3 Ways People Are Challenging Traditional Work Structures

Summary

New technologies, anti-labor trade liberalization, and economic instability have led to the volatile employment environment we have today. The shift to freelancing and portfolio-driven careers enabled by peer-to-peer platforms is offering extreme flexibility and an almost infinite choice to entrepreneurs who sell their services within a global marketplace. Notwithstanding that these digital service exchanges provide a lifeline to many underemployed workers, they provide little with regard to worker protection, health insurance, or even stable cash flow. People are working longer hours, for lower wages, and with less long-term income security.

Creative social entrepreneurs and digital-labor advocates are developing new ways of harnessing emerging technologies in order to allocate value on a more equitable basis. The emerging platform cooperatives movement, for example, is reclaiming worker solidarity, mutualism, and collective benefit as central tenets of a new commons economy.