ILPC 2027

It has been predicted that within the next decade one in three labour transactions will be mediated by online platforms (Standing, 2015). Globally, 48 million workers are estimated to have registered with online labour platforms which facilitate digital gig work (Kuek et al., 2015). An index measuring the utilization of online labour platforms suggests that their use is growing at an annual rate of 25 percent (Kässi & Lehdonvirta 2016). In high income countries there are concerns that online labour platforms fragment work, increase casualisation and undermine standard employment relationships (De Stefano, 2016). However, existing research on the quality of digital gig work is limited, both in the number of studies undertaken and breadth of platforms and countries investigated (D’Cruz and Noronha, 2016).

Our research focuses upon lower-to-middle income countries because it is an understudied context in which the growth of digital gig work has tended to be seen seen positively (World Bank, 2016; UNDP, 2016). We use 152 semi-structured interviews and a survey of 456 South East Asian and Sub-Saharan African workers to explore the job quality of digital gig work. Despite there being significant positives for job quality, our findings also highlight a number of negatives. We argue that divergent job quality outcomes are inherent to digital gig work due to the specific social materiality of online labour platforms.

Platforms constitute highly individualised and market mediated employment systems in which workers’ bargaining power is dependent upon ‘structural-economic power’ (Wright, 2000). Workers generally have weak bargaining power relative to clients due to the competitive nature of the work organisation, moreover, increasing connectivity and a widespread absence of local alternatives has created a global oversupply of digital gig workers who additionally lack labour protections. This weak position vis-à-vis clients leads to work intensity and long or irregular anti-social hours. Workers do not, however, only wield bargaining power in relation to clients but also relative to other workers. Workers who have relatively scarce skills, high educational qualifications and strong reputations manage to earn decent incomes, afford private social security and gain labour market security. Workers lacking these resources struggled on low incomes, face insecurity, and lack social security.

More positively, the use of market mechanisms to allocate work (combined with rating based control mechanisms) afforded a high degree of discretion over the work and ensured task diversity and complexity. For most, the work was interesting, intriguing and enriching. Workers could decide what work they would do and when, where and how they would carry it out. However, it is important to note that this agency exists within wider structures which shape and limit those possibilities (Jahoda, 1982). In particular, most workers have little option but to work from home, which could lead to social isolation. Some workers have little option but to work at night in order to meet their clients’ expectations.

We conclude that increasing workers’ bargaining power would be necessary to improve job quality and reflect upon some ways this could be achieved, such as the creation of universal basic incomes, worker networks and platform cooperatives. We also highlight that researchers concerned with improving job quality should pay greater attention to the manner in which particular technologies materially afford and constrain action and influence bargaining power.