Conference Agenda

The growing trend of digital labour platforms or the rise of the gig economy has been controversial among scholars and policymakers with their advantages and disadvantages. While some claim that they contribute to the efficient labour processes where the customers and service providers meet easily, others argue the rise of precarious work and call for the need to regulate the platform economies. Despite public and academic interest on remote platform work or popular physical platform works like delivery or ride services, platform works undertaken in the client's household such as domestic work is largely unnoticed. In this article, based on a qualitative field study from Turkish experience of domestic and home repair works, discussing the rising platform Armut, the impact of such economies on labour processes will be addressed benefitting from the concepts of control and autonomy in the labour processes, representing two alternative views on the labour platforms or gig economy. Study concerns with the questions of how the control and autonomy of the workers in the digital labour platforms are reproduced and how do these themes differ in domestic and home repair work settings. The data was gathered through 30 in-depth interviews with platform workers and analyzed using grounded theory methodology. The case of Turkey and platforms provided an opportunity to study domestic and home repair platforms in a national setting where there is no regulation concerning platform workers. Such a study provided an opportunity to monitor the implementation of recently adopted laws introducing social protections for domestic workers in Turkey. The results indicate the importance of skill levels for the experience of autonomy and control. Departing from the results, the article presents policy recommendations for government bodies, platforms and worker organizations.

The extant justice literature is sparse in non-standard work settings, including gig/platform work. This paper employed an interpretative phenomenological analysis based on detailed semi-structured interviews to study the expectations, lived experiences, and felt distributive justice perceptions of on-demand workers. We thus extend the justice literature beyond the traditional workplace context, towards conceptualizing a distributive justice framework for on-demand platform-based gig workers, including app-based cab drivers, food delivery and hyperlocal grocery delivery workers based in India. We focus on two questions, including what constitutes “distributive justice-at-work” perceptions, and how is such a “distributive justice-at-work” perception formed. We draw upon the social justice and organizational (distributive) justice literature to build our arguments.

Extant distributive justice literature mainly reasons equity as a fair distribution principle. We find that although workers prefer equity for the distribution of opportunities (to earn), equality is favoured for the distribution of freedom, leisure, and other benefits (like insurance). We posit that the perception of distributive justice for on-demand workers extends beyond the distribution of rewards, and includes the distribution of freedom/autonomy, opportunities, leisure and consideration of risk (asset, safety, and livelihood). Distribution of opportunities occurs at two levels: opportunities at the employment level, wherein on-demand work is seen as an employment opportunity with low skill requirements and entry barriers in the otherwise seemingly distressed job market, and opportunities to earn, that is how the work (orders/rides) is distributed. Freedom/autonomy in the social justice literature is an end in itself as everyone aspires to have more of it. Intra-Industry distribution of Freedom (or autonomy) is driven by equality principles. However, what one does with that freedom (Side-hustling/Surge-pricing) is dependent on what outcomes one desires, making freedom/autonomy an underappreciated element of procedural justice as well. Workers looked at risks in two senses. Risks as an outcome of their work setting and Risks were also considered as input to measure the equity in rewards.

Three perceptive lenses are prominent in establishing the distributive justice perceptions of Indian on-demand platform workers, including identity (shifting between that of an entrepreneur and worker), referent selection (including self as a referent), and locus of control (internal/external). The workers shift their lenses according to the context, i.e., the same person identifies as a worker and entrepreneur under different situations. They also change between multiple referents to facilitate justice perceptions. We thus integrate social and organizational justice literature towards a newer aspect of perceptions of “distributive justice-at-work”.

YouTube is probably the world’s largest digital labour platform. YouTube creators report similar decent work deficits to other platform workers: economic and psychosocial impacts from opaque, error-prone algorithmic management; no collective bargaining; and possible employment misclassification. In major jurisdictions with existing or proposed laws governing digital labour platforms (‘DLP legislation’), however, these laws do not appear to apply to YouTube or other ‘content marketplaces.’

Other laws, however, may apply: California AB 1790 (2019) and EU Regulation 2019/1150 establish rights for ‘marketplace sellers’ and ‘business users of online intermediation services,’ respectively, such as the right to a written explanation for suspensions or terminations. While the protections provided by these ‘marketplace laws’ are weaker than those in DLP legislation, they are underexamined in the literature on regulating labour platforms. To our knowledge they have not been used in any legal action or public dispute against any content marketplace.

This paper uses the case of YouTube to review the regulatory situation of content marketplaces, a category of labour platform defined in the literature but underdiscussed compared to location-based, microtask, and freelance platforms. The paper focuses on YouTube for four reasons. First, YouTube is very large. Second, YouTube’s algorithmic management systems are extremely sophisticated. Third, YouTube creators’ challenges are well-documented, despite limited discussion of content marketplaces in the literature on regulating labour platforms. Finally, YouTube use grew significantly during the pandemic, with users turning to YouTube for health information (especially Covid-19 and mental health), educational content (as schools ‘went online’), guidance with home tasks (e.g., cooking), and ‘uplifting’ content—but creators’ struggles with the platform’s algorithmic management practices continued.

The paper makes five contributions. First, it reviews the literature on YouTube creators’ working experiences and collective action efforts, and concludes that creators on YouTube and other content marketplaces face similar challenges to other platform workers. Second, it reviews major DLP legislation and notes that content marketplaces may be excluded, despite their relevance. Third, it compares the California and EU ‘marketplace laws’ to DLP legislation, concluding that the marketplace laws, while valuable, do not fully address the decent work deficits experienced by content marketplace creators. Fourth, it presents policy options for addressing these deficits: strengthening data protection enforcement; strengthening data protection legislation; including content marketplaces in the scope of DLP legislation; and strengthening marketplace laws. Finally, it sketches how content marketplaces might comply with these steps and how they could improve creators’ working experiences.