This gig paints a bleak future for jobs
The “gig economy” is a relatively new phenomenon and, if we are to believe tech CEOs’ hype, we should all be embracing a work world defined by freedom and flexibility, with financial independence always just an app away.
The reality for workers who drive for Uber or perform tasks for Fiverr, of course, is another story.
And this is the story told by Sarah Kessler in “Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work.”
The Silicon Valley reporter has been covering the gig economy since its inception in 2013, tracking the rise of appbased startups, which do away with employees — and benefits and, often, legal responsibilities — by utilizing the independent contractor model.
Treating each worker as his or her own microbusiness has not, Kessler suggests, led to freedom and flexibility at all.
Rather, as critics in the book point out, it has supported a massive transfer of wealth from front-line workers to tech entrepreneurs’ pockets.
(So much so that a 2015 analysis by Fortune found if Uber were forced to reclassify its drivers as employees, it would cost the company an extra $4.1 billion a year.)
Not surprisingly, the world of the temporary jobs painted in “Gigged” is a bleak one.
Whether it’s Uber or Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s crowdsourced task marketplace, wages are low, job security is nonexistent and workers shoulder enormous risk as they ride the waves of the market, with no buffers against illness, injury, aging or mistreatment.
(It’s small wonder, as Kessler points out, that a 2015 Federal Reserve report found 47 per cent of Americans could not cover an unexpected $400 expense with savings or their credit card.)
For some highly skilled players, such as computer programmers, Kessler concedes the gig economy can be beneficial.
But for the rest?
Not so much.