The gig economy has a problem — and it’s not the governments
This was published in Linkedin last month. Right now in Brazil an outsourcing legislation is currently being discussed — and strongly opposed by labor movements and working force reps in general. I think it’s a mistake — as such legislation (which can be improved) can be a right step towards acknowledging the ongoing changes in the nature of the work relationship.
All you need is to check your morning news to find that something’s brewing in the so called gig economy. The gig economy is how we chose to categorize all the new businesses surfacing everyday: Uber, Lyft,TaskRabbit, Handy, Instacart, to name a few.
Your default news about these companies would be either about funding rounds or lawsuits.
There’s a lot of money involved: Uber, the most successful so far, has more than $5 billion in funding rounds. This is a testimony to the current success and the expectations of the gig economy eventually taking over the world, reaching unprecedented scale. Disruption ahoy: from the car industry to every service you can think of.
And all you need is to take care of all those lawsuits — which are just a symptom of the disruption, a reflex action from clueless governments and endangered companies.
The problem is when they make sense — and are justifiable.
This is part of the argument here: http://www.fastcompany.com/3042248/the-gig-economy-wont-last-because-its-being-sued-to-death — a great analytical piece from Fast Company claiming that the gig economy has to deal with the current workers’ complaints lest it goes the way of the Dodo. Or the Webvan. Please, read.
This is a rather interesting point — and something that helps putting the gig economy in its right place.
A favorite expression among the most excited analysts is how “the gig economy will kill Capitalism”. This gig economy is essentially composed by software platforms as a marketplace and many atomized pieces perfectly allocated by a system of frictionless communication. This is the theoretical perfect competition scenario brought to life thanks to the Sillicon Valley.
It’s not something that will kill capitalism. It’s just cut-throat capitalism.
What is the status of all these workers that are the nuts and bolts of the gig economy? Are they workers? Freelancers? Independent contractors?
If I am a Uber driver, I’ll have a plethora of duties — financial and operational. From the car purchase and maintenance to how I should behave and what I must do and offer to passengers. I can be punished — “fired” from Uber.
And yet, I don’t have any rights or claims. If I get sick it’s my problem. Same thing if I get robbed, if I am involved in an accident, if… just coaching me on all the issues I could face, demand an insurance (properly paid by myself) and create software filters and ratings won’t be enough. This is pretty much the same thing in every other gig economy service.
As a commenter mentioned: as part of the gig economy I have all the downsides of a freelancer with none of the upsides. For these services to run adequately they end up creating a special status where their independent contractors are “quasi-employees”.
This is not bad in itself. This is not killing capitalism. This is our society once again going through a new form of work that needs to be acknowledged by legislation.
A little more than a hundred years ago we didn’t have weekends, 40 hours weeks, vacation, social security, you mention. All these rights that we take for granted are a result of intense struggle from workers all over the world.
We now have a new category of workers whose rights and duties should be acknowledged and formalized. They are likely the future — and if we are to reach the scale we expect from the gig economy we need to start thinking about them now.
