As 9-to-5 Jobs Vanish, Look Who’s Reinventing the Working World

Summary

Overcoming isolation in the gig economy, workers like Amazon’s Mechanical Turks are building democratic, worker-led communities.

Estelle Becker Costanzo has worked in Pittsburgh restaurants since age 15. Now 56, she is a server at The Capital Grille, a position she is proud of. “This is a good job,” she says—relative to the rest of the industry. Still, because her base wage has stayed put at $2.83 per hour for 25 years, she struggles to cover her basic expenses. “Originally, [tips] were supposed to be 50 percent of our income. Now it’s more like 100 percent.”