Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy

Amazon.com Price: $27.06 (as of 11/10/2019 13:24 PST- Details)

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Description

The crowdsourcing of work – the ‘gig economy’ – has been hailed as a ‘sharing’ revolution, enabling ‘micro-entrepreneurs’ to enjoy greater autonomy and flexibility in taking on ‘gigs’, ‘rides’, or ‘tasks’, even as customers get pleasure from the ease, convenience, and affordability of ‘work on demand’. Is this the way forward for work? What are the benefits and challenges of crowdsourced work? Is the gig economy fundamentally different to existing models of work and will have to it be kept outside the scope of employment law, as many platforms claim?

Humans as a Service offers an engaging and critical account of the gig economy. It charts the industry’s dramatic growth, explores the diverse platforms that comprise it, and describes how they operate. In scrutinising the competing narratives about ‘gig’ work, the book demonstrates the importance of language: how claims of ‘disruptive innovation’ and ‘micro-entrepreneurship’ incessantly obscure the realities of highly precarious work and the strict algorithmic surveillance and keep watch over to which workers are subject. And yet, far from being radically new, the book shows that the gig economy is but the up to date (and perhaps most extreme) example of labour market practices that have existed for centuries. Turning to how the law will have to respond to the on-demand economy, it argues that regulators can and will have to bring this work within the scope of employment law, adapting existing norms where necessary, in order to give protection to both customers and workers. In any case, it explores the wider implications of the gig economy for markets and consumers, assessing oppprtunities and challenges – if this is the way forward for work, how can it be made sustainable?

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