Flexible Work and Enterprise act of 2024

“Workers’ rights matter, but lasting improvements are best achieved through a competitive labour market rather than excessive government intervention. If we want unemployment to fall, we need to make it easier and less costly for businesses to hire. Individuals should be free to decide which jobs, wages, and working conditions they are willing to accept. Government should protect basic legal rights and enforce contracts, but it should not dictate every term of the relationship between workers and employers.”

“Liberal Platform votes Yes. Flexibility in how people work is a matter of individual and economic freedom, not just business convenience. Not every gig worker wants — or benefits from — being forced into a traditional employment model; many choose platform work precisely for its flexibility. This bill doesn't strip protections outright: minimum pay and accident insurance remain guaranteed floors. What it removes is a one-size-fits-all classification that limited both workers' and entrepreneurs' freedom to structure work on their own terms. A free market rests on voluntary arrangements between consenting parties, provided basic safety nets hold — and they do here. Liberal Platform trusts individuals to negotiate work that suits their own lives, rather than having Fjordheim's government mandate a single model for everyone.”

“We reject this proposal”

“This bill doesn't create new flexibility, it removes protections that already exist — sick pay, holiday, and pensions that gig workers won months ago, stripped back down to a minimum wage and accident insurance. Flexibility framed this way usually means precarity for the person doing the work and lower costs for the platform employing them, and ASTER has never voted to trade one for the other. We'd also note this specifically undoes a law Movement For Socialism achieved earlier this year — a genuine labor win, not an outdated rule in need of modernizing. Businesses can absolutely offer flexible arrangements without the state deciding, by default, that flexible work deserves fewer protections than any other kind. ASTER votes No.”

“We support this proposal”