‘If He Just Knew Who We Were’: Microworkers’ Emerging Bonds of Attachment in a Fragmented Employment Relationship

Abstract

<jats:p> Using the lens of attachment, we explore microworkers’ views of their employment relationship. Microwork comprises short-term, task-focused exchanges with large numbers of end-users (requesters), implying transitory and transactional relationships. Other key parties, however, include the platform which digitally meditates worker–requester relationships and the online microworker community. We explore the nature of attachment with these parties and the implications for microworkers’ employment experiences. Using data from a workers’ campaign directed at Amazon Mechanical Turk and CEO Jeff Bezos, we demonstrate multiple, dynamic bonds – primarily acquiescence and instrumental bonds – towards requesters and the platform, and identification with the online community. Microworkers also expressed dedication towards the platform. We consider how attachment buffers the exploitative employment relationship and how community bonds mobilise collective worker voice. </jats:p>

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

“…Indeed, the perceived benefits of collective voice activities would need to outweigh the high short-run costs of action, which have been found to weaken the translation of grievances into support for strikes among contingent workers (Jansen et al, 2017). This means that small acts of participation via the Internet, which entail fewer costs and resources (Margetts et al, 2015), may remain the most common form of collective action in the remote gig economy (see: Irani and Silberman, 2013;Johnston and Land-Kazlauskas, 2018;Lehdonvirta, 2016;Panteli et al, 2020;Salehi et al, 2015;Wood et al, 2018). Importantly, then, our findings also highlight that it is possible for remote gig workers within a context of heightened antagonism to transform platform voice infrastructures, such as forums that are designed to be platform-controlled 'microphones' (Gegenhuber et al, 2020;Gerber 2020;Gerber and Krzywdzinkski, 2019) into spaces for collective voice.…”

“…Remote gig work can be further broken down into microwork (or digital piecework; Lehdonvirta, 2018) and 'macrowork' consisting of larger projects (Wood et al, 2019a). While news coverage has tended to focus on protests by local gig workers, academic research has highlighted the potential for remote gig economy labour platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, Upwork, and Fiverr, to become targets for worker collective action (Irani and Silberman, 2013;Johnston and Land-Kazlauskas, 2018;Lehdonvirta, 2016;Panteli et al, 2020;Salehi et al, 2015;Wood et al, 2018).…”

Co-creation in Macrotask Knowledge Work on Online Labor Platforms

“…Platform work is typically divided into two kinds of tasks by their skills requirements. 'Microtasks' (Gegenhuber et al 2020;Howcroft & Bergvall-Kåreborn 2019;Rolandsson et al 2020;Sutherland et al 2020), 'microwork' (Panteli et al 2020;Wood et al 2019), and 'low-skilled work' (Jesnes 2019) comprise tasks that require low discretion and skill. These are highly defined and determined by the client or platform and often fragmented.…”

“…Existing literature on the quality of platform work is limited (Wood et al 2018) and, as referred to above, much of it emphasizes the precarious or deteriorative aspects of such work (de Stefano 2016;Deng et al 2016;Gandini 2016;Panteli et al 2020;Popiel 2017;Rasmussen et al, 2019;Sutherland et al 2020;van Doorn 2017). Instead, we focus on what value the platform worker can create in co-operation with clients and possibly other workers in the Nordic context, and how this value is created: an issue rarely discussed in Nordic working life studies thus far.…”

Nuevas formas de empleo y transformaciones del trabajo

“…Este incremento de la atipicidad se estaría registrando tanto en el seno del propio trabajo formalmente asalariado -trabajo subcontratado, interino, a tiempo parcial, zero hours, mediado por empresas de trabajo temporal, crowdwork y microworkers, etc. (Andrijasevic y Sacchetto, 2017;Casilli, 2019;De Stefano, 2016;Drahokoupil, 2015;Eurofound, 2015Eurofound, y 2017aPanteli et al, 2020; Serrano y Jepsen, 2019)-; como en los modos de empleo no asalariados -trabajo autónomo (tradicional o dependiente), https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/aiet.94 voluntariado, prácticas en empresas, etc. (Célérier et al, 2017(Célérier et al, y 2019Eurofound, 2017b;Moore y Newsome, 2018;Organización Internacional del Trabajo, 2016;Riesco-Sanz, 2016)-.…”