Platform Labor Research Articles

플랫폼노동 조직화 모델 제안: 플랫폼노동과 그림자노동 관점의 통합

This study aims to identify the relationship between algorithm management in digital labor platforms and platform labor in a phenomenal way. Based upon prior studies, we approach to investigate how the algorithm management organizes platform labor. To understand the phenomenon of platform labor, we have conducted in-depth interviews with various stakeholders including a delivery platform company, delivery riders, and delivery platform consumers. By analyzing the interview manuscripts based on grounded theory methodology, we have derived three core categories such as platform algorithm management, specificity of platform labor, and platform labor by incorporating similar concepts from the coding steps. This study contributes to understanding how the platform algorithm management organizes platform labor. In addition, this study has practical implications in that our findings help many platforms understand how to control algorithm management.

우리나라의 플랫폼노동에 관한 논의

과학의 발달은 이전에 예상할 수 없었던 새로운 노동형태나 노동방식을 출현시키고 있다. 그 중 하나가 지금 많이 논의되고 있는 플랫폼노동이다. 플랫폼 노동에 있어서 플랫폼 종사자가 근로자이냐 아니냐 그리고 근로자가 아닌 경우 어떻게 보호할 것인지의 문제가 나타난다.BR 플랫폼 종사자를 근로기준법상 근로자라고 하였을 경우 많은 문제점이 발생하기 때문에 근로자가 아니다. 그렇지만 플랫폼 종사자에 대한 사회적 보호는 필요하다. 따라서 사회적 보호가 필요한 부분에 대해서 개별적으로 보호하는 것이 합리적이라고 할 수 있다. 즉 플랫폼 종사자에 대하여 관계적 노동을 근거로 하여 그 관계의 긴밀도 그리고 보호필요성에 따라 관련 법을 적용시켜 보호를 하여야 한다고 서술하였다.BR 부연하면, 산업혁명 후 노동하는 사람에 대하여는 경제법과 노동법의 평면적인 관계, 즉 일하는 사람을 수평적 관계로 나누어 법을 적용시켰다. 그러나 시대의 변화에 따라 경제법의 대상이 된 일하는 사람을 보호해야 할ㅍ필요성이 대두되었으며 그 하나가 플랫폼 종사자이다.BR 플랫폼 종사자에 대하여 기존의 수평적 관계만을 근거로 하여 노동3권과 경제법의 어느 하나의 법을 적용시키는 보호방식은 더 이상 효용성이 떨어지기 때문에 플랫폼 종사자가 실질적으로 보호되지 않는 상황이 발생한다. 그러한 상황을 방치한다면 사회에 미치는 악영향이 매우 크기 때문에 많은 사회문제를 발생시킨다.BR 이에 다른 보호방도를 강구할 필요가 있고, 그 하나의 방법이 평면적인 수평적 관계뿐만 아니라 수직적 관계도 적용시켜 중첩적 보호를 해야 할 필요성을 주장하였다. 즉 관계적 노동은 수평적 관계와 수직적 관계로 나누고, 이둘 중 하나를 선택하는 것이 아니라 중첩적으로 적용할 필요가 있다는 것이다. 예컨대 사회보험법과 노동법이 중첩적 관계가 있기 때문에 근로자에게 사회보장법과 노동법이 적용되는 것처럼 플랫폼 종사자에게 사회보험법뿐만 아니라 경제법으로 더 나아가 노동3권의 주체로서 노동3권을 통하여 보호를 받을 수 있도록 하여야 한다는 것이다.BR 요컨대 사회보험법 분야에서는 플랫폼 종사자를 보호대상에 포함시키는 것이 이론적으로 문제가 되지 않으므로 당연히 보호의 대상에 포함시켜 보호를 받도록 하여야 한다. 즉 고용보험법, 산업재해보상보험법에 있어서 플랫폼 종사자는 당연히 보호의 객체가 된다는 것이며, 또한 노동조합 및 노동관계조정법상 노동자이기 때문에 플랫폼 종사자의 근로조건의 향상을 위하여 노동3권도 적용되어야 한다는 것이다.

