Two - Workers on tap but income drying up? The potential implications for incomes and social protection of the ‘gig economy’

Summary

Poverty and low income continue to be central to policy debates over the past year. While there are early signs that earnings may be returning to their pre-recession levels, the UK referendum to leave the European Union (EU) may hinder this change. Consequently ‘austerity’ has remained the driving focus of policy makers seeking to bring public spending ‘under control’ in the context of economic uncertainty following ‘Brexit’. It is difficult to predict, so soon after the vote, exactly how this will impact on incomes and earnings. However, other trends that have received significant attention over the last year open up some wider concerns, not just about income but about how social protection itself is designed. Recently, the context of employment and work has come under increasing scrutiny, calling into question the stability and security of income and employment. With the emergence of the ‘ondemand economy’, a political awakening towards the implications of this form of employment seems to have occurred. This chapter explores a number of these themes, drawing out considerations it may have for earnings, affordable living and social security. It seeks to go further than this and explore similarities between the language of the ‘on-demand’ economy and the re-emergence of moralistic and pathological accounts of poverty. Together, these revitalise narratives which individualise social problems and the agency necessary to resolve them. This shift – not only in terms of the ‘on-demand’ economy, but how it is being positioned – offers a challenging context for the provision of social protection, and it remains unclear how to counter these narratives and developments.

Austerity and the cost of living

The global economic recession since 2007/08 has called into question the pursuit of economic growth as the sole means of improving welfare. Although some continue to argue in favour of unrestricted economic growth (Ben-Ami, 2012), others have sought to reawaken Tawney's concern with the problem of riches, suggesting that such vast inequalities underpin the persistence of poverty (Seabrook, 2015). Wider ‘macro’ debates regarding the nature of the contemporary economy occur alongside concern with the ‘micro’ level of welfare provision and its impact on human lives. As the politics of austerity (and its impact) has grown in prominence, policy debates are reframed, altering provision of public services in significant ways (Gough, 2011; Clarke and Newman, 2012).