Gig workers are independent contractors, online platform workers, contract firm workers, on-demand workers, and temporary workers. Gig workers enter into formal agreements with on-demand companies to provide services to the company's clients. They are part of the gig economy.
In many countries, the legal classification of gig workers is still being debated, with companies classifying their workers as "independent contractors", while organized labor advocates have been lobbying for them to be classified as "employees", which would legally require companies to provide the full suite of employee benefits like time-and-a-half for overtime, paid sick time, employer-provided health care, bargaining rights, and unemployment insurance, among others. In 2020, California approved by popular vote Proposition 22, which created a third-worker classification of gig-worker-drivers as contractors but maintained certain benefits such as minimum wage and mileage reimbursement.
Etymology of gig Gig has various meanings in English, but it has two modern meanings: any paid job or role, especially for a musician or a performer and any job, especially one that is temporary.
The earliest usage of the word gig in the sense of "any, usually temporary, paid job" is from a 1952 piece by Jack Kerouac about his gig as a part-time brakeman for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Background
In the 2000s, the digital transformation of the economy and industry accelerated due to advances in information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, and the popularization of smartphones. As a result, on-demand platforms based on digital technology have created jobs and employment forms that are differentiated from existing offline transactions by the level of accessibility, convenience, and price competitiveness.
Normally, "work" refers to a full-time job with set working hours and benefits. But the definition of work began to change with shifting economic conditions and ongoing technological advances, and these changes in the economy created a new labor force characterized by independent, contractual labor.
Uberisation or uberization is a neologism describing the commercialization of an existing service industry by new participants using computing platforms, such as mobile applications, to aggregate transactions between clients and providers of a service, often bypassing the role of existing intermediaries as part of the so-called platform economy. This business model has different operating costs compared to a traditional business.
Uberization is derived from the company name "Uber". Uberization has also raised concerns about government regulations and taxation, insofar as the formalized application of the sharing economy has led to disputes over the extent to which providers of services via an Uberized platform should be held accountable for corporate regulations and tax obligations. In 2018, 36% of US workers joined in the gig economy through either their primary or secondary jobs. The number of people working in major economies is generally less than 10 percent of the economically viable population, according in Europe, 9.7% of adults from 14 EU countries participated in the gig economy in 2017, according to the survey. Meanwhile, it is estimated that the gig worker size, which covers independent or non-conventional workers, is 20% to 30% of the economically active population in the United States and Europe.
A 2016 study by the McKinsey Global Institute concluded that across America and England, 162 million people were engaged in some form of independent work. Moreover, their payment is linked to the gigs they perform, which could be deliveries, rentals, or other services.
Because much of gig work can be done online, gig workers find themselves competing with one another in a 'planetary labour market'.
Distinctions Temporary workers
Many factors go into a desirable job, and the best employers focus on the aspects of work that are most attractive to today's increasingly competitive and fluid labor force. Traditional workers have a long–term employer–employee relationship in which the worker is paid by the hour or year, earning a wage or salary. Outside of that arrangement, work tends to be temporary, or project-based, and workers are hired to complete a particular task or for a certain period of time. Coordination of jobs through an on-demand company reduces entry and operating costs for providers and allows workers' participation to be more transitory in gig markets (i.e., they have greater flexibility around work hours). Freelancers sell their skills to maximize their freedom, while full-time gig workers leverage digital service-on-demand platforms and job matching apps to level up their skills. Another example of temporary workers may be digital nomads. Digital nomads lead a mobile lifestyle that combines work and leisure, requiring a particular set of skills and equipment. Gig work enables digital nomads by offering flexible, location-independent job opportunities that can be performed remotely, typically through digital platforms, allowing for a lifestyle of travel and work anywhere with internet connectivity.
Zero-hour contract employment It is important to distinguish employment in the sharing economy from employment through zero-hour contracts, a term primarily used in the United Kingdom to refer a contract in which an employer is not obliged to provide any minimum number of working hours to an employee. Employment in the gig economy entails receiving compensation based on a single key performance indicator, such as the number of parcels delivered or taxi lifts conducted. Another feature is that employees can opt to refuse to take an order. Although employers do not have to guarantee employment, and employees can refuse to take an order under a zero-hour contract, workers under such a contract are paid by the hour rather than directly through business-related indicators, as in the gig economy.