The Dark Side of Working “Freely and in the Way I Am”: Focusing on the Experience of the Delivery Platform Labor

본고는 배달플랫폼기업의 광고와 실제 노동 경험에서 그려지는 배달플랫폼노동의 모습을 현장연구를 기반으로 비교한다. 광고 속 배달플랫폼노동은 자율성과 여성의 이미지를 거쳐 ‘게임처럼 즐길 수 있는 노동’이자 ‘누구나 활기찬 모습으로 참여 가능한 노동’으로 재현됐다. 하지만 실제 노동 현장에서는 광고 속 이미지에서 재현되지 않는 다층적 맥락과 사건이 존재했으며, 노동자는 이러한 모순을 극복하기 위해 ‘자기타협’ 전략을 구사했다. 이는 배달플랫폼노동에 다른 목적을 덧씌워 노동으로서의 비판을 허용하지 않거나, 다른 노동자와 자신을 구분 짓는 모습에서 확인할 수 있었다. 그럼에도 노동자가 자율성이라는 이름 아래 스스로를 관리·압박하고, 이로 인해 개인의 안전까지 위협받는 현실은 타협될 수 없었다. 수직적 위계 아래 구성된 플랫폼과 노동자 간 관계는, 노동자가 계속해서 앞선 요소들을 감내하거나 재진입의 가능성을 열어 놓고 불완전하게 이탈하는 결과를 낳았다. 따라서 본고는 이러한 논의를 바탕으로 노동자의 입체적 삶에 주목해야 할 필요성을 고찰한다.

제4차 산업혁명시대 사회･경제구조의 변화와 소득 불평등 완화 방안

The most serious social problem in Korean society in the 20th century was poverty, but the most serious social problem in the 21st century is inequality. Changes in production and social structure due to the development of intelligent information technology lead to diversity and uncertainty in the labor market, inevitably changing the nature of jobs and work together. More specifically, technological innovation increases irregular employment forms such as special forms of work in the labor market and platform labor, but the flexibility of the labor market often makes it difficult to guarantee the basic rights guaranteed by Articles 32 and 33 of the current Constitution and the Labor Standards Act. And this inevitably leads to the problem of job insecurity. The problem of income inequality, which can be the main cause of social polarization, is basically a social phenomenon, that is, a social problem. And these social problems originate from various subsystems and from the interaction of subsystems. However, there is a limit to the constitution's preventive function in this problem of income inequality. In contrast, the post-mortem task of the consequences of income inequality is absolute at the abstract level. This is because social polarization due to income inequality is one of the social tasks of the Constitution, which is a situation that must be overcome by the Constitution. On the other hand, the diversity and uncertainty of the labor market threaten the current social security system centered on social insurance designed around wage labor on the premise of full employment. In a situation where the number of groups whose judgment on workerhood is ambiguous under traditional standards is increasing, it is difficult for the social insurance system centered on wage workers and dependence on use to properly play a role as a social safety net. As a way to improve this, the reform of the income-oriented social insurance system and the introduction of a universal social security system such as basic income or basic services are being discussed. This system relieves blind spots in the social security area, raising expectations that the state can contribute to realizing the social tasks of the Constitution in a very forward-looking manner. Now is the time to examine the social tasks of the Constitution to alleviate income inequality in the social transformation period such as the 4th Industrial Revolution, and it is time for full-scale discussions to take place.

Introduction: platform labor and health

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디지털 컨텐츠 창작 프리랜서의 일-삶 균형과 경계관리활동

This study tried to explore platform workers’ challenges in achieving work-life balance. While past studies have focused on typical employees, little attention has been paid to how irregular workers including platform workers experience work-life balance. This paper analyzed interview data created by 9 webtoonists using grounded theory. This study found that the distinctive characteristics of platform labor such as readers’ evaluation system and job insecurity cause work-life conflict. The readers’ evaluation system embedded in the webtoon websites leads webtoonists to extend their working hours and strengthen labor intensity. In addition, webtoonists tend to perform heavy tasks to relieve employment anxiety. This study also investigated how platform workers devise strategies to restore work-life balance using boundary theory. Webtoonists are not passive actors who accept the imbalance between work and life. Instead, they attempt to restore the balance between the two areas by establishing the boundaries of work and life. Recent studies have pointed out that people can distinguish between work and life domains or integrate the two areas. This study found that most webtonnists preferred the segregation of work and life domains. They performed job crafting, and spatial and temporal boundary management to segregate the work-life domains. Finally, this study proposes the policies that support platform workers’ successful boundary work.

