Hoping that self-employment through gig economy can solve their financial problems, a hard-up UK delivery driver and his wife end up trapped in the vicious circle of this modern-day form of labour exploitation.
Drama
Language: English, Dutch subtitles
Ken Loach, UK 2019
“You don’t get hired here,” states Maloney, the hard-nosed delivery-depot boss in Ken Loach’s searing examination of zero-hours Britain. “You come on board. We call it on-boarding. You don’t work for us – you work with us.” It’s a prime example of the doublespeak that underwrites today’s gig-economy culture. As sold to hard-grafting Ricky Turner, it’s an opportunity to become “the master of your own destiny” – a self-employed franchise-owner, freed from wage slavery (there are only “fees”) in a brave new world in which everything “is your choice”.
Yet despite Ricky’s determination to grab this opportunity and make it work for him and his family, he’s been sold a lie – all he’s really being freed from are basic workers’ rights. Before the drama is over, that hollow declaration of choice will come back to haunt Ricky, painfully revealed as nothing more than an enslaving illusion [The Guardian]
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