A Long-Term Perspective on the Gig Economy

n July 2017, Don Lane, a courier working in southern England for the German logistics firm DPD, attended a hospital medical appointment regarding his deteriorating diabetes condition. The firm fined him £150 because as a result he failed to deliver his allocation of parcels for the day. In the following months his diabetes worsened; he had a succession of further hospital appointments, but he missed most of them, feeling unable to afford the successive penalties that DPD would impose. On January 4, 2018, he collapsed and died. Mr. Lane was not an employee of DPD, but for nineteen years had been a self-employed contractor to the firm, a member of the so-called gig economy, enjoying the much extolled “freedom” from domination by bosses that self-employment is reputed to bring.