Sorting the gig economy

When we think about organising precarious "gig" workers, the task seems biblical. Low pay and no benefits that accrue to gig workers are worsened by the uncertainty of a position where you can only work to deliver something specifically demanded by consumers and at a premium you are often powerless to control.

App companies misclassify workers as independent contractors rather than employees in order to pass on all of the maintenance and capital costs, aside from web work and marketing, to the workers, avoiding personnel benefit and equipment costs that are routine for regular employers. Conditions seem to cry out a union.

A recent "strike" by Uber drivers in Los Angeles illustrates the kind of problem we deal with when we discuss gig workers and their ability to fight for better conditions. The company had triggered the strike by increasing its percentage of the fare, thereby decreasing drivers' pay. In response, the drivers turned off the Uber application on their phone. Stated more plainly, they went on strike by simply not responding to any calls or inducements to drive.

Did it work? Who knows? How would any of us, whether organisers, curious observers, or company officials, know how to measure the number of drivers protesting in this way versus those who just decided not to drive on any given day or got ticked-off and responded to Lyft instead?

ACORN tried a similar approach in the early 1970s when we were fighting increases by the Arkla Gas Company in central Arkansas. Our "Turn Off Arkla Day!" action got a bit of press, as the Uber drivers did in Los Angeles. But in both cases, the company yawned since there was no way to measure whether the strike affected their cash flow.

Organising gig workers can be challenging, but there's some good work going on for bicycle delivery drivers in Europe, where companies like Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and others have become ubiquitous. Last fall, one of ACORN's affiliates organised a meeting in Brussels that brought together union activists interested in organising European bicycle delivery drivers with fledgeling groups of drivers from a dozen countries including the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany. That meeting highlighted several active organising projects:

– Bike Workers Advocacy Project (BWAP), a new group seeking to organise cycling workers and, eventually, lead to some kind of unionisation or union-style representation. Drivers at Postmates and Caviar in New York City and some bicycle shops seemed to be stirring the pot in 2018, but nothing seems to have emerged formally to date.

– Bike delivery workers at Foodora and Dilveroo in Germany have raised issues about low wages and their independent contractor situation while advocating for a union.

– In 2016, London gig workers for delivery services Deliveroo and Uber Eats organised protests and strikes for higher wages. There was also an outcry in Philadelphia when a rider for Caviar was killed while working.

– Legal action has managed to win back employment rights, such as a recent ruling in Spain that declared that a Deliveroo rider was, in fact, an employee and not an independent contractor, as the company claimed. Caviar is in mandatory arbitration in California on the same issue. Just as importantly, riders in London struck for three days in 2018 and joined with striking McDonalds's workers to demand higher wages, largely organised by a chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

While these examples seem promising, unions clearly lack any real commitment to organise these workers, and the workers have limited leverage. David Chu, who directs the European Organising Center, a joint project between European unions and the US-based Change to Win federation, told me recently that he hears a lot of talk about organising gig workers but sees little action in that direction.

Serious organising efforts in the United States have been contradictory and are embryonic at best. Uber in New York City and San Francisco reacted to organising efforts by attempting to co-opt the organisations into agreeing that the workers were not employees in exchange for consultation rights on rule changes and other issues like receiving tips.

More concerted efforts to create a mini-National Labor Relations Board representation mechanism were launched at the municipal level in Seattle, but the organising effort is currently mired in litigation over pre-emption by the National Labor Relations Act and the question of employee status.

Local efforts reflect the way companies keep changing their practices, as Marielle Benchehboune, coordinator of ACORN's affiliate, ReAct, noted recently in Forbes. "What will make the difference," she suggested, is workers organising "on the transnational scale." Perhaps her analysis is correct. Perhaps a rare global organising plan could create enough pressure and leverage among these competing companies that could weld a workers' movement together from the disparate pieces of independent worker mobilisations that are cropping up around the world.

Given the challenges, how much should we invest in organising gig workers? Labour economists in the US caution that despite all of the hype from Silicon Valley and even some labour officials about the emerging gig economy, it involves a very small percentage of the workforce.

I heard something similar 15 years ago when I asked a leader of the Indian National Trade Union Congress if they were doing anything to organise call centre workers in India. He answered that they estimated that there were 30,000 such workers, but there were 450 million workers in India at the time and hardly nine per cent were organised. He then shrugged. That's all he said, but we got the message. There's much to be done in organising the unorganised; resources and capacity are always restrained, whether in India, Europe or North America.

Is that a reason for not finding ways to organise workers who are attempting on their own to find justice in their jobs? Or is it just another rationale for doing little or nothing? The one thing that seems clear is that if unions are going to be relevant to the modern workforce and the irregular and precarious forms of work that are being created by technology married to avarice, we must debate and address these challenges. It may be difficult, but unions and organisers need to devise practical strategies that allow workers to organise, win, and build enough power to force companies to adapt and change. IPA

(Courtesy: People's World The views expressed are strictly personal)