청년 플랫폼노동자의 일경험과 사회보험에 대한 태도

This study investigates youth platform workers’ labor process and their attitudes towards social insurance, based on 12 in-depth interviews with workers between 19 and under 34 years of age. Possibly due to cut-throat competition among platform workers, participants demonstrated liberal principles such as meritocracy and individualism. The non-transparency of the algorithmic management system severely restricted autonomy of young platform workers. In order to resolve the tension between the promised autonomy and tight technical control, participants seemed to develop the entrepreneurial self. It was found that the main characteristics of the platform labor process could influence the perception of social policy. Despite the labor process that diminished the importance labor and social rights, participants demonstrated the needs for social insurance. This study concludes with policy suggestions for enhancing labor and social rights of platform workers.

An Approximation of Freedom: On-demand Therapy and the Feminization of Labor

Platform labor and gig work have become key sites for understanding a nascent "future of work" hallmarked by informalization and digitization. A growing body of research emphasizes how experiences of platform work are mediated not only by algorithms and user interfaces, but also by gender, race, local cultures as well as labor hierarchies. Drawing from ongoing ethnographic research on the digital transformation of healthcare, we show how therapists' experiences of platform labor are centrally shaped by the historical and ongoing feminization of mental health work. Platforms reinscribe feminized labor conditions that are pervasive in the healthcare industry, and yet platform labor appears as 'useful' to some therapists as they navigate a set of precarious career choices fundamentally structured by feminization. We use the analytic of the stopgap to describe platforms' two-fold reproduction of the status quo: first by offering an approximation of freedom to individual workers, helping to forestall a crisis of unsustainable work conditions; and second by reinscribing the same logics of exploitation in order to make labor scalable. This stopgap analytic reorients the focus away from the impact of the platforms technologies as such, towards the conditions that make stopgap solutions necessary for survival. It also points towards the importance of intervening in the conditions of exclusion and exploitation that help to create a market for platform stopgaps.

ПРОБЛЕМЫ И ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ НОВЫХ ФОРМ ЗАНЯТОСТИ В УСЛОВИЯХ ЦИФРОВИЗАЦИИ

The article examines the current trends in the formation of new forms of employment in the conditions of digitalization of the labor market. Platform labor actively developing since 2019 during the global pandemic, has attracted the attention of domestic and foreign researchers,but the problems of regulating social and labor relations between employers and employees are still at the stage of initial research. Theauthors consider acute issues that arise when trying to apply the traditional legislation of foreign countries on employment and labor to historically developing non-standard forms of employment based on the use of digital platforms, offer some preliminary regulatory recommendations designed to clarify labor relations and protect the interests of all participants inthe process.

The High-Speed Digital Nomads Trapped in the System: Food Delivery Workers of Meituan

This article studies the temporality of platform labor through the specific lens of Meituan, the leading food delivery platform in China featuring an algorithm-driven dispatch system. This paper widens the existing research on platform labor from the perspective of time and speed. The on-demand food delivery service cultivates consumers’ expectations of timely satisfaction, nonetheless, it builds upon the rush, strictness, and flexibility of digital labor’s temporality which is often called a “mission impossible at times”. With the rhetoric of ‘Flexible work hours,’ the platform acts as an intermediary in the contradictory costumer-rider temporal relationship and prioritizes the customer's position within the temporal orders, where ICTs such as real-time tracking systems play a key role in sense-making. As the article will show, Meituan’s ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) algorithm distributes the common interests of efficiency with the "invisible hand of value," in the quaternary relation between riders, customers, suppliers, and platform. While workers' time experience and negotiating ability are diminished, the platform gains the ultimate capacity to exploit platform labor systematically. The coordination of all platform algorithms normalizes class divisions and unequal power structures, interpreting the asymmetrical power between capital and labor in the platform economy.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Ride-hail Driver Reactions to Uber’s Covid-19 Response

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruptive event for most workers, it has disproportionately affected low-skilled occupations; one such example are platform (gig) workers contracted by ride-hail companies (e.g., Uber, Lyft) to transport passengers. Grounded in psychological contract theory and platform labor research, the purpose of this study was to develop and test a conceptual model of ride-hail drivers’ affective and cognitive reactions to Uber’s (lack of) commitment to safe working conditions after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing a sample of Uber drivers from the United States (n = 202), we show that when drivers’ perceptions of Uber’s commitment to safety were unfavorable, they were more likely to experience feelings of psychological contract violation, which in turn increased their cynicism toward Uber and decreased trust. But while trust in Uber was negatively related to drivers’ intentions to withdraw from their occupation, organizational cynicism only predicted withdrawal intentions for those drivers who did not believe that they had many job alternatives available outside of platform work. We draw on the emerging literature on situational diversity and economic dependence among platform workers to discuss this unexpected finding.

