France Stratégie – Évènements6 April, 2017

CEPS, Brussels, 13 March, 2017

Le cybertariatUrsula Huws

Professor of Labour and Globalisation, University of Hertfordshireu.huws@herts.ac.uk

The current situation

• A global division of labour (migration of people and migration of jobs)

• Concentration of capital and growing dominance of MNCs• Global spread of ICTs• Decline of normative 20th century post-WW2 model of stable

employment• Economic crisis• New waves of commodification based on (inter alia): biology, art and

culture, commercialisation of public services, sociality• Restructuring of capital (often using new technologies, eg

automation, substitution of goods for services, new forms of work organisation)

• A proliferation of new terminology

Confusing developments in discourse and the corporate landscape

• Crowdsourcing• Workforce on demand• Cloudsourcing• Human cloud• Sharing economy• Digital labour• Prosumption• Co-creation• Digital commons• Peer-to-peer networking• Playbour• Mesh Economy• Gig economy• Liquid labour• Platform capitalism• Online talent platform• Just-in-time workforce

• Use of online platforms for managing work• Spread of ‘just in time’ working (including zero hours contracts)• Standardisation and simplification of tasks (‘taskification’ of work processes)• Digitisation of tasks• Use of data derived from online activities (including customer ratings) for setting

targets and performance monitoring• Expectation that workers will be available to check messages 24/7• Multilocational working• Migration of traditional freelance agencies online• Migration of telephone directories online (from yellow pages to google)• Evolution of global outsourcing of digital work – elaboration of value chains;

growing role of intermediaries; centralisation of control combined with decentralisation of responsibility

A convergence of existing trends, now reaching critical mass

Some trends related to the growth of the platform economy

• Impetus for development of new business models in the wake of the financial crisis• Rapid expansion of major corporate players (e.g Amazon, Airbnb, Uber, Elance) helped by:• Concentration of ownership (e.g. merger of Elance and Odesk) and entry of large global

corporations into the market (e.g. Coca Cola, Ford, Google)• What began as a telemediated one-to-one introduction of individuals (‘sharing economy’) is

increasingly involving corporate clients• Business models do not remain static, especially when platforms achieve market

dominance. • The practices of platform companies are increasingly integrated into normal management

procedures across other sectors, including:– Requirements for workers to ‘pitch’ for projects or tasks– Use of apps for notification of new tasks– Use of online platforms for logging work done– Use of customer ratings– Surveillance– Growth of precarious, non-standard contracts– New health and safety risks

• Capitalism-as-usual?

Some recent survey results –Participation in the online economy as a source of income

53%

31%

10%

9%

8%

11%

57%

13%

10%

12%

7%

12%

53%

30%

12%

11%

10%

14%

64%

43%

20%

17%

16%

23%

61%

24%

8%

13%

8%

12%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Sell own possessions (eg Ebay)

Resell products on online marketplace (eg

Amazon)

Sell self-made products (eg Etsy)

Sell/resell on own website

Rent to paying guest (eg Airbnb)

Any crowd work

NL AT DE SE UK

People earning a living from crowd work

21%

11%

8%

7%

4%

3%

24%

12%

8%

7%

4%

3%

22%

14%

11%

9%

6%

4%

36%

23%

18%

15%

9%

5%

18%

12%

9%

8%

5%

3%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

Seeking crowd work

Any crowd work

At least annual

At least biannual

At least monthly

At least weekly

NL

AT

DE

SE

UK

Earnings from crowd work as a proportion of all income

31%

12%

8%

12%

9%

5%

19%

5%

21%

9%

12%

13%

7%

4%

27%

7%

32%

14%

9%

11%

5%

2%

22%

5%

40%

11%

9%

4%

4%

2%

20%

10%

29%

7%

6%

3%

5%

6%

38%

6%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%

Up to 10%

10% to 25%

25% to 50%

50% to 75%

75% to 99%

All

Don't know

Prefer not to say

UK

SE

DE

AT

NL

Sending or receiving email from home, by country: comparison of frequent crowd workers, occasional crowd workers and non-crowd workers

89%

75%

35%

95%

86%

51%

90%

75%

27%

89%

78%

51%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

At least weekly crowd workers

Occasional crowd workers

Non-crowd workers

NL DE SE UK

Use of ‘app’ to notify when work is available, by country: comparison of frequent crowd workers, occasional crowd workers and non-crowd workers

70%

37%

5%

71%

58%

10%

77%

48%

4%

50%

41%

7%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

At least weekly crowd workers

Occasional crowd workers

Non-crowd workers

NL DE SE UK

Use of ‘app’ or website to log work done, by country: comparison of frequent crowd workers, occasional crowd workers and non-crowd workers

74%

48%

9%

74%

66%

18%

76%

43%

5%

70%

49%

13%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

At least weekly crowd workers

Occasional crowd workers

Non-crowd workers

NL DE SE UK

Further information

About the survey:

http://www.feps-europe.eu/en/publications/details/463

Some books: