Documents Vallas, Steven P. 4 results

"This volume presents the most recent studies of work and labor in the digital age as it unfolds in both Europe and the United States.
One of the critical questions facing modernity concerns the reconfiguration of paid employment, which has been subject to wholesale changes that have widespread consequences for workers, their families, and the institutional structure that characterizes capitalist societies. A key driver of these changes has been the digital revolution and the rapid proliferation of the gig economy. Together with social network sites for hiring, the spread of robotics, and the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, they leave virtually no occupation untouched."

"The rapid growth of the platform economy has provoked scholarly discussion of its consequences for the nature of work and employment. We identify four major themes in the literature on platform work and the underlying metaphors associated with each. Platforms are seen as entrepreneurial incubators, digital cages, accelerants of precarity, and chameleons adapting to their environments. Each of these devices has limitations, which leads us to introduce an alternative image of platforms: as permissive potentates that externalize responsibility and control over economic transactions while still exercising concentrated power. As a consequence, platforms represent a distinct type of governance mechanism, different from markets, hierarchies, or networks, and therefore pose a unique set of problems for regulators, workers, and their competitors in the conventional economy. Reflecting the instability of the platform structure, struggles over regalutory regimes are dynamic and difficult to predict, but they are sure to gain in prominence as the platform economy grows."

"How do gig workers respond to the various financial, physical, and legal risks their work entails? Answers to this question have remained unclear, largely because previous studies have overlooked structurally induced variations in the experience of platform work. In this article, we develop a theory of differential embeddedness to explain why workers' orientations toward the risks of gig work vary. We argue further that because platforms define themselves merely as mediators of exchanges between workers and customers, they systematically expose workers to various forms of customer malfeasance, ranging from fraud and tip baiting to harassment and assault. We develop this perspective using interviews with 70 workers in the ride-hail, grocery shopping, and food delivery sectors. The structure of labor platforms indirectly invites workers to exhibit distinct normative orientations toward the risks that gig work entails while also multiplying the sources of these risks."