Description: Last week’s Wiley Weekly Accounting Updates featured a story on job churn: a concept voiced by the Finance Minister Bill Morneau to discuss the world of vanishing permanent jobs. And certainly one cause of job churn has been the so-called gig economy, where businesses like Uber maintain tall those drivers picking up passengers under the Uber app are independent contractors.  A tribunal in London though isn’t buying Uber’s story. In ruling that Uber drivers are indeed employees, the tribunal said “The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common ‘platform’ is to our minds faintly ridiculous.”

Date: November 3, 2016

Source: theglobeandmail.com

Link:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/executive-insight/the-true-nature-of-the-internets-puppet-economy-is-being-exposed/article32670394/

Discussion Points:

1) Have you ever used Uber? Do you know any Uber drivers?

2) What is your opinion of this decision made by the tribunal?

3)  What do you think about the author’s suggestion that the gig economy should be called the puppet economy?