Sustainable Platform Cooperativism: Towards Social and Environmental Justice in the Future of the Gig-Economy

Summary

Gig-economy platforms are disrupting the way that work is managed, completed and measured in low and no skill work in the UK. 2.8 million people work in the UK’s gig-economy, in which “the exchange of labour for money between individuals or companies via digital platforms that actively facilitate matching between providers and customers, on a short-term and payment by task basis” [9]. The large uptake of these platforms in the logistics sector (e.g. Uber, Deliveroo) provides employers with a dynamic, Mlexible and lower cost workforce, who can be instantly matched to piecemeal work through ICT and ranked on their performance [6]. Gig-work is growing as the primary way of work in the last-mile goods courier sector and urban mobility, intertwined with increasing levels of externalities connected to rapidly evolving consumption and unsustainable logistics networks [1,4,5].