플랫폼 노동의 재이용 의도에 미치는 영향요인 분석

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the relationship between the quality of platform labor and user satisfaction or re-use intention for platform operators to enhance the service quality of platform workers. This study investigated the relationship between cost of use, convenience of use, incentives, consumer rights, complaint resolution, and user satisfaction on re-use intention, model fit between major variables, and mediating effects of major variables. The main conclusion of this study is that it is necessary to clearly identify the influencing factors that platform companies can provide trust to service users. In addition, it is suggested that platform companies are required to prepare a system to operate platform companies from a long-term demand-based perspective while raising the intention of service users to reuse them.

Platform scams: Brazilian workers’ experiences of dishonest and uncertain algorithmic management

This article discusses how Brazilian platform workers experience and respond to platform scams through three case studies. Drawing from digital ethnographic research, vlogs/interviews of workers, and literature review, we argue for a conceptualization of “platform scam” that focuses on multiple forms of platform dishonesty and uncertainty. We characterize scam as a structuring element of the algorithmic management enacted by platform labor. The first case engages with when platforms scam workers by discussing Uber drivers’ experiences with the illusive surge pricing. The second case discusses when workers (have to) scam platforms by focusing on Amazon Mechanical Turk microworkers’ experiences with faking their identities. The third case presents when platforms lead workers to scam third parties, by engaging with how Brazilian click farm platforms’ workers use bots/fake accounts to engage with social media. Our focus on “platform scams” thus highlights the particular dimensions of faking, fraud, and deception operating in platform labor. This notion of platform scam expands and complexifies the understanding of scam within platform labor studies. Departing from workers’ experiences, we engage with the asymmetries and unequal power relations present in the algorithmic management of labor.

If I’m not Streaming, I’m not Earning: Audience Relations and Platform Time on Douyin

Abstract Purpose This article explores how platforms reorganize our sense of everyday life. The platformization of everyday life means a changing relation to what we do in our daily lives, not only in China, but in every country in which digital platforms are becoming more relevant by the day. Using TikTok in China as our point of departure, we discuss the role of platform time and the abstracted audience. Design/methodology/approach This study is a collaboration between Douyin of ByteDance, whose headquarters are in Beijing, and a team of researchers. Users with more than 10,000 followers were identified so as to select users who had sufficient activities and strong motivation to operate their short video channel. A survey questionnaire was sent to these users during one week in July 2019, and 2375 users responded to the survey. For this paper, after briefly reading the survey results, we selected 50 users for in-depth interviews. The users gave their consent to disclose their identity. In the process, ByteDance helped contact these users. Findings Based on the data, we discuss two concepts, abstract audiences and platform time, which helped us to understand platform–labor relations. We argue that while there is the illusion that audiences are closer than ever to the content creator in terms of engagement, at the same time, they are abstracted through platform analytics, meaning that they are reduced to statistics provided to content creators. Originality/value Rather than being liberated, creators are restricted by a new form of time that offers the possibilities of freedom within the confines of the platform. Rather than having fixed working hours, creators are self-regulating as streaming hours and upload times demand certain patterns to increase one’s following and make a living, while as creators, they must also try to understand their audience and the platform algorithm.

“Selling Poverty” on Kuaishou: How entrepreneurialism disciplines Chinese underclass online participation

The meanings of being “underclass” in China are increasingly ambivalent when various disadvantaged social groups also get access to digital platforms which become more and more influential in not just facilitating people’s economic and cultural practices online but also mediating, distorting, and reshaping these processes. Using critical techno-cultural discourse analysis about how the underclass represent poverty and themselves by creating short videos and performing live-commerce on Kuaishou, this study finds that digital entrepreneurialism becomes an interlocking governmentality to discipline the underclass’ online participation. Afforded by the platform and operationalized by multiple networked actors, entrepreneurialism incorporates the underclass in the digitally mediated productive relationship and at the same time disciplines their online representation and exploits the involved entities through both platform labor and monetary investments to cultivate an underclass entrepreneurial subject. Although claiming to include and empower the diversified Chinese underclass, digital platforms actually reproduce the underclassness by mobilizing the calculated conformity among the underclass to experience the intertwining online and offline inequalities through digital entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, nuances of minor narratives still exist in the digitally mediated self-representation.

