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Why ‘gig health’ matters（868 words）
By Anjana Ahuja
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The closer one studies the gig economy, the less fun it sounds. Those who make their living this way, generally working for app-based platforms that match consumer needs with workers who can fulfil them, are regarded as being in precarious or contingent employment.
Bodies such as the International Labour Organisation characterise this kind of employment as mostly low paid and insecure, in which workers enjoy very few social, organisational and legal rights and protections.
Attention is turning to the health and wellbeing of this fast-growing workforce, which numbers about 1.3m in the UK. One academic is even calling for a “Gighall” study — akin to the landmark Whitehall studies into the health of civil servants.
Those studies, conducted over three decades by Sir Michael Marmot, demonstrated the link between socio-economic status and health, a correlation that became known as “status syndrome”. Senior civil servants enjoyed lower rates of death and heart disease than lowlier employees, a difference partly ascribed to autonomy at work.
The sense of powerlessness that afflicts many in the gig economy — according to one survey, only four out of 10 gig workers feel like they are their own boss — suggests that health problems may be brewing in this sizeable slice of the workforce.
One study on the Italian workforce, published last year in Social Science and Medicine, suggests that those on temporary contracts are more likely to use prescription medication for mental health conditions such as depression (although the reverse is also likely to be true, that pre-existing ill health leads to more irregular employment).
While not specifically about the gig economy, the authors, from the universities of Brunel and Milan, conclude that the drive to make labour markets more flexible might bode ill for the psychological wellbeing of workers.
Gig work is often conducted privately, in cars and homes, from bicycles and motorbikes, instead of from a shared workplace, so basic hazards, such as fatigue associated with long hours, can go unnoticed.
Gig workers, who tend to be classified as independent contractors, are also not generally eligible for sick pay or compensation for injury. This may change: a recent ruling in the UK courts has forced Uber to reclassify its drivers as employees, rather than self-employed contractors. (Uber will appeal the ruling in court this autumn.) Companies such as Deliveroo and Amazon have also come in for criticism.
In the meantime, Molly Tran, assistant professor of public health at the State University of New York, recently urged professional organisations, such as the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, to take notice of the potential dangers to workers’ health associated with the gig economy.
“As occupational medicine specialists, we have a fundamental ethical responsibility to promote social justice,” she says in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The gig economy is a “toxic combination” of low pay, low support and high demand, meaning that workers need to toil long hours to earn a basic income, wrote psychologist Joanna Wilde from the UK’s Council on Work and Health in the magazine Health and Safety at Work.
Such precarious work, Ms Wilde says, is known to be hazardous to physical and mental health with an added “lack of access to occupational health support and the inability to afford any form of health insurance that could cover being unable to work”.
Gig workers, Ms Wilde points out, are left with little time to engage in positive activities, such as spending time with family, eating well and exercising. The result is a rise in stress, a factor that is implicated in cardiovascular disease and even cancer.
Chris Yuill, a lecturer in medical sociology at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, has researched workplace health and believes there may be a pattern of “gig health”.
“It’s an illusion that these people can work when they want,” he says.
“In Aberdeen I walk past a spot in the city where young men hang out, just waiting to get a call. There are the usual health and safety concerns, such as having to make a certain number of deliveries in a certain time, but what’s the psycho-social effect of waiting for that message to come up, telling you you’ve got your next job?
“We need to understand the effects, because we associate being in control with good health,” he says. “And there are good indications that workers [in the gig economy] do not have high levels of control.”
Mr Yuill praises the Whitehall studies but points out that its subjects enjoyed steady jobs with clear career progression. “We need a ‘Gighall’ study. There’s been a change in the way that work is organised in our economies. People are working quite long shifts to make a basic income. People are also spending their wages in order to work.” Delivery couriers and taxi drivers often supply and maintain their own vehicles.
“We need to ask: what is happening and, also, what is it good for? Does it produce a way of life that we think is acceptable in our society?” he asks. “British society has a long history of making sure work has meaning. How this happens in new forms of work is a debate we need to have.”
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