Speaker 1: Well, really excited to round out today's show talking about
Speaker 1: a new book do out on Labor Day. Appropriately, it's
Speaker 1: by Juliet Shure, professor of sociology at Boston College. The
Speaker 1: book is called After the Gig, How the Sharing Economy
Speaker 1: Got Hijacked and How to Win it back. Her latest book,
Speaker 1: she has looked very holistically about where we are when
Speaker 1: it comes to work, life and culture. Professor Shore, Juliette,
Speaker 1: really nice to have you with us. Congrats on the book.
Speaker 1: Oh thanks, It's a great pleasure to be here. So
Speaker 1: tell us what inspired this because this really is at
Speaker 1: the heart of so many things that we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: And I feel like we were really on this train
Speaker 1: for the gig economy, and then things started to kind
Speaker 1: of veer off, and heck, here we are in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: It feels like everything's veered off. So tell us how
Speaker 1: you got inspired to do this in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: I was writing a book in two thousand eight nine
Speaker 1: about sort of how we could respond to what at
Speaker 1: that time, of course, was the financial collapse and economic
Speaker 1: problems and the climate crisis. It was really interested in
Speaker 1: ways that people could begin to be more self sufficient.
Speaker 1: De link from jobs. They really didn't want to be
Speaker 1: in corporate you know, kind of rat race jobs. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I started looking at as they
Speaker 1: were just being founded were new sharing economy initiatives, things
Speaker 1: like Airbnb. Originally the ride share companies now now no
Speaker 1: longer really ride share, but um so these things were
Speaker 1: all just getting started. They were being founded just as
Speaker 1: I was writing that book. As soon as I finished
Speaker 1: that book, I started on a research project and I've
Speaker 1: spent the last ten years studying the sort of early
Speaker 1: promise of the gig or what was called the sharing economy,
Speaker 1: and then of course how things developed. So in in
Speaker 1: your research, was there one big takeaway that you learn
Speaker 1: from this, Well, I say there too. I mean the
Speaker 1: first one is that these were This technology that these
Speaker 1: platforms us is really great and it does hold wonderful promise.
Speaker 1: But the platforms came to be they were founded by
Speaker 1: and then investors came in, people who really weren't interested
Speaker 1: in having them achieve all the social benefits um that
Speaker 1: you know, they were promising in the early days, and
Speaker 1: they really just went for market domination, growth and profitability,
Speaker 1: and they kind of commercialized what was originally supposed to
Speaker 1: be a very personal person to person kind of economic structure.
Speaker 1: So that's one takeaway. It's sort of you know, greed,
Speaker 1: greed got the better of these things. Um. But there's
Speaker 1: one other really important finding in our book, which is
Speaker 1: that people who were just using these platforms for extra income,
Speaker 1: what we call supplemental income, mostly had really good experiences
Speaker 1: on them. And whether we're talking Airbnb, ridehals, we looked
Speaker 1: at a lot of task rabbit, which is a kind
Speaker 1: of errands and home home based work platform. People who
Speaker 1: were trying to earn a living on them, we're really
Speaker 1: having to struggle, and you know, many of them were
Speaker 1: earning below the poverty line. We didn't have any of
Speaker 1: those what we call dependent earners who were actually making
Speaker 1: a good living. So one of the problems is that
Speaker 1: more and more people on these platforms are people who
Speaker 1: need to make a living on them, and that's especially
Speaker 1: true in ridehal and food delivery. So the that's another
Speaker 1: really important thing that I think has has gotten lost,
Speaker 1: which is that they're they're really not feasible as jobs.
Speaker 1: And yet of course many you know, they they offer
Speaker 1: themselves as as being able to provide like a real
Speaker 1: income to people especially ride hail food delivery, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. And Juliette, I gotta ask you. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've been doing this research, as you said, really looking
Speaker 1: into this for the better part of a decade, and
Speaker 1: here we get to and I feel like everything gets
Speaker 1: turned upside down, including the gig economy, the sharing economy,
Speaker 1: however you wanted to find it. Every aspect of every
Speaker 1: economy got turned upside down. Absolutely. I mean right hailing collapsed,
Speaker 1: suddenly there was insatiable demand for in store shoppers and delivery. UM.
Speaker 1: The other thing that we're seeing in the interviews we're
Speaker 1: doing is that these workers can't get work anymore because
Speaker 1: the companies have hired so many people. There was a
Speaker 1: story out in Bloomberg today about UM a group of
Speaker 1: delivery workers on Amazon who were positioning phones in trees
Speaker 1: right next to the stores as a way of being
Speaker 1: the first one because that the algorithm picks the closest phones.
Speaker 1: So it's gotten really brutal out there. Our people were
Speaker 1: interviewing or telling us that, you know, other people are
Speaker 1: using bots to snag ships, and so they can't get
Speaker 1: work anymore. So, yes, it's really upended a lot of
Speaker 1: people's lives. The other part of the story is what's
Speaker 1: happened with Uber in California and the idea that the
Speaker 1: drivers for Uber need to be it's been put off,
Speaker 1: but can be classified as workers, so they have to
Speaker 1: get paid things like paid leaven insurance or security, et cetera. Um,
Speaker 1: what do you make of that? I'm have two minds.
