Australia’s federal government is preparing a sweeping expansion of the industrial relations system, declaring Uber-style labour contracts a “cancer” on the Australian economy, and is launching talks with major players such as Uber and Deliveroo on how to extend traditional employee rights to gig workers, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. “Gig work drives down wages and it has been spreading like a cancer through the economy,” Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke told Transport Workers Union (TWU) members ahead of next week’s jobs and skills summit in Canberra, Australia. “It is now extending into the care economy – into aged care and the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) – and into industries like security,” Burke said.

The push to regulate the gig economy comes ahead of the government’s jobs summit next month, and after the Australian Council of Trade Unions this week called for the return of industry-wide pay bargaining. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has said the ACTU proposal risks a “tightening of the industrial relations scheme that takes it back to the 1970s”. Gig economy companies are broadly supportive of the federal government's efforts to regulate the sector but have demanded their workers' flexible hours, which let them clock on and off at will to fit their schedules and efficiently match supply and demand, be protected.

“Our recent agreement with the TWU reflects a shared desire for industry-wide reform that ensures earnings protections and minimum standards for all gig workers, while preserving the flexibility and autonomy that they tell us is important to them," an Uber spokeswoman said.