Abstract
Digital labour platforms have been widely promoted as a solution to the unemployment crisis sparked by the COVID‐19 pandemic. However, the pandemic has also highlighted the harms to gig workers—who are exposed either to income loss, or to infection while carrying out essential work, but excluded from labour protections. We examine the COVID‐19 policies of 191 platforms in 43 countries to understand how the crisis has shifted the conventions of the gig economy. Using a typology of “fair platform work” we report the introduction of some positive worker protections, but also significant shortfalls, including entrenchment of precarious work as platforms leverage the opportunities arising from the crisis.
Highlights
Millions of workers around the world are increasingly subsumed into and reliant on the platform economy, performing piece-rate or one-off tasks for clients via apps, or digital labour platforms
Prior to the global spread of COVID-19, researchers were increasingly sounding the alarm about the unsafe and precarious conditions faced by platform workers globally, fearing a race-to-the-bottom of labour standards within a regulatory vacuum (Berg et al 2018; Forde et al 2017; Graham and Anwar 2019)
Some fit and able workers could have overlooked the fact that platform work would not provide them with a safety net; but the events of 2020 have laid bare the extent to which the digital labour platform model has succeeded in transferring risks on to workers, and the real-life consequences of this shift
Summary
Millions of workers around the world are increasingly subsumed into and reliant on the platform (or ‘gig’) economy, performing piece-rate or one-off tasks for clients via apps, or digital labour platforms. Some fit and able workers could have overlooked the fact that platform work would not provide them with a safety net; but the events of 2020 have laid bare the extent to which the digital labour platform model has succeeded in transferring risks on to workers, and the real-life consequences of this shift. They have made undeniably clear the fact that labour performed via digital platforms—such as shopping, delivery, transport, and care work—is essential to maintaining our economies, but the health of our communities, especially in times of public health crisis. Every platform regardless of its size is counted as one, though in identifying the sample, we focused on the most prominent platforms in each country included
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