Minimum standards of employment were needed, they told a Senate inquiry examining the government's workplace reforms to prevent companies undercutting employees with labour hire, and increase protections for gig workers.
An anonymous support worker, who appeared before the inquiry as Witness D, said workers using online care platforms such as Mable had been under pressure to constantly lower prices.
"Workers on Mable don't have much control over their work because they join the platform to start earning and I found that you'll give Mable an inch and they take a mile," the witness told the inquiry on Tuesday.
"I noticed that the occupation health and safety standards for workers were not up to the standard and, unfortunately, not much has changed."
Another worker, known to the inquiry as Witness E, said there was pressure to perform unpaid work to be competitive on the service.
"I had to charge lower and lower because clients would negotiate my prices down because a majority of the clients were self-managed," they said.
Mable argued the workplace law changes were not needed, saying more than half the working relationships on the platform were six months or longer, which should not be considered gig work.
Mable executive director Peter Scutt told the inquiry the platform supported minimum standards for workers.
"Our objective has been to ensure that people with disabilities, older persons and independent contractors can all continue to engage cost-effectively in a manner of their choosing, with the flexibility and safeguards they value," he said.
"Mable's future is intrinsically dependent on enabling good outcomes for all users on our platform."
Australian Services Union acting national secretary Emeline Gaske said loopholes needed to be closed in order to protect workers.
"We are seeing a race to the bottom in conditions in the workforce, which is only exacerbating the pace with which people are leaving the sector," she said.
"Unregulated platforms like Mable can exploit the loopholes that exist and can operate more profitably than traditional services because they keep a higher proportion of the NDIS funding and undercut other providers."
Disability service provider Hireup has thrown its support behind the proposed law changes.
Executive director Jordan O'Reilly told the inquiry Hireup had offered all of its workers formal contracts, saying the current gig economy model was failing employees.
"Many (platform companies) have been perfectly aware of the big lie at the heart of the gig economy, the lie that has allowed companies to get away with misclassifying workers as independent contractors rather than employees," he said.
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