Speaker 1: I mean, one is like, we'll do the workers actually
Speaker 1: want to be classified as such if they're just making
Speaker 1: extra income? Or is this a good thing because it's
Speaker 1: sort of moves that develops that industry, matures that industry.
Speaker 1: What's your So the polling will show that most workers
Speaker 1: would like to be independent contractors, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: many of them got into this work because of the
Speaker 1: freedom that it offers. But what's happened is that many
Speaker 1: drivers began to realize that they they were they couldn't
Speaker 1: make it, as I sees, and they sort of reluctantly
Speaker 1: came around to the idea that the only way they're
Speaker 1: going to get a decent income and decent working conditions
Speaker 1: is as UM employees. So the the sort of the
Speaker 1: squeeze that Uber and Littz put on the drivers in California,
Speaker 1: especially Uh, they've they've really been squeezed. I mean, you
Speaker 1: read all these stories of drivers sleeping in their cars
Speaker 1: and they're spending you know, a huge fraction now of
Speaker 1: their time driving around with empty cars. So they they
Speaker 1: came to support this law a B five, which reclassifies
Speaker 1: them as employees. The real rub is is whether the
Speaker 1: companies will continue to give them flexibility if they're if
Speaker 1: they do convert them to employees. It's something that companies
Speaker 1: can do. They're gonna have to tweak the model. They're
Speaker 1: saying it's impossible. Um, but I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1: And of course they're playing hardball. They've they've got a
Speaker 1: two hundred million dollar flush fund to pass a proposition
Speaker 1: overturning the law for them, And um, I have a
Speaker 1: good friend who's being harassed by the pr companies that
Speaker 1: that Uber and Lyft have hired. So it's it's gotten
Speaker 1: into a nasty fight. And so who ultimately can should
Speaker 1: will kind of fix this to some extent, because you
Speaker 1: do say even in the title of your book, we
Speaker 1: can sort of win this back to some extent. Who
Speaker 1: needs to come to the able to figure this out? Well,
Speaker 1: there are two paths to to winning it back. I
Speaker 1: mean one we we have begun to see some fruits
Speaker 1: of and that is the regulatory path. New York put
Speaker 1: in a minimum wage for right held drivers in it
Speaker 1: regulated Airbnb, so it's you know, it's much better in
Speaker 1: in New York they have a after expenses drivers need
Speaker 1: to get seventeen dollars an hour, so that's you know,
Speaker 1: a much more reasonable wage than the sort of seven
Speaker 1: dollars that were five dollars even that some drivers around
Speaker 1: the country are getting after expenses are taken care of. Um.
Speaker 1: So regulation is one thing really important. Also, a lot
Speaker 1: of big workers are joining unions, so that gives another
Speaker 1: sort of counter force to the power of the platform companies.
Speaker 1: But one of the things my research team and I
Speaker 1: studied is is, uh, you know, a little bit more
Speaker 1: out of the box. It's called a platform co opera
Speaker 1: off where the workers actually own the platform, they own
Speaker 1: the technology, and so they're they're not up against management
Speaker 1: or investors. They actually can exploy that technology for themselves.
Speaker 1: And it's the cooperative model works really well here because
Speaker 1: the technology has pretty much innovated away a lot of
Speaker 1: what management normally does. So technology and workers together is
Speaker 1: a pretty efficient outcome, and we studied, we did one
Speaker 1: of the first studies of a platform cooperative and it's
Speaker 1: been really successful. And they're you know, there's just a
Speaker 1: few of them still, but they are popping up in
Speaker 1: house cleaning, there's up and up and glow in New
Speaker 1: York and dr driving bicycle careers are forming coops all
Speaker 1: over Europe and a little bit in North America too.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of like the different type of union,
Speaker 1: non traditional fight big corporation, but it's sort of its
Speaker 1: own independent union. Does that make sense, Yeah, except that
Speaker 1: the work is actually owned the company. I guess like
Speaker 1: the new iteration of this Yeah, absolutely, wow, interesting, interesting,
Speaker 1: what could what's the next sort of catalyst here? I
Speaker 1: feel like we live in a world of catalysts, Like
Speaker 1: what's going to force this issue? Juliette, Well, I do
Speaker 1: think if we get a democratic administration, there's going to
Speaker 1: be some movement on this at the national level because
Speaker 1: the inability of these gig workers. You know, there are
Speaker 1: now more and more of them, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: millions and millions of workers in this country, you know,
Speaker 1: really a growing sector who don't even have access to
Speaker 1: unemployment insurance or health benefits are really you know, basic things.
Speaker 1: So the the the first bill out of Congress to
Speaker 1: deal with Corona, the Cares Act, did set up a
Speaker 1: special fund for these gig workers. So they've they've finally
Speaker 1: gotten a toe hold into federal policy. And I think
Speaker 1: you're gonna see that really expand if you of a
Speaker 1: Democratic administration. All right, well, we will certainly keep an
Speaker 1: eye on this story. Congratulations on an incredibly timely book,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like a long time in the making
Speaker 1: in terms of the research. So just a rich vein
Speaker 1: to mind here and we look forward to keep me
Speaker 1: in touch. In touch. Juliet Shore is professor of sociology
Speaker 1: at Boston College. Her new book appropriately coming out right
Speaker 1: around Labor Day After the Gig, How the sharing economy
Speaker 1: got hijacked and how to win it back.