Gig Economy

Food (or textiles or anything else) which has the official Fair Trade mark - the blue and green one - is not monitored by the supermarkets, * Heckter* but by the Fair Trade organisation whose proper name escapes me for the moment. I buy Fair Trade when I can too, and particularly bananas and cashew nuts, which both have poor records for the exposure of workers to horrible chemicals. These days there seem to be more instances of Fair Trade and organic certifications going together, and this does apply to both bananas and cashew nuts. Traidcraft and Natural Collection both have good ranges of Fair Trade foods and other things.. I have to confess to using Amazon but never buy Nestle products.

Sorry Heckter. meant to make your name bold, but failed to proof-read!

Another point to consider. The large global companies who pay their staff low wages . The staff need topping up by housing benefit, tax credits. So we are paying for companies to make more profits for their shareholders and executives. It's so unfair on everyone.

hear Hear Lyndie

And then these workers are criticised for being benefit dependent

Not all zero hours contracts are bad. There is a (probably small) percentage that are mutually beneficial to the employee and employer, because of the flexibility they offer. It becomes a problem when the flexibility is all on the employers side and none on the employee side, e.g. When people can't choose whether or not they want to work particular hours in any given week, or when they are not allowed to accept work from a different employer.

They aren't all minimum wage jobs either - I have a zero hours contract which suits me very well and the pay is good. The big difference is that for me, it's extra income on top of my pension, and buys the extras like holidays and treats. That's very different from the position if someone is dependent on a zero hours contract as their main or only income.

However, all these different situations get lumped together as 'a bad thing'

The links were interesting and informative. DH was (is) self employed, but it was much like zero hour or gig in many ways. He loves it, poured himself into his idea and made a good wage. We pay taxes, the contributions, took holidays when we were inclined, his hours flex as needed.

As long as someone pays the contributions, I think gig, self, and zero-contract all have merit for people who don't want to be on the "regular empolyer employee path".

Cagsy Wed 03-May-17 13:16:27 Thanks for your reply.

How odd, on the occasion of our first delivery the Ocado driver said that the drivers are not allowed to accept tips and it was quite a large delivery (12 bags) and I had a fiver in my hand. He was middle-aged as most of them are in our area.

And since I have never been looked at in expectation of one. We meet ours at the front door, so there's no coming in or going upstairs, downstairs, etc.