Platform Cooperativism

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Imparare il Cambiamento @ProgettoRENA, Milano

Commoditized Workers Taking digital unionizing seriously

Antonio Aloisi – Bocconi University, Milan | @_Aloisi

+All we need is sharing. Really? 2

Global trend towards:

1. casualization of work

1.b decentralization of structures 1.c. creation of dispersed production

networks

Opportunities for people willing to find a job or to

top up their salaries

[flexibility]

Circumvent employment regulation, by operating informally in traditionally

regulated markets

[informalisation] Companies benefit thanks to technologies that allow cutting transaction costs

by outsourcing

[computerization]

+Why #platformcoop?

n  Facing a digital version of Taylorism, i.e. the efficient exploitation (or expropriation) of work at the detriment of education and skill development of workers à invisible workers

n  Websites like TaskRabbit, Elance, Lift, Handy (“commodities market” vs “knowledge economy”) threaten to dismantle traditional labour markets as they do not seem to ensure a fair protection of workers’ rights

n This new configuration implies wages fixed by a dynamic calculation of supply and demand, and every worker’s act constantly traced, appraised and “subject to the sometimes harsh light of customer satisfaction”

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+“Employing humans-­as-­a-­service” Jeff Bezos said

n  A preliminary definition of “crowd-working”: n  “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent

(usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined,

generally large group of people in the form of an open call”

n  These tools have the potential to “chop up” a broad array of traditional jobs into detached tasks that can be allocated to workers just when they are needed à on-demand economy / workers on tap

n  Rating system à monitor and discourage n  This new configuration implies wages fixed by a dynamic calculation of

supply and demand, and every worker’s act constantly traced, appraised and “subject to the sometimes harsh light of customer satisfaction”

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Legal issue: do workers in the on-demand economy continue to be independent contractors (according to participation agreements: not employees, in a word) even though many indicators reveal a disguised employment relationship (disproportionate presence of vulnerable players)?

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n  Whether a worker is an employee or a contractor depends on a “multifactorial” test based on the facts emerging from the employment relationship. n  the possibility of having free

personal judgement and control over one’s own work,

n  the way in which tasks are performed,

n  the power of termination, n  the “economic realities” and

the concrete dependency in relation with the employer,

n  the permanency of the relationship,

n  the number of working hours, n  the power of direction exercised

by the employee, n  the freedom of managing its own

time schedule, n  the ownership of equipment, n  the method of payment (hours vs

project), n  the degree of flexibility and

protections, n  the disparity of relative

bargaining power.

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The multifactorial test

+Class actions

n A federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit that examine the employment classification of Uber drivers, this could be the beginning of a slow legal challenge: the ride-hailing company’s business model could be “disrupted” (does this set a precedent?) n  Lyft, a competitor to Uber that has also raised venture capital, faces a

similar class action.

n The California Labor Commissioner’s Office (administrative organ)

ruled that Barbara Ann Berwick, a former Uber driver, should have been considered an employee.

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n “Rather than forcing workers to litigate the issue of employee status on a case-by-case basis, policymakers could provide for direct, automatic coverage of on-demand workers under core labor laws” (Rebecca Smith and Sarah Leberstein)

n Provide a social safety net: n Health coverage, insurance against workplace injuries,

paid vacations and maternity leave: these have long been universal entitlements in many economies. (Arun Sundararajan)

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A social safety net

+From ownership to membership

n Nothing new: companies such as term agencies have long made workers “bid for jobs on a daily basis, work for piece rate, or contract for short-term jobs”. What changes here is scale and speed.

n “Use the past to inform the fight to revive the labor movement today”

n Organizations: Freelancers Union, the NYC Taxi Alliance,

CADA, TurkerNation, the Domestic Workers Alliance

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n  Rubeny and Wilkinson: considerations at the basis of the contemporary use of home-based outsourcing: (1) technology; (2) work organization; (3) avoidance of collective action; (4) product market; (5) labor cost.

