I am currently working as an external PhD candidate at Utrecht University on my thesis, provisionally titled ‘Essays in the Empowerment of Gig Workers’. Below is a (not yet final) draft of the outline of my thesis.

Digital labour platforms, known for organisations such as Uber, Deliveroo and Amazon Mechanical Turk, are playing an increasingly significant role in matching labour supply and demand within ever more fragmented labour markets. Globally, the World Bank estimated the number of platform workers to be between 154 and 435 million in 2023. This amounts to approximately 4.4% to 12.5% of the global labour force (Datta et al., 2023). These platforms succeed in efficiently connecting workers with clients and facilitating the transaction. At the same time, as ‘private regulators’, they determine the conditions for workers regarding, amongst other things, access, allocation, content, execution, pricing and evaluation, often by using algorithms. This fragmentation, combined with automation and the use of algorithms, contributes to a growing information asymmetry between workers, their representatives, and clients and employers, whilst the dominant position of platform companies increases.

Although platform work is often presented as an umbrella term, the landscape of platform work and the extent of its impact on work are diverse. Moreover, platform work is embedded in broader societal and academic discussions concerning precariousness, types of contract, decent pay, worker participation and the impact of automation on the labour market. This makes it clear that there are no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions.

This thesis examines various potential solutions that could help improve the position of platform workers in relation to the platforms on which they depend for access to, and the conditions of, work.

In the first part, I examine how existing instruments and structures on the labour market can be utilised to improve the position of workers. In doing so, I first examine contractual status, asking to what extent platform work can also be organised within the framework of an employment contract. This reveals that, in many cases, platform work can be effectively organised through a (temporary agency) employment contract, but that this makes only a limited contribution to workers’ security and the platform company’s accountability. It is also noted that fully-fledged employment is not a realistic scenario in some markets, particularly in the Majority World. As a tool for calculating a minimum rate for workers, regardless of contract type, I then present the ‘Living Tariff’ – a methodology for calculating a minimum rate for self-employed workers based on the cost of living, which builds on the widely recognised Living Wage.

In the second part, I examine how platform technology itself can be utilised in the labour market to improve the position of workers. I begin with an investigation into data portability, first examining the extent to which workers would wish to take their data with them should a platform offer this functionality, and then exploring how a successful ‘data portability scheme’ might be developed. The second angle I examine in this second part is the question of how platforms, which operate as central hubs within fragmented markets, can be used as a tool to connect workers with one another and to link workers with their representatives. I do this in response to Article 20 of the European Platform Work Directive, presenting a design for a public platform with APIs that platform companies would be obliged to use.

Finally, I examine how platform workers themselves can take control of ownership and governance. I do this by first investigating the success factors of platform cooperatives and the sectors in which they could be viable. To conclude, I take a broader view of how co-operatives and shared ownership can be implemented by platforms as an ‘exit by design’ strategy to safeguard users’ interests in the long term.