It's been an interesting year for the multinational gig economy — the loose conglomeration of companies including Uber, Deliveroo and Airtasker that connect users online with independent contractors willing to deliver something to them, drive them around, or complete miscellaneous tasks.

One of the men who started the whole craze, Uber founder Travis Kalanick, was forced to resign.

Concerns that Kalanick's win-at-all-costs mentality was harming female employees, low-income drivers and customers caused enough bad press that the all important stock price dipped, leading to a shareholder revolt.

But Uber's employees were unhappy too. Many drivers and customers left the company in protest over Kalanick's leadership and the company's love of changing terms of service and hated background checks for drivers.

Additionally, while gig economy behemoths love saying they're only thriving because of a lack of government regulation, in the UK at least, the regulators are on the way.

Earlier this month, UK Prime Minister Theresa May launched the Taylor Review into Employment Practices in the Modern Economy, led by former Labour Party heavyweight Matthew Taylor, saying its findings would help stop the exploitation of gig economy workers, without stifling innovation.

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While the UK Government has not yet committed to the findings of the report, there may be lessons in it for Australia.

Senior Researcher Brhmie Balaram, from Matthew Taylor's organisation The RSA, said an important aspect of the Taylor Review was a suggestion that people in the gig economy be reclassified.

"While it should be decided on a case-by-case basis, I think that what we're trying to say is that if you classify people in the UK employment category of workers rather than independent contractors, you will be able to guarantee them a level of rights and protections such as minimum wage, holiday pay and rest breaks," she said.

Additionally, the Taylor Review recommends that some provision be given for career progression in gig economy companies.

Uber power over drivers

Another issue is how much power workers have to change their conditions.

The terms of service contract Uber drivers are required to agree to is regularly changed by the company, meaning the amount of income for the same amount of work can be cut unilaterally.

Sorry, this audio has expired The growth of the 'gig economy'

For some drivers, who have invested in high-end or new model cars to improve the service they provide to their customers, this can mean a significant investment is now worthless.

According to Dr Sarah Kaine from the University of Technology Sydney Business School, gig economy companies like us to think that fixing the problem of classifying their workers is much harder than it is.

"Currently it is the companies that are deciding how to classify these workers. At the moment they're maintaining that they're independent contractors," she said.

"We do have provisions under the Fair Work Act to try and limit 'sham contracting', whereby you call workers contractors even if they're not, and the Fair Work Ombudsman is very active in trying to make sure that kind of contracting doesn't happen.

"The Fair Work Ombudsman is beginning investigations into Uber and how they classify their workers.

"What workers really want is to be treated fairly. They want to have a say, instead of being on the end of unilateral changes."

At the moment, this isn't an issue for most Australians, as most of us are full-time employees or casual workers.

However, in the future, it might become a much bigger problem as the number of people working in the gig economy increases.

"What happens when you have 30 or 40 per cent of workers working as quasi-independent contractors who haven't made provisions for superannuation? What happens to the tax base in that situation?" said Dr Kaine.

The UK Government appears to already be moving towards solving this problem and, as some of the shine starts to come off the multinational gig economy companies, a change may arrive in Australia too.