n Outsourcing stops workers entering into contact and the rise of “sodality” by fragmenting the labor force

n Competition could prevent from cooperating, so that opportunistic behaviours may be easily incentivised

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Collective action

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n  The importance of social media in creating a “sense of community”

(or a “fantasy of community in an atomized population”): n  all these platforms use gadgets, instant marketing, and partnerships in order to

engage people and get them involved towards these challenges between “old/boring/institutionalized” and “new/amazing/entrepreneurial”

n  Just think of Lyft: pink moustaches. “a brand identity and emblematize

the touchy-feely spirit that Lyft

has adopted as its credo. Drivers bump

fists with their passengers at the end of each ride”.

“a more human vision for the service industry”

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A sense of community

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n  The company added a “de Blasio’s Uber” widget, available for over 2 million NYC users, that will either always show no cars available or wait times of 25 minutes.

n The feature prompts users to take action and send an email to Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city council opposing the new bill.

n Uber told that the new feature will “demonstrate what life for NYC riders would be like if de Blasio’s plan to limit Uber is passed into law”.

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The Uber-­ization of activism

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n  “Most models focus either on leveraging networks of existing resources, capital and volunteers then charging rents for platform use or on forging platform monopolies that lock-in users so that their data can then be monetised”. Izabella Kaminska

n Technology may be neutral, but grass roots should be built bottom up, not top down.

n We should be able to recognize the profound difference between Uber’s capitalistic populism and “authentic” organizing for action. Edward T. Walker

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Avoid the Uber-­ization of activism

+The ‘Fight-­For-­15’ campaign’s legacy

n  Nearly 3 years ago, about 200 NYC fast-food workers interrupted their jobs, demanding higher pay.

n  The protest was not small. It is debateable whether it has obtained what it asked for: wage gains for low-­wage workers.

n  The major “big chain” employers - retailers Wal-Mart, McDonald’s stores – not exceeding the hourly rate of $9 today

n  The #FF15’s most significant mission accomplished - the approval of modest minimum-wage hikes in more than ten states – is still on-going (gradually). We cannot say “they won the war”.

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n  Next step: “15 and a union” n  Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has made some inroads organizing home-care agencies like Hill’s, framing the

efforts as part of the same fight to boost fast-food worker pay and lift wage floors in urban areas. And union contracts, while they can take a considerable amount of time to achieve, tend to produce meaningful wage gains. (Cole Stangler)

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Gaining momentum after #FF15

§  Like great unions’ campaigns of the past, FF15 is raising questions about social citizenship and worker rights in America.

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o Turkopticon a potential source of worker organizing in virtue of class-consciousness “an activist system that allows workers to publicize and evaluate their relationships with employers”. o  The website permits Turkers “to engage one another in mutual aid”.

n  Researchers put a provocative task on the platform, asking workers to define an ideal “Workers’ Bill of Rights” from their point of view.

o Dynamo a community founded by scholars, which could be seen as the first step toward granting Turkers a collective voice.

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Amazon Mechanical Turk An attempt to organize

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n  The website (actually a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome, see turkopticon.ucsd.edu) also permits Turkers “to engage one another in mutual aid”.

n  Launched in late 2008, Turkopticon is a browser plug-in application that offers a way for workers to rate MTurk employers and avoid those with bad reputations.

n  Irani and Silberman, during a survey, received 67 responses and found out that “35 workers felt that their work was regularly rejected unfairly or arbitrarily, 26 workers demanded faster payment (Amazon allows employers 30-days to evaluate and pay for work), 7 explicitly mentioned a ‘minimum wage’ or ‘minimum payment’ per HIT, 14 mentioned ‘fair’ compensation generally, 8 expressed dissatisfaction with employers’ and Amazon’s lack of response to their concerns”

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Amazon Mechanical Turk Turkoptikon

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n  It is a community designed, founded, adapted by scholars

n “Dynamo is more like a virtual union hall, a worker-only safe space where workers can post ideas about activist actions anonymously,” Irani said.