Workplace learning in Crowdwork Questionnaire (WLCQ): Measuring self‐regulated learning and skill development in online platform work

AbstractThis paper addresses learning and development processes in online platform work. Specifically, it proposes a new instrument to survey and analyze self‐regulated workplace learning in crowdwork, a type of online platform labor in which a global pool of workers are matched with clients through digital platforms to carry out remunerated tasks. Although workplace learning practices of workers in traditional, organisationally embedded jobs have been studied extensively, the findings cannot be transferred to describe and explain learning behaviors within crowdwork, which is fundamentally different from traditional work in that it is autonomous, radically distributed, and no organisationally provided training opportunities exist in crowdwork. To advance the understanding of workplace learning in crowdwork we reviewed the literature on workplace learning, platform work, and self‐regulated learning to develop the Workplace Learning in Crowdwork Questionnaire, which we subsequently validated with 992 crowdworkers from six European countries on three crowdwork platforms. The instrument can be used by researchers to study the nature of (self‐directed) workplace learning in online labor platforms. It can also be used by crowdworkers to self‐reflect on their learning and development.

Happy riders are all alike? Ambivalent subjective experience and mental well‐being of food‐delivery platform workers in China

AbstractThis study draws upon organizational psychology and platform labor research to investigate how socio‐psychological factors affect the mental well‐being of platform workers and help them cope with the challenges of work. Based on a survey study of 500 food‐delivery workers (‘riders’) in China, we provide quantitative evidence of workers' ambivalent subjective experiences that complements the predominantly qualitative account in the extant literature. In particular, we assess the complex relationships between meaningfulness of work, autonomy at work, self‐perceived competence, and workers' subjective well‐being. Our data also show that the stress‐buffering effect of social support mainly comes from the riders' familial contact and their online group chat with other workers. Overall, despite the well‐documented precarity and stress in platform work, the riders in our sample appear to be able to mobilize inner and relational resources to achieve a relatively high‐level mental well‐being.

플랫폼 비즈니스에서의 정보 흐름 모델 개발

This study aims to develop an information flow model for the platform business to provide basic data that helps the social protection of platform labor. To this end, we defined the meanings of platform business and platform labor through literature review in the social welfare and labor economics fields and derived various stakeholders in the platform business such as ‘service client’, ‘platform firm’, ‘operator’ and ‘platform worker’. We also surveyed seven types of brokerage in the food delivery industry. We proposed an information flow model for the platform business by integrating the types surveyed. To verify the proposed model, we designed the quantitative and qualitative questions and conducted a case study on a representative company of the platform business. We modified the former model based on the case study results and finally developed a more generalized information flow model for the platform business.

Platform capitalism’s social contract

What kind of social contract underwrites platform capitalism? Based on findings from the Platform Labor research project, this essay argues that we are seeing the emergence of different gendered “platform fixes”.

Who Bears the Burden of a Pandemic? COVID-19 and the Transfer of Risk to Digital Platform Workers

In this paper, we analyze the recessionary effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital platform workers. The crisis has been described as a great work-from-home experiment, with platform ecosystems presenting as its most advanced form. Our analysis differentiates the direct (health) and indirect (economic) risks incurred by workers in order to critically assess the portrayal of platforms as buffers against crisis-induced layoffs. We submit that platform-mediated labor may eventually increase precarity, without necessarily reducing health risks for workers. Our argument is based on a comparison of the three main categories of platform work—“on-demand labor” (gigs such as delivery and transportation), “online labor” (tasks performed remotely, such as data annotation), and “social networking labor” (content generation and moderation). We discuss the strategies that platforms deploy to transfer risk from clients onto workers, thus deepening existing power imbalances between them. These results question the problematic equivalence between work-from-home and platform labor. Instead of attaining the advantages of the former in terms of direct and indirect risk mitigation, an increasing number of platformized jobs drift toward high economic and insuppressible health risks.