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It’s been nearly a decade since I last worked a nine-to-five and I have to say that I haven’t missed it in the least. An old Bristow cartoon once had one of the Prince of Office Workers’ colleagues ask why they did the job? Wages, Bristow answered. But what about excitement and adventure? Wages is all them things and more.
Is that true, though? One of the great whipping boys of the dying union movement (less than one in five Australians is a union member and most of those are public servants) has been the ‘gig economy’. The unions have framed it as exploitative and misery-inducing, as if Engels had risen from the grave to once again fulminate at the cotton mills that funded his trustafarian lifestyle.
But, is it true? Monash University Malaysia’s Workplace Wellbeing Science Network just dropped the first phase of its Employee Wellbeing Index. They surveyed 451 workers: 213 delivery riders and 238 white-collar office types. Four dimensions – physical, psychological, social and financial. The results are a slap in the face to every union boss and Labor backbencher who’s spent years demonising the gig economy.
New insights from the first phase of the Employee Wellbeing Index (EWI), conducted by the Workplace Wellbeing Science Network at Monash University, Malaysia, offer a window into this changing landscape. Drawing on data from 451 Malaysian workers (213 delivery riders and 238 white-collar employees), the study compares wellbeing across four dimensions – physical, psychological, social and financial.
The findings reveal both expected patterns and surprising contradictions.
For instance, office workers reported higher levels of physical wellbeing. Which might sound contradictory, until you realise office drones sit on their arses in air-conditioned comfort. Delivery riders battle traffic, weather and time pressure on two wheels or a scooter.
Yet the study also uncovered a striking paradox. Despite these challenges, delivery riders reported higher levels of psychological and social wellbeing.
And even slightly higher overall wellbeing than their white-collar counterparts.
Financial wellbeing showed no significant difference between the two groups, although lower-income riders experienced greater financial strain.
How the hell does that work? Simple. Gig work gives riders something the cubicle farm never will: autonomy. Choose your hours. Work when you want. No pointless meetings. No middle manager breathing down your neck. The flexibility that unions call ‘precarious’ feels to the riders like freedom.
Social connection turns up too. Riders aren’t isolated: they’ve built informal networks at waiting spots, through apps and peer support. The office workers? They’re stuck in hybrid hell, Zooming into the void while pretending the water-cooler banter still exists.
The unions, of course, will ignore this. They’ve spent years painting every Uber Eats rider as a victim who desperately needs their protection racket. But Malaysia is on to that, outside the unions.
More recently, Malaysia has taken a significant regulatory step. The Gig Workers Act 2025 (Act 872), gazetted on 31 December 2025, introduces a clearer legal framework for platform-based work. For the first time, gig workers – including delivery riders – are formally recognised in legislation.
The act strengthens oversight of platform operators, improves coordination with existing social protection mechanisms and introduces clearer processes for dispute resolution, including safeguards around account suspension or deactivation.
Australia’s union heavies would rather die than admit the obvious. The gig economy isn’t misery: it’s the escape hatch from the soul-crushing nine-to-five they’ve spent decades defending. But the data keeps piling up. People aren’t stupid. They vote with their feet and their scooters. Flexibility beats the fake security of a cubicle any day. Psychological wellbeing, social connection and a sense of control over your own time: these aren’t luxuries, they’re what make life worth living.
Unions can keep railing against the ‘exploitative gig economy’ while their membership evaporates. Tellingly, the last redoubt of unionism is the public sector. Those of us who pay the taxes for these pampered mandarins might well object that the real exploitation is lifetime job security at everyone else’s expense.
Wages might pay the bills, but autonomy, connection and the freedom to choose your own adventure? That’s the real excitement. And the riders have it in spades.
