Meanwhile in the gig economy, workers are finding their pay being docked for no apparent reason & are excluded from bookings/work by the ap... and there is little recourse from an automated system that few understand how it works.

I've said it before, the gig economy's innovation is not technological it is a system to remove workers' rights, and exploit them, to enhance profits... this is just Victorian working practice for the new millennium!

#workers #GigEconomy

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/21/its-a-nightmare-couriers-mystified-by-the-algorithms-that-control-their-jobs

Vile Startup Charges Gig Workers to Get Paid on Time

https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-charges-gig-workers-for-wages

‘So immoral’: gig economy workers forced to pay fee to receive their wages

One of the problems of much of our employment legislation is that is still assumes that employers will act reasonabley. And time and time again that has proven to be an unwarranted assumption. The 'gig' economy epitomises the tendency to rip off the poor.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/11/so-immoral-gig-economy-workers-forced-to-pay-fee-to-receive-their-wages

In lobbying for a higher quality of life -one of the top grievances raised by striking Starbucks workers: unpredictable scheduling.

Income volatility: at least twice as common since 1970 & now affects ~1/3 of HHs. The rise of gig work, “perma-lancing” & jobs w/o a set number of hrs, the unreliable nature of wages has all kinds of consequences beyond sending families scrambling to adjust when the bottom of their budget falls out.

#WorkersRights #Union #USPol #GigEconomy

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-01-03/amazon-starbucks-strikes-work-schedules-pay

"…point of the 'gig economy' is to use the 'did it with an app' trick to avoid labor laws, so that bosses can shift risks onto workers, because capitalists hate capitalism. These apps were first used to immiserate taxi-drivers, & this was so successful that it spawned a whole universe of 'Uber for __________' apps that took away labor rights from other kinds of workers…"

https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-12-17-loose-flapping-ends-luigi-has-a-point-db7e46c1c9c9

Behind the scenes a new ap, Young Ones is driving gig economy work in some retail sites this season; the ap, allows freelancers to be booked for retail shifts at short notice (and includes a review function whereby employers rate their work, thereby impacting on future hiring opportunities).

As Sarah O'Connor (FT) notes the problem is the ratings judgement cannot be appealed & of course it keeps workers outside employment protections (again).

Look exploitative to me!

"Claudio Agosti’s and Gaetano Priori’s most recent research at Tracking Exposed (now operating as part of the Reverse Engineering Task Force), which they shared with AlgorithmWatch, shows how riders also suffer privacy violations and a misuse of their personal data by the Glovo Courier application. In addition, the company might have created its own scoring system to evaluate the couriers' performance and possibly bases defining decisions on the scores.

After four years of in-depth research into the dynamics of the service and a technical analysis that involved reverse engineering the Foodinho Courier app, the researchers found what they call a “hidden rating score” that does not match any of Glovo’s public scoring, like the ”Excellence score” that any rider can look up in their app and that somehow defines the ratings they receive from customers."

https://algorithmwatch.org/en/glovo-tracking-riders-location-infringements/

On Saturday I went Door Dashing and got a call from someone claiming that an offer I just got was done with a fraudulent credit card. So I went through the steps suggested to clear the order.

Immediately afterward, I called Door Dash Support and asked if the previous call was legit. They said yes it was. But just in case, I went and changed my password on my account.

Then when out yesterday, I got called again. Same voice. Different name. Same thing. After it was done, I again went and changed my password. But this time it seemed my account was locked out.

I called Door Dash support and after running through verification they confirmed that my account had been compromised. Presumably by the phone person.

They promised it would all be fixed up and I'd have access to my account again soon.

But I continue to wait to gain access 18h later. I haven't been paid for last week's work. And when I try to login to the Dasher app it claims I've never had an account.

I'm mad at the scammer.
I'm mad at myself.
I'm mad at Door Dash.
It's been a crappy day all ‘round.

And yes, I'm writing this down not just as a warning for all of you that scammers will scam and always be suspicious… but also to document it for my own brain (I've got other notes too) in case this gets more ugly.

Sigh. If Doordashers were actual *employees* perhaps this would not be happening.

If you have questions feel free….

"Gig workers expressed that, after noticing frequent changes on the listing platforms that were made without their consent, they started to see themselves as laboratory rats rather than valued users. Because their messages were blocked by chatbots, they were unable to speak to the platform to complain or opt out of the changes. Frustration flared and apathy set in. Their income and well-being declined.

This is concerning, not only because of how it affects gig workers, but also because academics are increasingly becoming involved in designing digital experiments. Social scientists follow strict Institutional Review Board (IRB) procedures that govern the ethics of experiments involving people — such as informing them and requiring consent — but these rules don’t apply to technology companies. And that’s leading to questionable practices and potentially unreliable results.

