Jeremy Corbyn wants Uber to be replaced with a co-operative and workplace robots to be owned by workers

Jeremy Corbyn has said the next Labour government could push for so-called gig economy firms like Uber to be run as co-operatives and put robots in the hands of workers.

Speaking at the Co-operative Party Conference in London today, the Labour leader said technology had led to a more “rapacious and exploitative form of capitalism”.

He called out Uber and Deliveroo, which he said used the technologies of the future, but ​whose “business models depend not on technological advantage, but on establishing an effective monopoly in their market and using it to drive wages and conditions through the floor”.

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Corbyn said:

Imagine an Uber run co-operatively by their drivers, collectively controlling their futures, agreeing their own pay and conditions, with profits shared or re-invested.

The next Labour government, working with you, can make that a reality.

The biggest obstacle to this is not technological but ourselves.

While Labour doesn’t have all the answers, he said, they are “thinking radically”.

Having previously warned of the effect automation will have on jobs, Corbyn also suggested that robots in the workplace should be owned and controlled by workers rather than their bosses.

He noted Alternative Models of Ownership, a report the Labour party commissioned, which suggests “putting the ownership and control of the robots in the hands of those who work with them and come to rely on them” to prevent the few benefiting from the “rise of the robots”.

A recent report by Pearson, Nesta and the Oxford Martin School found one in five jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots as the majority of current jobs will sill be around in 2030.

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