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Why Does Unpaid Labour Vary Among Digital Labour Platforms? Exploring Socio-Technical Platform Regimes of Worker Autonomy KU Leuven
Digital platforms provide many workers with vital income and offer the promise of flexible work, and yet also contribute to experiences of precariousness and exploitation, particularly with regard to pressures to undertake unpaid work. This article explores why unpaid labour is necessary and what drives its extent and form among diverse types of digital platforms. We theorize two ideal types of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ socio-technical platform ...
Unveiling ‘Algorithm Governance’ Shaping Labor Platforms’ Strategies and Working Conditions in the Digital Era KU Leuven
Research on platform work has primarily focused on analyzing how algorithmic management influences working conditions by empowering platforms to govern digitally-delivered services. However, prior research has overlooked the crucial aspect of how algorithmic management underlies platforms’ use of diverse contractual forms of employment available in the labor markets from where they source their workforces. Bridging this gap is vital to ...
‘If we lower our responsiveness, the algorithm likes us less’. A biographical perspective on (losing) control in the platform economy KU Leuven
The gig economy has attracted a lot of attention in the contemporary discourse in the social sciences. While there have been numerous – mostly qualitative – studies on the experience and the conditions of platform labour, the exploratory potential of biographical research has so far been overlooked. This article responds to this gap in research by presenting a case study of a French crowdworker, who was interviewed in the context of a larger ...
Mapping social protection coverage for platform workers: A comparative analysis of Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands KU Leuven Vrije Universiteit Brussel
‘Digital Tournaments’: The Colonization of Freelancers’ ‘Free’ Time and Unpaid Labour in the Online Platform Economy. KU Leuven
This article challenges positive views of the assumed relationships between skills, productivity and rewards in self-employed digital freelancing. It suggests that the upfront investments made by freelancers to build up positive platform ratings are not necessarily recouped in the form of increased autonomy, guaranteed work or more lucrative ‘gigs’. Drawing on 38 autobiographical narrative interviews and 12 audio working-diaries with diverse ...
The platform discount: Addressing unpaid work as a structural feature of labour platforms KU Leuven
Digital labour platforms are able to structure work to limit paid working time, extract fees from workers to access labour, and shift costs associated with OSH compliance onto platform workers. We call this unpaid work the ‘platform discount’. Unpaid labour is embedded within platforms’ competitive strategies as platforms operate with labour oversupply while clients use multiple platforms to search for the cheapest option (multi-homing effect). ...
Inequalities in Neo-mutualistic Professional Organisations: The Boundary Work of Creative Workers in Italy. KU Leuven
In this chapter, we discuss how multi-professional organisations, such as mutual aid cooperatives of creative workers, operate as agents of differentiation within and between professions. Analysing the actions of individuals and organisations and how they influence each other is key to understanding their implications in terms of differentiation ‘within’ and ‘between’ professions, in the dual sense of a growing division of labour, and also ...