[LatteLazy]

The arbitrary bit is who is an employee. I can do the same work as my colleague, but one of us might be a contractor and the other an employee. The cleaners who clean my office come in every day like me, but they're not employees of my company. But they are employees of A company. But when I hire the same person to do the same job in my house, they're NOT employees. Some people who want to be employees are NOT, and others who do NOT want to be ARE.

It's a huge mess. Maybe it made sense when people worked one job for life, and when risks around employment were mostly about risk of injury and not downsizing etc. It doesn't work now. It does not protect enough people AND it stops others being as flexible as they want. And instead of us deciding whether an Uber driver etc is an employee or not (or them deciding themselves), we have dumped the responsibility on judges...

FYI, I am a brit.