Gig Workers Need Support

I have worked for three online platforms - Uber Eats, Fiverr, and Crowd Content, and all three of them pay under the minimum wage for Ontario where I live.

I'm sure one could argue that those companies aren't based in Ontario, and therefore shouldn't have to pay Ontario's minimum wage. My counter to that argument is that the law should apply based on where the work is being done, not on where the company's HQ is located. (For example, a Starbucks employee in Ontario is paid according to Ontario's minimum wage, not Seattle's, where Starbucks is based.)

Work is work, and the idea that a company shouldn't have to pay minimum wage because they don't have a bricks and mortar office (which isn't even true in the case of Uber, which has an office in downtown Toronto), is a giant loophole that digital platforms have been exploiting to underpay the people who are doing the work for them.

I would argue that the minimum wage for gig workers needs to be set at the federal level as well, in order to prevent these platforms from avoiding hiring workers from provinces with higher minimum wages, in favour of those with lower minimum wages.

Alternately, if a platform doesn't want to hire workers from a particular province, they could be denied access to that province's market of customers as well.

The final point I would like to make is that these platforms can be difficult for workers to get a hold of. Uber Eats had a call centre and a physical office, but Fiverr and Crowd Content are only available by email or online chat. As I shared in my answer to one of the questions for this survey, I had an experience with Fiverr where I couldn't access my payment from their site, and I couldn't get ahold of anyone who was capable of helping me. I eventually gave up on trying to get the payment I was owed, and it left me with the impression that they were deliberately difficult to get a hold of because they didn't want to invest in proper HR for their workers. That's just my opinion, however, and isn't a fact. Still, it was disheartening, and I would like to see these platforms become more accessible to the people who are doing the work for them.