Ghost work Ghost work is a specific type of labor that is typically task-based and invisible to the end user. Ghost workers work on discrete tasks for a company, but they do not have a relationship with the company beyond assignment of the task and the minimal training necessary. A key characteristic of ghost work is completing small tasks to support machine learning or automation.
Cybertariat Cybertariat denotes precarious workers or also impoverished middle classes subordinated to an algorithmic decision-making system. The algorithmic architecture of digital labor platforms is believed to concentrate benefits and reduce the base for subsistence of cybertariat. Cybertariats represents an integration of the digital work with physical space. The cybertariat can work anytime and from anywhere, can be hired and fired at will. The cybertariat workers work mostly anonymously in virtual identity. The term is introduced by Ursula Huws.
Advantages and disadvantages Gig workers have high levels of flexibility, autonomy, task variety, and complexity. The gig economy has also raised some concerns. First, these jobs generally confer few employer-provided benefits and workplace protections. Second, technological developments occurring in the workplace have come to blur the legal definitions of the terms "employee" and "employer" in ways that were unimaginable when employment regulations in the United States, like the Wagner Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 were written. These mechanisms of control can result in low pay, social isolation, working unsociable and irregular hours, overwork, sleep deprivation, and exhaustion.
According to a 2021 report by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization the expansion of the gig economy can be seen as one significant factor for the increase in worker deaths for those who work over 55 hours a week (relative to those who work 35–40), rising from 600,000 deaths in 2000 to 750,000 in 2016. The report found that in 2016, 9% of the world's population worked more than 55 hours weekly, and this was more prevalent among men, as well as workers in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions. Work has also been associated with poor mental health outcomes amongst gig workers.
Legislatures have adopted regulations intended to protect gig economy workers, primarily by requiring employers to provide gig workers with benefits typically reserved for traditional employees. Critics of such regulations have asserted that these obligations have negative consequences, with employers almost inevitably reducing wages to offset the increased benefits, or even terminating employment when they have no leeway to do so.
Gender disparities There are several gender differences in gig work, from the number of women participating to the wage gap. Globally, the gender differences in participation of women in the gig economy differ. For example, in the United States, female gig workers account for 55% of the gig workforce. In India, 28% of the gig workforce consists of women. The platform economy has been described as conferring a professional status that allows women to participate in paid work without disrupting social hierarchies and while managing household and childcare responsibilities. The advent of home service providers and beauticians within the gig economy has led to the formalizing and feminization of casual labor, dubbed "pink collar work".
In October 2021, India's first women-led gig workers' strike was led by 100 women agitating outside the office of Urban Company in Gurugram, Haryana, a platform that provides at-home services, protesting "low wages, high commissions and poor safety conditions". This led to a lawsuit being filed by Urban Company against its workers for "instigating violence against the Company". The lawsuit stated that Urban Company was an aggregator connecting customers to independent workers and sought a permanent prohibitory injunction from the court against protests by the Urban Company employees. The protest was eventually called off following the imposition of Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code in Gurugram.
The gig economy is ostensibly less gender-segregated worldwide than the traditional labor market. However, women across the world continue to protest against gender gaps such as lower wages and working hours, and the lack of flexibility. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for worker protections for women who work in the gig economy for supplemental income.
Gender and type of work Gig work has witnessed a similar gendered division to that found in traditional work. The platform economy has particularly attracted female service providers due to the flexibility it offers. For example, 80% of women on DoorDash said that flexibility is the main reason they pursue gig work. One reason for this is that many women need to balance work with familial responsibilities and are therefore more likely than men to participate in gig work due to scheduling reasons. For many women, platform-based food delivery work also provides an opportunity to monetize previously unpaid domestic skills like food shopping.
Platform-based work is also highly segregated by gender. Men in the gig economy typically perform traditionally male tasks, most notably transportation. A study in Australia found that the most common task for male gig workers was driving, particularly for Uber. Women, on the other hand, tend to perform traditionally female tasks like food shopping, care work, cleaning, and creative jobs like graphic design and writing tasks.