Gig Economy and Processes of Information, Consultation, Participation and Collective Bargaining"
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Paper on the European Union co-funded project VS/2019/0040 "Gig economy and processes of information, consultation, participation and collective bargaining". By Davide Dazzi (translation from Italian to English by Federico Tani) Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 2 Gig Economy: a defining framework ................................................................................................................. 2 GIG workers: a quantitative dimension ............................................................................................................. 6 On line outsourcing ........................................................................................................................................ 7 Working conditions of GIG workers ................................................................................................................ 10 E-commerce in Europe ..................................................................................................................................... 15 An overview of the extension and expansion of e-commerce ..................................................................... 15 E-commerce strategies ................................................................................................................................ 17 Pure players ............................................................................................................................................. 17 Traditional retailers ................................................................................................................................. 19 A gallery of platforms: trends .......................................................................................................................... 21 Food delivery................................................................................................................................................ 21 Food delivery platforms and business models ........................................................................................ 24 Final Remarks .......................................................................................................................................... 29 Household services: online housework ........................................................................................................ 31 Household services platforms ................................................................................................................. 33 Digital tourism ............................................................................................................................................. 36 P2P accommodations .............................................................................................................................. 38 Platforms and digitalisation in the tourism supply chain: some experiences ......................................... 41 Gig Economy and industrial relations .............................................................................................................. 45 1 Introduction Gig Economy: a defining framework Digitalization is changing, and has now changed, economic and social processes, and the definition webplatform capitalism probably appears to be the most appropriate to interpret the transformations taking place1 because it does not necessarily imply a discontinuity with capitalist transformations and indicates the appearance on the market of a new type of enterprise as a "hybrid between a market and a hierarchical organization".2 Platform capitalism therefore represents a transformation of capitalism whose destination takes on trajectories that are not yet fully understood, swaying between optimistic and pessimistic perspectives. While behind the emergence of the sharing economy one could get a glimpse of post-capitalist scenarios, we have nevertheless reached a very distant reality of "work without workers"3 and a change in future scenarios, from a jobless future to a bossless future4. As a capitalist form, platforms express an extractive drive5 in the process of enhancing value not only of activities that are usually part of the informal economy, such as food delivery or short-term renting, but also of data,6 the new raw material from which to extract value7. In an increasingly digital society, data becomes more and more valuable not only in a strictly commercial sphere but also in an organisational-political one, and its collection, management and sale becomes a strategic market. Platforms are in fact configured as two-sided markets where platforms do not directly offer the services sought by the consumer/user/ but create the conditions for the transaction to take place.8 In this way it is also understood how platforms offer services at a loss, or free of charge, with the sole purpose of having access to user profiles and the collection of information giving rise to a trade union saying "when the price is too low you are the product". The monopoly of the network, or the monopolistic trend, becomes a forced way of strategic positioning because the more users the platform has, the more it gains economic value and positions in the market: what is known as the network effect9. Although there are different classifications of platforms and different classification criteria, there is a general convergence on the meaning of platform, i.e. a digital infrastructure that allows two or more groups to interact, thus giving rise to an activity of online intermediation. Digital environments that allow to integrate production processes in new forms, to organize management processes. Virtual spaces governed by algorithms, the so-called invisible engines, in which the transaction costs - which represent the theoretical and economic presupposition of the very existence of the concept of company as a preferable alternative to free market exchange - are substantially reduced to zero favouring their attractiveness in practically all 1 Garibaldo F. Il capitalismo delle piattaforme, in Somma A. (by) Lavoro alla spina, welfare à la carte – Lavoro e Stato Sociale ai tempi della Gig Economy, Maltemi, Milano, 2019 2 Sundararajan A., The Sharing Econoy. The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd Based Capitalism, Mit Press, London 2016, p.54 3 Referring to how Friedman G. describes the Gig Economy in “Workers without employers: Shadow Corporations and the Rise of the Gig Economy, in Review of Keynesian Economics, n. 2, 2014, pp 171 4 Isabelle Daugareilh, Christophe Degryse and Philippe Pochet (eds) The platform economy and social law : Key issues in comparative perspective, Working Paper 2019.10, ETUI, Brusseles 5 Marrone M. Gig Economy e sindacalismo informale, in Somma A. (by) Lavoro alla spina, welfare à la carte – Lavoro e Stato Sociale ai tempi della Gig Economy, Maltemi, Milano, 2019 6 N. Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2017 7 Paul Mason, Post-Capitalismo, il Saggiatore, 2016 8 Cattero B., Oltre i confini della contrattazione collettiva? in Quaderni di Rassegna sindacale 4, Ediesse, Roma, 2018 9 Parker, Geoffrey & Van Alstyne, Marshall. (2005). Two-Sided Network Effects: A Theory of Information Product Design. Management Science. 51. 1494-1504. 10.1287/mnsc.1050.0400. 2 sectors. Although formally companies and platforms act and are comparable to a market where the main product is not so much the service itself but the reduction of transaction costs.10 There is no common vocabulary among the EU member states in the semantic sphere that can be traced back to platform capitalism. The Dublin Foundation tried in 201811 to sort out the different definitions and the use and meaning of the same term in different national contexts. Generally speaking, the term sharing economy or platform economy takes on a broader meaning than that of platform work, since the former usually includes platforms for the exchange of goods or services without any monetary exchange, while the latter usually also includes those platforms for financial services and housing. Gig Economy, or the economy made of small side jobs, is the most used term in Anglo-Saxon countries and includes on location, app-based and on-demand services while in Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands the term refers more to physical tasks (such as domestic work or riders). Chart 1 – European map of terms used for platform work Fonte: Eurofound, 2018 In Italy, moreover, the term Gig Economy has a negative connotation as it is often associated with precariousness as well as in Finland, Germany, and to a lesser extent in Austria, where Gig Economy refers to precarious jobs, discontinuous and not necessarily performed through an online platform. It is interesting to observe how in Poland the concept of platform work, precisely because it is less widespread and known, is often associated with distance work, externalizations, outsourcing, freelance and self-employment, while 10 Del Prato F., Stagnaro C., Take it easy, rider! Perché la flessibilità dei lavoretti è un valore e non un limite, briefing paper, n. 167, Istituto Bruno Leoni, Torino, 2018 11 Eurofound, Employment and working conditions of selected types of platform work, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2018 3 the Finnish trade union SAK has opted for the term platform economy and has invited its members to adopt it, trying to define it from above. The term Gig Economy