A courier company in the UK doesn't allow its workers (all "independent contractors") a day off to see a doctor. The result: one of them died from diabetes after skipping medical appointments.

We have to put an end to this "independent contractor" bullshit.

A company that pays people to do more than 1000 hours per week of a certain kind of work should be required to hire full-time employees to do at least 80% of that work. If the work amounts to more than 10,000 hours per week, the company should have hire full-times to do 90% of it. At more than 30,000 hours of work per week, there must be enough full-timers to do 95% of it.

Work farmed out to contractor companies should count towards the total just as if there were no middleman, and that slight differences in the details of the work should not divide it legally into separate pools.