Sceptics or supporters? Consumers’ views of work in the gig economy

Abstract

Labour‐management practices and workers’ experiences in the gig economy are topics of major interest for researchers, regulators and the general public. Platform companies project a vision of gig workers as autonomous freelancers, but pervasive features of their own labour practices, along with workers’ traits, create new vulnerabilities and risks. Efforts to improve gig workers’ conditions to date have made in‐roads without achieving a general shift in platforms’ practices or gig workers’ conditions. In this paper, we explore how another, less‐recognised stakeholder group—consumers—shapes the conditions of gig work. Drawing on Australian public opinion data, we study consumers’ views of the gig economy and ask whether these will help or hinder pro‐worker campaigns. While consumers are sympathetic to gig workers’ financial plight, they also see benefits in the work’s flexibility and opportunities for jobseekers. We explain how our findings can inform advocacy campaigns and further gig economy research.

Planetary carambolage: The evolutionary political economy of technology, nature and work

“…The term digital labor has also been used to refer, e.g. solely to work arrangements which are transacted and delivered online via the platform (Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft 2014; Huws 2014; Irani 2015), and contrasted with remotely delivered gig work (Healy et al 2020;Kässi and Lehdonvirta 2016;de Ruyter and Brown 2019;Wood et al 2019). Those seemingly distant takes on only one term used in regard to platform-mediated work show how platforms render the "problem of labor as at once a commodity and a lived experience" (van Doorn 2017, p. 899), ultimately bringing us back to the problem of social subjection.…”

“…As such, we consider in particular income-generating work performed by (private) individuals-the on-demand workforce-and draw the scope of the phenomenon as (a) location-based (offline) and web-based (online) platform-mediated work, both types provided by (b) individuals and the crowd (Schmidt 2017). Though still elusive in numbers, platform-mediated work has been estimated to grow at an annual rate of 26% (Kässi and Lehdonvirta 2016), catering for 1-3% of all paid work in advanced economies (Healy et al 2020;Schwellnus et al 2019), with 70 million workers registered on platforms facilitating only location-based work (Heeks 2017).…”

Out of sight, out of mind? (In)visibility of/in platform-mediated work

“…Some of them might have a physical space in the city, a "touch-base," where they pick up their bags or bicycles and have a regular possibility to see and interact with other workers. Although their work is atomized, uniforms and actual perception by the general public might have contributed to workers forging alliances (Healy et al, 2020). Curiously, interest alignment and unionization has also occurred among workers providing ride-hailing services, for example, in the EU or in selected US states (Gruszka and Novy, 2018), despite their utter invisibility to each other.…”

Building Collective Institutional Infrastructures for Decent Platform Work: The Development of a Crowdwork Agreement in Germany

“…Another set of actors responding to platforms are associations and civil society groups that develop private regulations. Examples include business associations and trade unions in established markets such as transportation (Thelen, 2018), grassroots activism by workers, sometimes supported by consumer groups (Healy, Pekarek, & Vromen, 2020), and even collective action by workers, unions and platforms themselves (Cutolo & Kenney, 2021).…”