Dependence and precarity in the platform economy
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Dependence and precarity in the platform economy Juliet B. Schor 1 & William Attwood-Charles 2 & Mehmet Cansoy 3 & Isak Ladegaard 4 & Robert Wengronowitz 5 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The rapid growth of Uber and analogous platform companies has led to considerable scholarly interest in the phenomenon of platform labor. Scholars have taken two main approaches to explaining outcomes for platform work—precarity, which focuses on employment classification and insecure labor, and technological control via algorithms. Both predict that workers will have relatively common experiences. On the basis of 112 in-depth interviews with workers on seven platforms (Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Turo, Uber, Lyft, Postmates, and Favor) we find heterogeneity of experiences across and within platforms. We argue that because platform labor is weakly institutionalized, worker satisfaction, autonomy, and earnings vary significantly across and within platforms, suggesting dominant interpretations are insufficient. We find that the extent to which workers are dependent on platform income to pay basic expenses rather than working for supplemental income explains the variation in outcomes, with supplemental earners being more satisfied and higher-earning. This suggests platforms are free-riding on conventional employers. We also find that platforms are hierarchically ordered, in terms of what providers can earn, conditions of work, and their ability to produce satisfied workers. Our findings suggest the need for a new analytic approach to platforms, which emphasizes labor force diversity, connections to conventional labor markets, and worker dependence. Keywords Airbnb . Algorithmic control . Economic dependence . Platform labor .
Precarity . Sharing economy . Uber The rapid growth of Uber and analogous platform companies has led to considerable scholarly interest in the phenomenon of platform labor. While the number of platformbased workers is relatively small (1.9 million in 2016), it is growing rapidly (Collins et al. 2019) and many observers believe it is a harbinger of what will become the dominant form of labor relation (Huws et al. 2018; Kenney and Zysman 2016; Scholz 2016). Management theorist Gerald Davis has predicted widespread “Uberization” in
* Juliet B. Schor [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Theory and Society
which companies abandon long-term contracts in favor of task-based work, employeefree organizations, and an organizational structure akin to a “web page” rather than the modern corporation (Davis 2016a, b; Vallas 2019). Economist Arun Sundararajan also foretells an “end to employment” (Sundararajan 2016), but in this view, independent agents are able to self-employ profitably, using technology to gain freedom, autonomy, and livelihood. A third position sees platforms as twenty-first century entities that use digital tools, and specifically algorithms, to control and manipulate workers (Rosenblat 2018; Rosenblat and Stark 2016; Lee et al. 2015). These examples
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