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Transnational, European, and National Labour Relations pp 59–71Cite as

Making a Living in the ‘Gig’ Economy: Last Resort or a Reliable Alternative?

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Part of the book series: Europeanization and Globalization ((EAG,volume 4))

Abstract

Modern work arrangements in the collaborative or ‘gig’ economy challenge and redefine traditional work patterns. Extensive scholarly writings in the last years have been dedicated to revealing the true nature and implications of such work, and this topic is a matter of heated debates. However, empirical research on the prevalence of ‘gig’ work is still relatively scarce and not reliable enough to reach any definite conclusions or provide prospective outlooks. This contribution does not aspire to analyse all open issues associated with the work in the ‘gig’ economy but instead attempts to bring only the most pressing issues to the forefront.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Flexibility of labour relations has become an inevitable topic in labour law academic circles since 1980s. The authors have also dedicated substantial amount of research and published several papers on this topic.

  2. 2.

    See, e.g., Davies and Freedland (2007); McCann (2008), p. 4.

  3. 3.

    “Workers are provided “just-in-time” and compensated on a “pay-as-you-go” basis; in practice, they are only paid during the moments they actually work for a client.” See De Stefano (2016a), p. 476.

  4. 4.

    The authors of this contribution have analysed aspects of precarious work in their previous works, most recently in Bodiroga-Vukobrat et al. (2016).

  5. 5.

    Prassl (2015).

  6. 6.

    Eurofound (2017), pp. 23–25. The authors of the report highlight that the most reliable estimate is from the UK in 2016, where 4% of employed people performed such work, 25% of which reports this type of work as their main job. For further estimates see Smith and Leberstein (2015) and Katz and Krueger (2016).

  7. 7.

    Huws et al. (2016). The same survey revealed that crowd work is generally only a small supplement to total income of a person, with 45% respondents stating that it represents 10% or less of their income.

  8. 8.

    Just 14% of people engaged in the gig economy because they could not get traditional jobs with employers. See CIPD (2017).

  9. 9.

    The ILO uses “non-standard employment” as an umbrella term which groups together distinct forms of work contracts that deviate from the standard employment relationship definition. See ILO (2016), p. 20. This definition distinguishes between salaried employment and self-employment, which does not strictly fall under the category of ‘non-standard work’. Similarly, the European Commission refers to non-standard work as including temporary work, part-time work or contractual arrangements involving multiple parties. European Commission (2016), pp. 87, 164. OECD, on the other hand includes self-employment (own-account workers) under the term non-standard work. See OECD (2015), p. 138.

  10. 10.

    ILO (2016), p. 8.

  11. 11.

    ILO (2016).

  12. 12.

    ILO (2016), p. 39.

  13. 13.

    ILO (2016), p. 40.

  14. 14.

    ILO (2016), p. 40.

  15. 15.

    ILO (2016), p. 40.

  16. 16.

    De Stefano (2016b).

  17. 17.

    De Stefano (2016b), p. 462; Aloisi (2016), p. 661. Some authors include both types of work arrangements under the common denominator “crowdwork” or “crowdsourcing of labour”. See Prassl and Risak (2016), pp. 623–624; Huws et al. (2016). Majority, however, agrees that work over crowdsourcing websites has to be distinguished from work on-demand via app over Uber-like online platforms. See e.g. Ratti (2017), p. 479. See also ILO (2016).

  18. 18.

    De Stefano (2016a), p. 478.

  19. 19.

    According to them, the phenomenon customarily labelled as ‘atypical employment’ “…now looms so large that it can no longer satisfactorily be described in the language of marginality or exceptionality”. See Albin and Prassl (2016), p. 209.

  20. 20.

    See, for example, Freedland (2016), p. 4.

  21. 21.

    In Croatia, for example, employee or a worker is a natural person who performs work for an employer. Employer is a natural or legal person who employs an employee (worker) and for whom worker performs certain tasks in an employment relationship. See Article 4 (1) and (2) of the Labour Act (Official Gazette Narodne novine no. 93/2014).

  22. 22.

    Casale (2011), p. 3.

  23. 23.

    European Commission (2015a), p. 3.

  24. 24.

    European Commission (2015b), p. 1.

