‘Gig’ economy: autonomy or precariousness?

‘Gig’ economy: autonomy or precariousness?

Juan Miguel Baez Melian, Zaragoza’s University

A ghost has emerged from developed countries that travels the world, has been spreading throughout it and threatens to reach all corners of the planet. It’s called economics gig and it is the last turn of the screw of neoliberalism.

The economy gig It basically consists of the fact that, on the one hand, there is a company that bases its management on a digital platform, with which it is able to connect a large number of customers, suppliers and workers, while, on the other, there are the workers gigwhich are the ones that carry out the service requested by the client.

These tasks are usually very simple. For example, taking a client from one part of the city to another or taking food from a restaurant to a client’s house. But, sometimes, the tasks gain in complexity. For example, the translation of a text, the design of a computer program or the commentary of a book.

The gig discourse and false autonomy

The official discourse, which is based on the concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship, is as follows: this new business form allows access to the labor market for groups that were previously excluded. Especially women and youth.

Among the arguments in favor are the flexibility and autonomy that workers have gig, who decide how much, how and when to work. Even what orders they accept or not. These people would not be workers but rather entrepreneurs, since they are their own bosses, independent contractors, freelancers. That is, they do not belong to the template of the platform company.

However, the reality is very different. Some of these workers are forced to work endless days in order to earn a decent wage, which can even affect their health and job security.

For example, some riders they must drive for hours, traversing streets congested with traffic and trying to keep delivery time to a minimum. This not only implies going at the maximum possible speed, but also breaking traffic regulations with the risk that this implies for the worker himself and the rest of the users.

The self-employed condition fostered by the economy gig implies the non-applicability of the regulations that protect the labor rights of employees. This, in turn, means that the customer can get the service much cheaper than that provided by traditional organizations.

The power of the algorithm

The supposed autonomy of the worker gig it is altered by “the execution of a sequence of logical steps that allow solving a problem”. This is for the algorithm.

Indeed, the main managerial element of this business model is an algorithm that, based on opinions and evaluations of clients and suppliers, and on other data on how the service has been carried out (for example, the execution time), decides who to assign the next assignment or if there is disconnect to a certain platform worker.

It is the closest thing to the state of permanent surveillance generated by the panopticon proposed by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century, and analyzed by the philosophers Michael Foucault and Byung Chul Han (the digital panopticon).

Judgments and laws

The public debate on the false autonomy of the riders includes various court rulings in some European countries. The Spanish justice ruled against Deliveroo and Glovo, forcing them to incorporate the riders as staff workers. Both rulings are based on the ability of the company to influence the work of the alleged self-employed, which is a clear indication of an employment relationship.

In addition, in August 2021, the so-called rider law. Its great deficiency within the economy gig is that it only affects the delivery sector when digitization through platforms is spreading to practically all sectors.

This implies an increase in job insecurity and a decrease in the rights of workers, especially with regard to periods of unemployment and retirement.

With this model, companies avoid a large part of the risk inherent in all economic activity and avoid a series of costs that substantially affect the labor rights of workers.

Everything seems to indicate that the business side is the only beneficiary of the efficiency gains derived from this new organizational form. In other words, the conflict between efficiency and equity is clear.

Juan Miguel Báez Melián, Professor of the Department of Business Management and Organization. Topics of interest: inequality and the gig economy, Zaragoza’s University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.