Latest / Roast the Post Podcast / Australian Gig Workers Get a Minimum Wage - But Are They Employees?

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Australian Gig Workers Get a Minimum Wage - But Are They Employees? · Roast the Post Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I did my homework last night after I got home from the seawall.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So this is from the AFP, and it's about labour
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: and employment.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: The headline is "Australian gig workers win world leading pay rise."
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: For background, Australia's Fair Work Commission ordered a minimum wage of
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: AUD $31.30
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: per hour, which is it's about thirty bucks an hour
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Canadian, so
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: it's a pretty decent wage as far as we're concerned, for delivery drivers
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: working for platforms like Uber Eats, Hungry Panda, kind of all of those.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's effective seventeenth of August 2026.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it just kicked in a couple of weeks ago.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: A part of the benefits package that is mandated, and this is where the new part
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: really
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: kind of kicks in, is there is mandatory workplace accident insurance now for gig
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: workers,
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: regardless of your employment status.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you work for a gig platform, you've got to have insurance now.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: The company provides it.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: so it marks a milestone for some of those protections that were missing before.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what I kind of wonder about all of this is if gig workers are now entitled
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: to both minimum wages and protections in Australia, does this redefine their status
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: as independent contractors?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or is this the start of a new kind of hybrid model for the future of work?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's funny that you chose this headline because when I was doing my
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: homework and I was pulling headlines, I also picked that one.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: I picked
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: that one because I thought it was really interesting.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then I just went with something else instead.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I did see this headline as
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: well.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is gonna be a huge shocker.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know Australian employment law.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: I barely know Canadian employment law.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can't speak to some of the nuances when it comes to employment versus
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: contractor.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: but if I speak to it from a place that, how we do it in Canada, there are
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: some very specific things that differentiate a contractor from an
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: employee.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to be really, really careful.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you start to dictate people's hours, if you provide them with equipment,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: if you give them certain benefits and things like that,
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: If they're only working for you, then technically you can make a case that they are
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: your employee.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then you
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: need to start, you know, deducting taxes and you have to treat them like an
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: employee.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: And there are more protections for an employee than there are for a contractor.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: and so with this a new Australian thing, they're basically saying this is
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: the minimum you can pay them.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: and you have to pay for their insurance.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Then yeah, I think it's really interesting.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is getting a little bit blurry.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: I like it.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad that there's a minimum wage for gig workers.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad that there's insurance coverage, but usually the contractor pays for their
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: own insurance coverage.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I do think that there are a bit of lines blurring.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it it'll be interesting to see.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know why that happened.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like what all these things that happened, happen for a reason.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Something happened, something didn't work out, something went
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: south.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to know why that happened.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to know how this plays out down the road.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: could a gig worker say you owe me for this and that because this happened
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: during my shift and I was contracted to your company?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: think it's good and I think it's weird, and I don't have enough
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: context to kind of understand the consequences potentially.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: It
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: certainly blurs the lines, right?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: when you're a platform business like the UberEats, the DoorDashes, they
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: mentioned Hungry Panda, I assume that's an Australian one,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: when you're a business operating a platform like that, the whole point of hiring
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: contractors is to offload or outsource your risk and offload or outsource certain
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: liabilities that you have for your employees and obligations that you have for your
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: employees.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So hiring contractors is meant to keep that off of your books.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this action, it claws some of that back onto your books.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: The wage thing in particular is... that's... that's a decent wage.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: particularly for what what can only really be described as unskilled labour.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that being a delivery driver is easy, that actually would
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: be very
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: challenging work, especially in inclement weather, heat and whatnot, like you're
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: outside.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: for how many hours of the day and it's hot and there's everything else kind of
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: going on around you, like... not pleasant.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: but it is unskilled labour.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are very, very few barriers to entry.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the fact that the regulator is saying, No, we need to up the floor for the wage
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: significantly, that says something.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: That says that there are things happening in the Australian economy that makes the
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: lower wage untenable and it's a big enough problem
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: for them to do something about it beyond just those kind of auspices of basic
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: fairness, right?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm also quite curious, like what has kind of led to that, what political
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: developments,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: what societal developments have led to that to make them kind of do that.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: what I'm saying.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Any workplace policy or employment law or whatever,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: something happened and that's why it's there.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, need to learn a little bit more about that.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: but that's an interesting one.