How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked, And How to Win It Back

Oh thanks, It's a great pleasure to be here. So tell us what inspired this because this really is at the heart of so many things that we've been talking about. And I feel like we were really on this train for the gig economy, and then things started to kind of veer off, and heck, here we are in twenty twenty. It feels like everything's veered off. So tell us how

you got inspired to do this in the first place. Well, I was writing a book in two thousand eight nine about sort of how we could respond to what at that time, of course, was the financial collapse and economic problems and the climate crisis. It was really interested in ways that people could begin to be more self sufficient. De link from jobs. They really didn't want to be

in corporate you know, kind of rat race jobs. And one of the things I started looking at as they were just being founded were new sharing economy initiatives, things like Airbnb. Originally the ride share companies now now no longer really ride share, but um so these things were all just getting started. They were being founded just as

I was writing that book. As soon as I finished that book, I started on a research project and I've spent the last ten years studying the sort of early promise of the gig or what was called the sharing economy, and then of course how things developed. So in in your research, was there one big takeaway that you learn from this, Well, I say there too. I mean the first one is that these were This technology that these platforms us is really great and it does hold wonderful promise.

But the platforms came to be they were founded by and then investors came in, people who really weren't interested in having them achieve all the social benefits um that you know, they were promising in the early days, and they really just went for market domination, growth and profitability, and they kind of commercialized what was originally supposed to be a very personal person to person kind of economic structure. So that's one takeaway. It's sort of you know, greed,

greed got the better of these things. Um. But there's one other really important finding in our book, which is that people who were just using these platforms for extra income, what we call supplemental income, mostly had really good experiences on them. And whether we're talking Airbnb, ridehals, we looked at a lot of task rabbit, which is a kind

of errands and home home based work platform. People who were trying to earn a living on them, we're really having to struggle, and you know, many of them were earning below the poverty line. We didn't have any of those what we call dependent earners who were actually making a good living. So one of the problems is that more and more people on these platforms are people who need to make a living on them, and that's especially

true in ridehal and food delivery. So the that's another really important thing that I think has has gotten lost, which is that they're they're really not feasible as jobs. And yet of course many you know, they they offer themselves as as being able to provide like a real income to people especially ride hail food delivery, but it

doesn't work. And Juliette, I gotta ask you. I mean, you've been doing this research, as you said, really looking into this for the better part of a decade, and here we get to and I feel like everything gets turned upside down, including the gig economy, the sharing economy, however you wanted to find it. Every aspect of every economy got turned upside down. Absolutely. I mean right hailing collapsed,

suddenly there was insatiable demand for in store shoppers and delivery. UM. The other thing that we're seeing in the interviews we're doing is that these workers can't get work anymore because the companies have hired so many people. There was a story out in Bloomberg today about UM a group of delivery workers on Amazon who were positioning phones in trees right next to the stores as a way of being the first one because that the algorithm picks the closest phones.

So it's gotten really brutal out there. Our people were interviewing or telling us that, you know, other people are using bots to snag ships, and so they can't get work anymore. So, yes, it's really upended a lot of people's lives. The other part of the story is what's happened with Uber in California and the idea that the drivers for Uber need to be it's been put off, but can be classified as workers, so they have to get paid things like paid leaven insurance or security, et cetera. Um,

what do you make of that? I'm have two minds. I mean, one is like, we'll do the workers actually want to be classified as such if they're just making extra income? Or is this a good thing because it's sort of moves that develops that industry, matures that industry. What's your So the polling will show that most workers would like to be independent contractors, and that's you know, many of them got into this work because of the

freedom that it offers. But what's happened is that many drivers began to realize that they they were they couldn't make it, as I sees, and they sort of reluctantly came around to the idea that the only way they're going to get a decent income and decent working conditions is as UM employees. So the the sort of the squeeze that Uber and Littz put on the drivers in California,

especially Uh, they've they've really been squeezed. I mean, you read all these stories of drivers sleeping in their cars and they're spending you know, a huge fraction now of their time driving around with empty cars. So they they came to support this law a B five, which reclassifies them as employees. The real rub is is whether the companies will continue to give them flexibility if they're if they do convert them to employees. It's something that companies

can do. They're gonna have to tweak the model. They're saying it's impossible. Um, but I don't think that's true. And of course they're playing hardball. They've they've got a two hundred million dollar flush fund to pass a proposition overturning the law for them, And um, I have a good friend who's being harassed by the pr companies that that Uber and Lyft have hired. So it's it's gotten

into a nasty fight. And so who ultimately can should will kind of fix this to some extent, because you do say even in the title of your book, we can sort of win this back to some extent. Who needs to come to the able to figure this out? Well, there are two paths to to winning it back. I mean one we we have begun to see some fruits

of and that is the regulatory path. New York put in a minimum wage for right held drivers in it regulated Airbnb, so it's you know, it's much better in in New York they have a after expenses drivers need to get seventeen dollars an hour, so that's you know, a much more reasonable wage than the sort of seven dollars that were five dollars even that some drivers around the country are getting after expenses are taken care of. Um.

So regulation is one thing really important. Also, a lot of big workers are joining unions, so that gives another sort of counter force to the power of the platform companies. But one of the things my research team and I studied is is, uh, you know, a little bit more out of the box. It's called a platform co opera off where the workers actually own the platform, they own the technology, and so they're they're not up against management

or investors. They actually can exploy that technology for themselves. And it's the cooperative model works really well here because the technology has pretty much innovated away a lot of what management normally does. So technology and workers together is a pretty efficient outcome, and we studied, we did one of the first studies of a platform cooperative and it's

been really successful. And they're you know, there's just a few of them still, but they are popping up in house cleaning, there's up and up and glow in New York and dr driving bicycle careers are forming coops all over Europe and a little bit in North America too. So that's sort of like the different type of union, non traditional fight big corporation, but it's sort of its own independent union. Does that make sense, Yeah, except that

the work is actually owned the company. I guess like the new iteration of this Yeah, absolutely, wow, interesting, interesting, what could what's the next sort of catalyst here? I feel like we live in a world of catalysts, Like what's going to force this issue? Juliette, Well, I do think if we get a democratic administration, there's going to be some movement on this at the national level because

the inability of these gig workers. You know, there are now more and more of them, when we're talking about millions and millions of workers in this country, you know, really a growing sector who don't even have access to unemployment insurance or health benefits are really you know, basic things. So the the the first bill out of Congress to deal with Corona, the Cares Act, did set up a special fund for these gig workers. So they've they've finally

gotten a toe hold into federal policy. And I think you're gonna see that really expand if you of a Democratic administration. All right, well, we will certainly keep an eye on this story. Congratulations on an incredibly timely book, and it sounds like a long time in the making in terms of the research. So just a rich vein to mind here and we look forward to keep me in touch. In touch. Juliet Shore is professor of sociology

at Boston College. Her new book appropriately coming out right around Labor Day After the Gig, How the sharing economy got hijacked and how to win it back.