Taking Platform Domestic Work Offline: Using Platform Leakage to Resist Precarity in South Africa’s Domestic Sector

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on platform domestic workers’ (PDWs’) experiences and their decision to engage in platform leakage—taking platform domestic work offline. We argue that delving into the types of domestic work choices PDWs make reveals their agency with and through digital platforms in response to precarity on the platform and in the domestic sector. The article demonstrates, through an interpretivist case study that included semi-structured interviews with a sample of PDWs in Cape Town and analysis of documents related to their platform company, that platform leakage is an unavoidable and possibly inherent feature of the platform domestic work model. The findings show that PDWs’ experience of platform domestic work as a form of “gig work” is informed and mainly influenced by unemployment and underemployment in the domestic sector rather than its benefits of flexibility for work life balance and fulfilling unpaid reproductive labour needs. Further, the algorithmic management of the labour process shows that flexibility leaves PDWs in a precarious position but also, paradoxically, creates the need and opportunity to engage in platform leakage. As a result, algorithmic management as a form of control over PDWs’ work performance, and its contingence on personalism for reputational ratings, does not always imply the inescapable power of platform companies. We conclude that further research is needed to deepen our understanding of the employment relationship that emerges from platform leakage, particularly how PDWs experience it and the management of it.