This article explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected platform workers' work and life experiences in Poland and how they have responded. These workers have been exposed to substantial fluctuations in demand during the pandemic, magnifying the distortions existing in an unregulated asymmetr ical employment relationship that diverges from the standard employment relationship. Findings illustrate how workers have attempted to reduce the disruptions underpinning this relationship by adopting different strategies, which resemble Hirschman's typology of exit, voice and loyalty. The authors explain workers' choice of strategy by different levels of access to resources and institutional capabilities, as well as by variations in workers' orientations.
This working paper identifies some key areas of policy intervention for advancing socially sustainable and fair solutions for freelancers working in the creative industries, who are among those have suffered the most from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we focus on those who work entirely on their own account, without employees (i.e. the 'solo self-employed'), and who undertake project-or task-based work on a fixed-term basis. While demand for some services (e.g. ICT services, software development, digital communication, media, medical translation and audiobooks) has grown, due to their digital nature or essentiality in the post-COVID reality, other types of creative work have suffered due to increased competition, decreased demand, or because they were entirely put on hold due to the pandemic. National government policy measures aimed at cushioning the impact of COVID-19 on workers' livelihoods proved necessary but insufficient to guarantee long-term protection. This is because the eligibility criteria for such support measures exclude many freelancers in the creative industries. Moreover, those who have been guaranteed access to national government support are often confronted with the complexity and length of the administrative proceedings which accompany the implementation of these measures. Finally, career development and employability are vulnerable areas for freelancers due to there being a lack of (or insufficient) national funds dedicated to these areas.
Researchers search for factors explaining the disruptive impact of labour platforms on work, yet very few studies explore how platforms approach product markets and the resultant effects on platform workers’ working conditions. Looking at this question, this paper studies distinct but similar international and regional food delivery platforms in Poland and Italy, exploring which factors explain differences in their working conditions. Two findings emerge. First, international and regional platforms differ substantially in terms of how they approach product markets. Second, these differences account for the variety within (and across) platforms’ employment outcomes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.