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Worker-Owned Apps Are Trying to Fix the Gig Economy's Exploitation

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the routing-around-damage dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

What would happen if low-wage workers came together to cut out the middleman and build their own platforms? This isn't just a thought experiment. Worker-owned apps are already providing real alternatives to dismal working conditions in the global gig economy.

Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa75a8/worker-owned-apps-are-trying-to-fix-the-gig-economys-exploitation

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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:51PM (3 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:51PM (#922642) Journal

    Have you tried googling the exact phrase "the abuses of the gig economy" [ycombinator.com] because even that hyper-specific search finds results documenting them.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 20 2019, @10:41PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 20 2019, @10:41PM (#922674) Journal
    Didn't see any abuses there. Saw a lot of blowhards though. Here's a couple of examples:

    In London, deliveroo is one of the most visible examples of this. I see them on every road, rushing through traffic so they can make minimum wage.

    Sure enough, they have accidents as a result, again, something I see on an almost daily basis. They get no sick pay if this happens, no support whatsoever from deliveroo. So they get back on their bike, injured, and carry on working, as they have no choice.

    They also get a lot of abuse from drunk customers in the late evening. Again, they just grin and bear it and carry on.

    This is the definition of exploitation.

    It's thoroughly depressing, almost Dickensian.

    It doesn't matter to that poster that the delivery contractors do indeed have a choice and their "abuse", such as it is, has nothing to do with their employee or contractor status. In the second quote, the poster just pulls some stuff out of their ass.

    I find it hard to believe that the IRS isn't doing this for the workers, for two reasons. Firstly, another component of Uber's business model that wasn't touched on by the video is that Uber/Lyft/Deliveroo and so on effectively force their employees to commit tax fraud by paying far too little, and the IRS of course gets to clean up the mess, but can't go after these employees because there's far too many of them. So it seems logical for me that they'd simply go after Uber, and get an injunction barring them from using workers without an employee contract. Second, the IRS should enforce it's own rules. You are not allowed to be a freelancer if you don't control your own customer relation, and in these cases you clearly have no ability to do so.

    No one is "effectively forced" to do tax fraud (how would that work anyway?). And notice how the flimsy pretext "if you don't control your own customer relation" is used as an excuse to claim the driver isn't a contractor. The IRS doesn't use that as the standard (and who is the customer here? Uber or the passengers?). Once again, a lack of any abuse from the gig economy combined with demands to treat contractors as employees.

    My view is that law shouldn't protect your business model any more than it should protect traditional or gig economy businesses. Uber, Deliveroo, and such don't exist because of some hypothetical exploitation of the employer-employee relationship, but because they're delivering services that existing businesses couldn't due to a combination of cartel behavior and lack of infrastructure.

    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 21 2019, @07:04PM (1 child)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 21 2019, @07:04PM (#923101) Journal

      That's just the result from googling, the actual abuses are in the youtube video that page is a discussion of.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 21 2019, @10:51PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 21 2019, @10:51PM (#923195) Journal
        Ok, so what were supposed to be the abuses in question? I notice in the video that it was repeated asserted that "poor working conditions" and low pay were alleged to be problems inherent in the gig economy. And then it discussed the possible shenanigans of one company, Deliveroo inserting various dubious clauses into its work contract (which incidentally made the contract more like a employment contract such as some level of mandatory work). Then finishing up with a spurious comparison with feudalism and some labor union activitists complaining that it doesn't protect the labor union business model. I skipped over a bunch because it was 15 minutes long and I didn't want to waste that much of my life on it. None of that is somehow inherent to gig economies or even an abuse in the first place.

        What hasn't been shown that "someone is losing out" and "standards of living are being put under pressure".

        After all, what's the gig worker doing otherwise? They're not going to choose to work this, if they had better work (by whatever criteria they use) available. Nor are the people buying gig services considered. These things have considerable value.