Platform employment has already revolutionized the world of work and is predicted to have a great future. But this system also has a downside. Let’s talk about it in detail
How does it work
The gig economy is based on involving not a full-time employee in the work, but a contractor who performs a one-time – from the point of view of the client – work. Translated from English gig is a concert, and gig workers are a kind of guest performers: tonight you have a courier with your dinner on tour, and tomorrow morning an electrician with new switches.
At the center of the gig economy are information platforms whose main function is to help the client avoid transaction costs associated with finding a counterparty, resolving the issue of trust, pricing and payment. Many of these platforms are familiar to everyone, such as Facebook (now Meta), Amazon, Uber, Yandex, VK, and so on. The work of information platforms is based on a huge array of information that allows you to connect supply and demand. The platforms know who can teach you English or singing, fix a faucet or assemble furniture, take pictures or take you to the train station.
The gig economy is not limited to providing one-time periodic services to the consumer. The platforms also work in the b2b segment and allow you to find contractors for non-core projects for the company, or, for the applicant, to find a project in another city or country.
The gig economy as a boon
The advantages of platform employment come down to one aspect – temporary: the consumer receives a product or service when it is needed, and not when it is possible, and the employee has full control over his schedule. From this, the (not always correct) conclusion is drawn that he can earn as much as he wants.
“The initiative often comes from employers, but many applicants also want to work on projects when there is a specific task, there are deadlines for its completion, an understanding of earnings and a clear expected result of the work,” says Elena Londar, HR expert, consultant for the rating of employers in our country hh. ru and HR-brand awards. – After completing the work, they can take a second project from the same employer, a third, a fifth, or they can refuse. This approach gives a feeling of freedom and satisfaction from work, helps to expand the scope of their professional and creative skills, and avoid burnout.”
but on the other hand
But when talking about the benefits of platform employment for job seekers, this nuance is often overlooked: most gig workers – those whose services do not necessarily require high qualifications – cannot work on the beach, and their one-time earnings are very modest. And even for tutors, creative workers or IT professionals, things are not so simple. There are several reasons for this:
Platforms actively fight not to be considered as employers. Uber argued in a British court for several years that it was not a transport company and only provided information services (but in the end, drivers won this high-profile case in a higher court, and later a court in the Netherlands also considered that Uber provides taxi services). The status of gig workers was also noticed in Portugal. And in the US, Uber and Lyft taxi drivers went on strike and regularly protested against a law passed in November 2020 that removed platforms from the contract law. This law was later declared unconstitutional.
We should not forget that the problems of the gig economy affect not only contractors, but also customers. In case of unprofessional or dangerous behavior of a gig worker in relation to a client, the platform bears only reputational costs. The operator can disconnect an individual taxi driver (plumber, tutor) or the entire partner taxi fleet from the system, but in the event of compensation for physical and moral damage through the court, the taxi driver (plumber, tutor) or taxi fleet, and not the platform, will be the defendant.
Employment in the gig economy makes such concepts as “job security”, “stable salary” and “pension” meaningless. Even in the white-collar gig economy, at the end of the project, the professional finds himself face to face with the platform and high competition from his colleagues. However, this does not scare anyone.
“If we talk about young people, then guarantees of earnings and stable employment are less important to them now, they are in search of themselves,” Elena Londar believes. “The younger the applicants, the more important the meaning of the work is to them, and not just money.”
Free work
According to a study by the International Labor Organization, in the gig economy there is a large share of unpaid work – activities, the employee’s own costs or his time, which are not compensated and not paid by the platform. First, the means of production (bicycle, computer, smartphone, software) the worker must provide for himself. Secondly, in order to acquire a competitive advantage, he masters related professions at his own expense and improves his qualifications.
The rating system affects the success in finding orders, but it forces the employee, in pursuit of “five stars”, to perform a volume of work that exceeds the original one, spend time clarifying the terms of reference, finishing and alterations that sometimes occur through no fault of the contractor.
Since employees are paid for the fact that the order is completed, the time between orders, lunch breaks, searching for an order and waiting for it to be completed at the previous stage (for example, if we are talking about a courier and he is waiting for a dish to be prepared in a restaurant) is not paid. You cannot take a new “deferred” order until the previous one is closed. Loss of time due to errors of the previous stage is also not compensated.
There are attempts to level these problems – for example, the couriers of the French company Takeaway have employment guarantees, they are paid for working hours. But the system is such that you can rise from the initial two or three shifts of two hours to a decent full week only by fulfilling orders very intensively.
Of course, the gig economy is a modern approach to employment, but only from the point of view of its informational foundation. In social terms, this can be called a rollback to the 12th century. Homeworkers in New York sweatshops were, in essence, the same kind of gig workers: women who sewed at home for 14-XNUMX hours worked on a piecework basis, and their employer had no obligations and no responsibility. Therefore, for the platform economy to truly become a model of the future in employment, it must not leave behind the achievements of the last century and a half in the field of labor regulation.