Technology companies use their terms of service to authorize them to collect data without any obligation to inform people that they were involved, or provide any opportunity for them to withdraw. Thus, digital experimentation faces scant oversight."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03674-x

Another group of gig economy workers for for their employment rights & won.... as the lawyers representing them conclude:

'gig economy operators cannot continue to falsely classify their workers as independent contractors... to avoid providing the rights those workers are properly entitled to'!

As I've said before; if your businesses 'innovation' is the exploitation of you workers, your business is neither innovative nor a tech company!

#workers #rights #gigeconomy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7047kz0vr0o

Our country keeps astounding me with how backwards we are.

Banning all cyclists from pedestrian areas is a dangerous move.

There are so many better solutions, such as:
-marked #CycleLanes
-scrapping the #GigEconomy for deliveries
-investing as much in cycle infrastructure as is invested in vehicle infrastructure

Hey folks, there's a #ClimateEmergency underway, please don't carry on as usual

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/oct/31/cycling-clampdowns-city-councils-danger

I could have done with something like this.

Lyft will have to tell drivers how much they can truly earn, with evidence

https://www.engadget.com/transportation/lyft-will-have-to-tell-drivers-how-much-they-can-truly-earn-with-evidence-120011572.html?src=rss

Some time ago I posted a story (from The Observer) about an encampment of caravans in Bristol that was home to many exploited migrant gig economy workers.... the Home Office has now raided the camp;

As the IWGB President says:
“Instead of going after the predatory employers whose business models are built on exploiting the desperate, the government opts over & over again for performative cruelty towards the people just trying to survive' !

#gigeconomy #migrants

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/12/calls-for-investigation-of-uber-eats-and-deliveroo-after-raid-on-bristol-caravan-camp

Migrant workers living in a caravan encampment in #Bristol raided by immigration enforcement officers have accused the Home Office of targeting the victims of labour exploitation rather than companies profiting from the hidden economy.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/12/calls-for-investigation-of-uber-eats-and-deliveroo-after-raid-on-bristol-caravan-camp

#USA #NYC #Uber #Lyft #GigEconomy #RideHailing: "The whole summer was like this for rideshare drivers in New York City. Under a local law, drivers are supposed to be paid even for the time they spend between trips. But Uber and Lyft found a money-saving loophole: Simply prevent them from logging into the apps, erasing some of their working time from the record. Because these so-called lockouts happen without warning, and can last anywhere from several minutes to several hours, drivers have had to work longer to keep their wages up. And in many cases, they can’t.

When Bloomberg first reported on the existence of lockouts, Uber and Lyft said they were locking out drivers only during periods of low demand. But the practice has been more pervasive, widespread and financially damaging for drivers than previously understood, a Bloomberg investigation found. These lockouts occurred almost every hour of every day, according to the data, which included more than 800 drivers, or roughly 1% of registered drivers in the city. They even happened in high-demand areas, leading to some increased fares because there were fewer cars available for hire. By making drivers seem busier on paper, the companies set themselves up to save as much as hundreds of millions of dollars in driver payouts, according to Bloomberg estimates — all while telling the drivers, falsely, that the lockouts were required because of the law."

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-uber-lyft-nyc-drivers-pay-lockouts

One major change as we enter the network era is that positional power may no longer be required to have influence in a network society.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/leadership/2018/06/the-declining-influence-of-leadership-positional-power-in-a-network-society

Free Delivery: Post something about the exploitation of gig workers, and you’ll receive a lifetime supply of hideous takes about how ‘things were so much worse’ before uber: ‘my latte delivery / 2 block car ride was a *nightmare*’.

Thinking about themselves, for convenience.

That’s buying into the Model, until the bitter end.

#gigeconomy
#latestagecapitalism

#Uber #GigEconomy #RideHailing: "[A] few years ago the company started rolling out a new pricing mechanism that disconnected driver pay from the rider’s fare, allowing it to pay drivers a lot less than the company was charging for a ride. Recently, More Perfect Union got some drivers in a room to see how this works — and how those drivers can be offered very different rates for the same rides, if Uber’s algorithms have enough data to believe they’ll accept a lower payment.

On top of that, Uber has continued to fight against the rights of workers in the United States and beyond. Earlier this summer, Ed Ongweso Jr. wrote about a deal in Minneapolis that, on its face, seemed positive for drivers, but was actually a compromise from the council to after Uber and Lyft threatened to pull their service in the city. More recently, a court in New Zealand ruled that the contractors who brought a case against Uber were in fact employees, setting up the potential for a wider reclassification. Instead, the extreme right-wing government currently leading the country announced it planned to change the law to make it easier for companies to ensure their workers can be — and will remain — contractors.

Once again, Uber is not only keeping its own workers down, but potentially hurting those in other industries too. How long will this company continue to get away with the harm it causes to workers on such a global scale?"

https://disconnect.blog/roundup-uber-is-cutting-workers-wages-globally/