Abstract
Pricing is one of the most powerful mechanisms platform firms use to internally regulate demand and supply, withstand competitors and achieve profitability (Rochet & Triole, 2003). This article uncovers the effects that platform pricing logics have on existing labour markets within the city of Bengaluru. For this article the platform serves as the object of study, i.e. in determining earnings for service providers for various purposes (like subsidising products by (mis)matching service price and earnings) and it serves as a means to enter the service labour market as it exists in the city. This article looks at how platform service fees, with the particular set of logics of the two-sided markets and intra-capitalist competition, impact adjacent enterprises (informal, own account enterprises) providing the same services. Carpentry, electrical work and plumbing are services with a long history in the city and their breadth of service was not created as a result of the platform (compared to food delivery, for example). Rarely do minimum wage floors factor into the service fee negotiation between providers and clients. The platforms' market does have that impact, creating a standard around their base fee, undercutting the more tacit ways in which workers negotiate their service fees. This article uses ethnographic data from interviews with people working on Urban Company and Housejoy platforms in carpentry, electrical work and plumbing, collected in Bengaluru in 2017-18.
Highlights
Digital platforms have become vital objects of study for scholars and regulators looking at the potential of technology to alter the way we conceive of work, labour and employment
Over the last five years a key issue that has arisen in the economy created by digital labour platforms in particular is the way platforms use ‘pricing’ to govern their marketplaces
Existing household services like carpentry, electrical work and plumbing have been platformised, implying that they are available on digital platforms, with enhanced market connectivity between customer and service provider
Summary
Digital platforms have become vital objects of study for scholars and regulators looking at the potential of technology to alter the way we conceive of work, labour and employment. Labour platforms have abounded in emerging markets like India, and countries on the African continent and South America, whose fast-paced urbanisation is supported by substantial informal economies In these countries, the question of technology producing developmental outcomes for the individual and the nation has held sway over the regulatory impetus governments seek to have. I draw out the kinds of ways these platforms deploy power within their marketplaces and within the city since workers work both offline and online These narratives are situated within a secondary set of evidence which is drawn from governance decisions taken by state actors vis-à-vis these platform firms in India. I examine how state actors like the Government of Karnataka, departments within the state government, the Government of India and its departments seek to regulate platforms’ impact on workers
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