On Tuesday, “gig workers” who drive for platforms like Uber and Lyft in British Columbia gained the right to be paid a minimum wage for their work. Lawyers say many more provinces may follow suit.
“What it signals for us is a growing awareness that these people in this industry deserve some protections and some minimum standards,” said Paul Edwards, a Winnipeg labour and employment lawyer who is representing workers in a class-action lawsuit against the food delivery company SkipTheDishes.
Last month, workers in that case won an important victory when the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear SkipTheDishes’s appeal to stop the lawsuit from proceeding. The lawsuit, which has yet to be certified, claims SkipTheDishes’s workers should be considered employees, which would entitle them to minimum wage and other protections.
