Town Hall 2 – “Labor Power for the Platform Economy Now! Digital Labor Is Not Free” as Part of Who Owns the World? PCC Conference at The New School 2019

Summary

Speakers answer questions from the audience at Who Owns the World Conference, convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School in November 2019.

Town Hall 2 – “Labor Power for the Platform Economy Now! Digital Labor Is Not Free”

Speakers: David O’Connell, Sabine Kock, Fredrik Söderqvist, Luciana Bruno, Tina Vu Pham, Erik Forman, Camile Just, Ra Criscitiello, Minsun Ji, Maru Bautista, and Rebecca Lurie

About This Town Hall
The world of work is not working for too many people. Labor Law in many countries including the United States is broken. That’s why we ask: What are innovative forms of associational power for workers in the gig economy? Can we re-imagine and rebuild the gig economy in a fundamentally fairer way? How important a role does ownership – and Employee Stock Ownership Plans in particular- play in creating leverage for platform workers? How aware are workers of the ownership option? Do cooperatives emerge when unions fail, or do unions have an essential role to play in co-op development? How much hope do we place in the enforcement of AB5, a law passed by the California State Senate requiring platforms such as Uber and Lyft to treat their drivers as employees? How can technology help to link up, organize, and empower geographically dispersed workers?