GGR328H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Taskrabbit, Temporary Work, Airbnb
11 May 2018
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Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017
GGR328H1
LECTURE 7
Precarious work in the Platform/ Sharing Economy
• Economic activities involving an online intermediary that provides a platform by which
independent workers or sellers can sell a discrete service or good directly...
• Algorithms and cloud computing
• Diverse set of actors: Amazon, Etsy, Facebook, Uber, Task Rabbit Airbnb
• Variety of Terms: 'sharing economy', 'digital economy', 'gig economy'
• Most monetize human effort and assets
• Entrepreneurial
• Parallels with the 'putting out' system (putting out work to independent usually home-
based employers)
• Large platform companies exercise tremendous control
• Revolutionizing the way we work
• Labour Platforms (Gig economy): connect customers with freelance or contingent
workers who perform discrete projects or assignments (such as UberX, TaskRabbit, Lyft,
Gett)
• Capital Platforms: connect customers with individuals who rent assets or sell goods
peer-to-peer (such as eBay, Airbnb)
• DeStefano (2015): divides labour in the platform economy into two further categories
a) Crowd work
b) Work on demand apps
Examples of Platform Labour
• Digital janitors (such as Amazon Mechanical Turk)
• Task Rabbit
• Happy Host
Reasons for Pursuing Platform Work (JP Chase Morgan)
• Young people, low income individuals and those living in Western U.S. are more likely
to experience income volatility
• More likely to participate in platform economy
• More than 4.2% of adults in the U.S. earned some income from the online platform
economy from 2012-2015
• Mainly a second source of income
• 33% of total income
• earnings from labour platforms compensate for dips in non-platform income
• earnings from capital platforms add to or supplement non-platform incomes
Risks and Opportunities
• opportunities venture labourers vs. gig workers, be your own entrepreneur, unlock
commercial value in assets, flexible working hours, ideal for home-bound workers, allow
workers to potentially access a wider geographic market
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