Gig economy: An epidemic hits tech’s underclass
The coronavirus epidemic starkly shows the gap between tech’s elite and its underclass, said Julia Carrie Wong in TheGuardian .com. When Google cybersecurity worker Josh Borden arrived at his office last week, “the parking lot was deserted, there was no breakfast being served in the cafeteria, and the nap rooms were tagged with signs announcing their closure ‘as a precaution given the Covid-19 situation.’” So what was Borden doing there? Despite working side by side with colleagues employed directly by Google, Borden is a contractor, one of a vast force of people who “work for, but are not technically employed by, the $830 billion company.” While Google’s own employees can easily work from home, Google doesn’t let its contractors access its systems from outside the office. Borden says the contractors have been “forgotten and abandoned.” Amazon did announce it would provide sick leave for contract employees. “But why did it take a global pandemic” for Amazon to provide this basic benefit?
The tech industry has come to rely on workers who “shoulder most of the risks and costs” while companies “retain most of the control and most of the rewards,” said Emily Guendelsberger in The Washington Post. Tech companies promised that we would be able to trade the “job security and safety net of being an employee for the bigger risks and bigger rewards of selfemployment.” The reality is the gig workers with precarious livelihoods have little choice but to ignore health recommendations.
And the companies turn a blind eye. “It’s not Uber’s problem if drivers get exposed to the coronavirus by passengers.” Small businesses that have been built on the tech giants’ platforms are also at risk, said Erin Griffith in The New York Times. Hosts on sites such as Airbnb and Booking.com “are now feeling the brunt of the coronavirus fallout.” For some, bookings have dropped to zero. While the collapse in travel has hit every part of the business, the people who’ve put rental listings on these platforms “typically have fewer resources to withstand a prolonged slump” than do big hotel companies. “I’ve got to keep paying my mortgage somehow,” says one Airbnb host.
“Pressure is mounting” on gig economy firms to do more to protect their workers, said Kia Kokalitcheva in Axios.com. Last week, Uber “announced it will compensate drivers for up to 14 days if they’re diagnosed with Covid-19 or put under quarantine.” But both workers and companies are reluctant to give up business that has skyrocketed “as the virus spreads.” Instacart said that demands last week for its delivery service rose 10-fold. One other sticking point: Tech companies are wary of providing the kind of benefits that “could make it harder to deny that their workers are employees.”