  25. 25.

    A deeper and fairer Single Market: Commission boosts opportunities for citizens and business, Brussels, 28 October 2015, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-5909_en.htm.

  26. 26.

    European Commission (2011).

  27. 27.

    European Commission (2012).

  28. 28.

    European Commission (2012).

  29. 29.

    European Commission (2015b).

  30. 30.

    Rifkin (2014).

  31. 31.

    What do you know about peer-to-peer or sharing economy?, http://www.certusrecruitment.com/news/what-do-you-know-about-the-peer-to-peer-or-sharing-economy-62451134438.

  32. 32.

    European Commission (2015b).

  33. 33.

    PwC (2015).

  34. 34.

    European Commission (2015a), p. 7.

  35. 35.

    See e.g. ING International Survey (2015).

  36. 36.

    Nielsen Global Survey of Share Communities (2014).

  37. 37.

    European Commission (2015c).

  38. 38.

    European Commission (2015a), pp. 5–6.

  39. 39.

    The case of ‘Uber’ is very illustrative for this example.

  40. 40.

    European Commission (2015a), p. 6.

  41. 41.

    European Commission (2015b).

  42. 42.

    See “In the sharing economy, workers find both freedom and uncertainty”, NY Times, 16 Aug 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/technology/in-the-sharing-economy-workers-find-both-freedom-and-uncertainty.html.

  43. 43.

    See e.g. “Uberification of the US Service Economy”, https://schlaf.me/2014/04/04/uberification-of-the-us-service-economy/; “Apple Pay’s Real Killer App: The Uber-ification of Local Services”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-boland/apple-pays-real-killer-ap_b_6233828.html.

  44. 44.

    Aloisi (2016), p. 670.

  45. 45.

    One of the most recent cases involves the recognition of the status of workers to Uber drivers in the United Kingdom (Aslam and others v Uber, Case Nos. 2202551/2015 & others, Judgment of 28 October 2016).

  46. 46.

    See, e.g. Case C-434/15, Asociación Profesional Elite Taxi v Uber Systems Spain SL pending before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

  47. 47.

    A phrase ascribed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the occasion of presenting Amazon Mechanical Turk in 2006: “You’ve heard of software-as-a-service. Now this is human-as-a-service.” See Irani and Six Silberman (2013).

  48. 48.

    Aloisi (2016), p. 683.

  49. 49.

    See Huws (2003, 2014).

  50. 50.

    On a proposal to develop a separate category of ‘independent workers’ see Harris and Krueger (2015).

  51. 51.

    For example zero-hours contracts in the UK, see https://www.gov.uk/contract-types-and-employer-responsibilities.

  52. 52.

    See ILO (2016), p. 11; Spasova et al. (2017), p. 7.

  53. 53.

    CIPD (2017), p. 21.

  54. 54.

    Eurofound (2017), p. 14.

  55. 55.

    Eurofound (2017), p. 14.

  56. 56.

    BBC News, 6 Nov 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34733862.

  57. 57.

    Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations 1776; see “The ‘gig economy’ is coming. What will it mean for work?”, The Guardian 26 Jul 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/26/will-we-get-by-gig-economy.

  58. 58.

    Kuttner (2013).

  59. 59.

    Finkin (2016), p. 617.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, Department of EU Public Law, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia

    Nada Bodiroga-Vukobrat, Ana Pošćić & Adrijana Martinović

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  1. Nada Bodiroga-Vukobrat
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  2. Ana Pošćić
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  3. Adrijana Martinović
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Correspondence to Nada Bodiroga-Vukobrat .

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  1. Hochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung und Finanzen Ludwigsburg, University of Applied Sciences, Ludwigsburg, Germany

    Gerald G. Sander

  2. General Court of EU, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

    Vesna Tomljenović

  3. Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia

    Nada Bodiroga-Vukobrat

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Bodiroga-Vukobrat, N., Pošćić, A., Martinović, A. (2018). Making a Living in the ‘Gig’ Economy: Last Resort or a Reliable Alternative?. In: Sander, G., Tomljenović, V., Bodiroga-Vukobrat, N. (eds) Transnational, European, and National Labour Relations. Europeanization and Globalization, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02219-2_4

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