Fairwork UK Ratings 2022: Collective Worker Power

The second Fairwork report for the United Kingdom continues to analyse digital labour platforms in an evolving policy and labour market context. In the UK, such platforms have been at the centre of a debate over the increasingly precarious situation of workers.

Our ratings this year cover 14 platforms across across a diverse range of sectors, including food delivery, grocery delivery, ride hailing, care work, and cleaning services. The research shows that while most platform workers continue to face unfair working conditions and lack social protections, a growing number of them are receiving benefits comparable to, or sometimes even better, than the statutory entitlements of the standard employment contract.

The ‘Fairwork UK Ratings 2022’ report highlights positive changes as well as the ongoing challenges platform workers face. The improvements we see in this new round of ratings for the UK platform economy are the result of the organising efforts of unions and workers associations like ADCU, GMB, IWGB, and the Nanny Solidarity Network. Organised labour has been crucial to forcing companies such as Uber to recognise the reality of contractual relations between workers and the platform. Legal challenges brought by these unions have changed the regulatory landscape by putting pressure on both platforms and legislators to improve working conditions for platform workers.