WINNING THE WAR ON WAGES:

LP: The other problem is, critics say (and in my view they do have a point) that the companies using the sharing economy model are violating employees' rights. They are taking us back to the nineteenth century by undermining the structure of the welfare state we have created over the last decades. For example Uber does not take any responsibility for its drivers and does not provide them with any assistance if they can't do their job.

AW: If you have a regular job as a taxi driver, pay a certain level of taxes, and enjoy a stable relationship with you employer, you may see your rights threatened by the arrival of Uber. If, however, you're somebody who's excluded from the taxi market, because you don't have a job with a regular taxi company, then suddenly you have a chance to get a job. And if you're somebody who wants to work just a few hours a week then you should have the option to do that. So one group of workers are right to feel threatened by this flexible economy, but lots of other people get may benefit from it.

On the other hand Uber tries to abuse the system, by avoiding paying taxes and insurance for its employees. There's a danger that if you allow that to go on, you'll have a whole class of workers not paying for pension and insurance systems and working only on short term contracts. We therefore need to adapt our legislation to the arrival of the flexible economy, in which the 40-hour-work week is disappearing.

LP: This type of business model shifts much of the risk to employees. In case of Uber if you lose your car, crash it, if you have any health problems - you're on your own. If, however, you're making money, you have to share it with the company. It's not flexibility, it's exploitation.

AW: Definitely the trend of the flexible economy is to put most risks on the employee and remove them from the employer. We definitely need to address this issue. In this case one solution might be to allow Uber drivers to team together in order to get collective insurance. In other words we could use old fashioned nineteenth-century methods such as mutual benefit societies in collaborating for cheaper insurance. [...]

LP: Many economists claim that today work has become less and less secure, which leads to the creation of a new social class, the precariat.[1] Job insecurity is also thought to be one of the major reasons behind social unrest and impatience with capitalism. And here we have another substantial chunk of economy that provides insecure jobs. Maybe we should simply ban such companies as Uber as the French did?

AW: It's important to remember that the shift to a much more precarious economy predates the sharing economy. The number of part-time and precariously employed workers rose sharply in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The arrival of the sharing economy is introducing much more efficiency into a part-time economy that already exists.

LP: Which makes it even more difficult to deal with.

AW: This is a sort of essential paradox of capitalism: sometimes what looks like security actually creates insecurity and what looks like insecurity actually creates more security. In France, for example, there are vast numbers of people in their 20s employed on short term contracts. Companies are too afraid of employing people on permanent contracts, because it's so hard to get rid of them once they are employed. If you actually use a more flexible approach and make it easier to fire people, it will make companies more willing to take people as full-time employees. Britain, which has taken a more flexible approach to jobs, could be used as an example of a precarious economy. Yet it has also created a lot more jobs than France over the last decade.

LP: But there's also the question about the type of jobs that are created.

AW: It's better to have a short-term job or a precarious job than no job at all.

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