This article originally appeared in LawNews and is here with permission.
By Mahvash Ikram & Neil Sands
Full-time employment may become the exception, not the norm, as technology, demographic shifts and even climate change shape the future of the workplace, Employment Court Chief Judge Christina Inglis says.
Inglis said the employer-employee relationship could morph beyond recognition, or even disappear entirely, as artificial intelligence (AI) and the gig economy take hold, requiring fundamental changes to employment law.
“The traditional picture is reassuring – employer here, employee there, with an agreement in the middle binding them together. But what if the actual relationship is triangular or quadrilateral or distributed across a global network?” she said in a recent address to The Law Association’s Burning Issues in Employment Law Forum.
“Do we stretch old concepts until they break? Abandon inherited concepts whenever a new business model appears. We may need to step back, identify the purpose that the law is seeking to serve, and ask whether the legal structure still gives effect to it.”
While acknowledging that accurate predictions are notoriously difficult to make, Inglis said it was clear that change is coming at pace in the employment sphere.
“Working lives may move between contracts, platforms, projects and enterprises, combining periods of employment, self-employment, caregiving and education. Machines may perform much of the routine work previously...
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