For me personally riding my bike around delivering food would be far preferable to working in a restaurant or bar. Depends on your personality I guess.
"Far preferable" enough that you'd settle for under minimum wage and a variable paycheque? If so, you are exactly the reason companies like Deliveroo exist. They appeal to the whole "but you'll be so free cruising around on your bike delivering food at your own pace!" mentality.
There's a lot wrong with that when society--us--have the duty and obligation, which we do, to help when that Deliveroo driver gets doored and can't pay a medical bill because the job is comedically penurious.
Employers have a duty to their employees and to the society and community that grants them the right to the fiction of their existence, and that is being shirked.
> There's a lot wrong with that when society--us--have the duty and obligation, which we do, to help when that Deliveroo driver gets doored and can't pay a medical bill because the job is comedically penurious.
Which is why Britain has the NHS.
To me, the entire point of a robust welfare state is that you don't need to regulate employment nearly as strictly, because then you aren't as reliant on employers for life necessities. And that's a net positive, because regulation is far less effective than entitlements.
Sure! But the NHS is effectively becoming "care for the old and everyone else can shift for themselves" in a lot of ways. And there are plenty of other ways that the social safety net in the UK (to say nothing of other places Deliveroo et al. operate, like the United States) is being sabotaged--council housing is shrinking, when it's not catching on fire, etc.
> And that's a net positive, because regulation is far less effective than entitlements.
Completely agreed. But political forces exist to trash them, so...welp.
Who said anything about salary? I worked in a gastropub in a rich area of central London and they paid cash in hand. There was even an illegal Chinese dude in the cellar peeling potatoes etc. He barely spoke a word of English.