Platform Capitalism: What’s at Stake for Workers?

Summary

Labor market insecurity has been expanding rapidly in recent years, as downsizing, outsourcing, and the use of “contingent” labor have all combined to weaken the “standard” work arrangement—full-time work with benefits and a living wage—that workers had come to expect during the post–World War II period.1 This trend has been much studied in both the United States and the European Union, with a sprawling literature as the result.2 Although much remains to be known about the rise of precarious work, one particular issue seems especially pressing (and prompts the current article) the rise of the on-demand economy, which has only come to dominate the economic landscape within the last decade. If the proliferation of precarious work was well underway before the rise of Uber, TaskRabbit, and Upwork, what is likely to transpire now that the digital revolution has taken root?

Keywords: gig economy, platform economy, Uber, on-demand economy, precarious work