n  “A platform to gather, gain critical mass, and mobilize” + “it generates

change, whether that take the form of pixels, profit, or progress”.

n  This trend deserves attention, Providers are a platform’s best economic inputs, they should be protected, though AMT can tolerate the loss of accounts that do not accept the system’s terms

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Amazon Mechanical Turk Dynamo

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n  In August 2014, a group of drivers established the California App-based Drivers Association, a sort of Uber drivers union.

n  The same happened in Seattle and New York City...

n  Threats of work stoppage are the order of the day.

n  People want to join forces.

n A feeling of dissatisfaction and outrage towards Uber employment – and price, too – models and unilateral changes in T&C.

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Uber Strikes and protests

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+Organizing or unionizing?

ü  Workers will gather in communities where it is feasible to exchange knowledge and tricks.

ü  The blog “Ride share guy” provides guidance and instructions to drivers on maximizing incomes from the diverse car sharing apps.

ü “Peers.org” could be considered a “power-organizer”;

o  a system of pooling many accounts into one, organizing, caring, supporting participants in the sharing economy, both its freelance population

ü  Guilds like “Peers.org” and “Freelancers Union” are starting to engage in a struggle aimed at pooling bargaining power, also in order to let contractors access promotional health insurance

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+A new model is possible #1

n BlueCrew provides on-demand labor but pays workers as employees. n  The company prefers this model since it can avoid potential tax liability

and other problems arising from an incorrect classification, while workers get stable and secure work.

n InstaCart, grocery delivery service, allows its personal shoppers the possibility to switch from contractor to employee status. n  The decision follows a change to Instacart’s business model.

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n The food preparation and delivery service Munchery,

the personal assistant company Alfred,

and the office cleaning service Managed by Qii hire workers as employees, not independent contractors

à tales of Responsible Business Practices in the On-­Demand Economy

n  In addition to avoiding lawsuits, companies consider increased efficiency, strong commitment and worker retention as reasons to (re)classify their workers as employees.

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A new model is possible #2

+Platform “cooperativism” According to Scholz and Schneider’s manifesto

n New forms of solidarity aimed at fighting for better conditions for “cloud workers” and vulnerable workforce.

n  Cooperatives are facing copious amounts of challenges on the level of competition from players like Uber, in terms of public awareness, allocation of work, as well as wage levels.

n  An app with the basic functionality of UberX can be duplicated and improved upon by independent developers who are working in tandem with cooperatives.

n  Taxi drivers and technologists can coalesce to build an app that equals or is able to compete with their corporate equivalent.

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+A movement of interests?

n  Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops

without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want

the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

— Frederick Douglass, 1857

n  Facilitate organizing by on-demand workers.

n  The opportunity to join forces in unions and bargain collectively is pivotal in the on-demand economy. In the light of the fact that work is distributed on a piece-rate basis, competition for getting job is inhumane, and the conditions of work are by definition isolating for citizens.

n A considerable mass of workers can define its sectoral priorities, a sector-­specific approach may be an effective way to set standards.

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ü Infrastructures are just a shell / packaging

ü We need to build constituencies

ü People matter

ü Act on the side of the demand, rather than on the side of the offer à generate advocacy

ü Genuine bottom up workers movements + government intervention and – if needed – law making

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Not to reinvent the wheel

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“Sharing” = “an equitable split in wealth and responsibility”

§  tighten up international codes of good practice and make worldwide firms respect them;;

§  reduce up to eliminate discrimination based on geographical preferences or rating charts;;

§  avoid and hinder child labour or forced labour;;

§  prevent “labor brokerage” from shifting into “social arbitrage” (Hill, 2015);;

§  make ratings “portable” across platforms, leading to a unique “digital identity”;;

§  overcome the exclusivity clause that ties workers to a special platform;;

§  ensure better protection to whom is behind the scene of the sharing economy.

Workers’ goals (in my opinion)

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Thank you! (Q&A time)

@_Aloisi [email protected]