Antagonism beyond employment: how the ‘subordinated agency’ of labour platforms generates conflict in the remote gig economy

Abstract

This article investigates why gig economy workers who see themselves as self-employed freelancers also engage in collective action traditionally associated with regular employment. Using ethnographic evidence on the remote gig economy in North America, the UK and the Philippines, we argue that labour platforms increase the agency of workers to contract with clients and thus reduce the risk of false self-employment in terms of the worker–client relationship. However, in doing so, platforms create a new source of subordination to the platform itself. We term this phenomenon ‘subordinated agency’, and demonstrate that it entails a ‘structured antagonism’ with platforms that manifests in three areas: fees, competition and worker voice mechanisms. Subordinated agency creates worker desire for representation, greater voice and even unionization towards the platform, while preserving entrepreneurial attitudes towards clients.

Conflict and control in the contemporary workplace: Structured antagonism revisited

“…Developing the theme of different types of platform, Wood and Lehdonvirta (2021) studied remote platform work such as data entry or other tasks where workers are selfemployed and can choose their jobs across three countries. As they insist, some platforms are pure information exchanges, and in such cases, we would say, there is no SA but standard market bargaining between buyers and sellers.…”

What Is on Your Gig Radar? Toward a Hierarchical Structure of Coping

“…The categorization of some gig workers as false self-employed explains some coping behaviors by them that are unlikely to happen for self-employed workers. For instance, while collective action is unlikely for self-employed workers due to a lack of structured antagonism, protests by Uber, Deliveroo, and Foodora workers have been started due to the de facto employment relationship that these workers experience [ 10 ].…”

“…They have little time to decide, and both their performance rate and future assignments get affected if they refuse the task [ 4 ]. Gig work structures substitute behavioral control by supervisors with technical control [ 5 ], so while it gives workers some forms of autonomy (e.g., flextime) [ 3 ], different contextual characteristics of gig work are depleting workers’ autonomy due to controls on work methods, decision making, work time through rules, ratings, penalizations, and information asymmetry [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Algorithmic control threatens worker well-being due to the ambiguity, anxiety, and insecurity resulting from these challenges [ 14 , 15 ].…”

Organizational perspectives on digital labor market intermediaries

“…These shifts have affected workers' experiences, including precarity, boundaries between employment and personal life, autonomy, and alienation (Glavin et al., 2021; Kalleberg, 2009; Pedulla, 2020; Schor, 2008; Wood et al., 2019; Wood & Lehdonvirta, 2021), as well as work relationships (Chen & McDonald, 2015; Cristea & Leonardi, 2019; Schwartz, 2018) and status differentials (Bianchi et al., 2010; Metiu, 2006). Researchers have contemplated the organizational implications of dis‐embedded workers (Bartley et al., 2019) and new forms of power and control (Rahman & Valentine, 2021; Shestakofsky, 2017).…”