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37 Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 653 (2015-2016)
Commoditized Workers: Case Study Research on Labor Law Issues Arising from a Set of on-Demand/Gig Economy Platforms

handle is hein.journals/cllpj37 and id is 689 raw text is: COMMODITIZED WORKERS: CASE STUDY RESEARCH ON LABOR LAW ISSUES ARISING FROM A SET OF ON-DEMAND/GIG ECONOMY PLATFORMS Antonio Aloisit In the framework of the so-called on-demand/gig economy, the number of on-demand companies matching labor supply and demand is on the rise. These schemes may enlarge opportunities for people willing to find a job or to top up their salaries. Despite the upside of creating new peer marketplaces, these platforms may also be used to circumvent employment regulation, by operating informally in traditionally regulated markets. The literature showed how, by 2009, millions of worker accounts have been generated within these frameworks. Productivity may be fostered but, at the same time, a new version of Taylorism is disseminated (i.e., the fragmentation of labor into hyper-temporary jobs - called microtasks - on a virtual or local assembly line), strengthened by globalization and computerization. All these intermediaries recruit freelance or casual workers who are labelled as independent contractors even though many indicators seem to reveal a disguised employment relationship. Uncertainty and insecurity are the price for extreme flexibility. A bulk of business risk is shifted to workers, and potential costs such as benefits or unemployment insurance are avoided. Minimum wages are often far from being reached. This Article presents a case study analysis of several on-demand work platforms, starting from Uber and Amazon Mechanical Turk, one of the first schemes founded in 2005, which is arguably employing humans-as-a- service. It splits a single service in several micro Human Intelligence Tasks (such as tagging photographs, writing short descriptions, transcribing podcasts, processing raw data). Turkers/Providers (workers) are selected by Requesters (firms) to quickly accomplish assignments online, and then rated according to an internal system and finally paid only if delivery is accepted. I comment upon the business model of TaskRabbit (thousands of t Ph.D. candidate in Legal Studies, Luigi Bocconi University, Milan. The author wishes to thank Valerio De Stefano and Miriam A. Cherry for their helpful support, feedback, comments, and suggestions on this Article.

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