soc of work 2 Flashcards

Question

link between political inequal and econ inequal

Answer 1

When political power increases, economic power often increases in turn And vice versa

Answer 2

● 8 hour workday ● 5 day workweek ● Collective bargaining ● Employee healthcare ● Pensions ● Minimum wage ● Severance (payment after job ends)

Answer 3

One-off jobs, outside an organization or a long-term labor contract

Answer 4

An infrastructure connecting workers, consumers, and companies (often digital but doesnt have to be)

Answer 5

● Does not inherently require a casualization of labor ● But companies often argue that they are not “employers” ○ simply a platform connecting two parties, that they are not organizing the work ○ Legal argument is that the gig workers are independent contractor ○ Allows companies to avoid legal responsibilities... ○ Escaping labor law? NOT EMPLOYERS, NOT ORGANIZING, NO LEGAL RESPONSIBILITIES, YES PLATFORM, YES GIG WORKERS INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR,

Answer 6

Not general, some recent efforts have been made

Answer 7

● No Politics ● No Oversight of boses ● No or low Emotional labor ● More Temporal freedom ● You can sell a Smaller unit of your labor

Answer 8

● No social contract that working on the platform will actually allow you to make a LIVING WAGE ○ To afford health insurance, etc.

Answer 9

○ Because of temporal flexibility, the worker may also be doing other work ■ Series of one-off transactions BUT PRECARITY: ■ No guarantee of the NEXT TRANSACTION ■ No guarantee the WAGE WILL SUSTAIN them

Answer 10

gig worker still needs to generate enough income to sustain themselves - so how are they going to do it: ○ multiple income streams ○ from other employment

Answer 11

○ Leads to overwork, very long hours ○ Exploitation is still hard to measure because hours are very intermingled

Answer 12

○ You have the freedom to sign into the app or not ○ Freedom to sell your labor in smaller chunks ○ But you also still HAVE to make money ■ Companies are in an advantageous position ■ And that is exploitable ● Gig workers still are producing more value ○ getting paid less than cost of the service they are providing ○ if the workers were contesting their rights: they may fight to get larger percentage of the fee charged for their services

Answer 13

● Tight surveillance of location, time for delivery, number of orders/customers ● The movements and actions of platform-based gig workers are very surveilled

Answer 14

1- The app itself (possibility of being demoted, highly centralized- data gathered all over world via platform to headquarters, workers separated from each other (diff to establish solidarity bec conditions of others are unknown), surveillance is CONSTANT AND UNVERIFIABLE, depersonalized (algo control- inhuman), machine controls actions, makes grievances extremely difficult to process DEMOTED, HIGHLY CENTRALIZED, WORKERS SEPARATED, SURVEILLANCE CONSTANT AND UNVERIFIABLE, DEPERSONALIZED, MACHINE CONTROLS ACTIONS, GRIEVANCES HARD TO PROCESS 2- customer ratings hold power over remuneration of gig workers (ratings are decisive, workers fear 1 stars): Capricious & Mercurial, Unreasonable people, Job prospects can be damaged by factors completely outside the worker’s control, Human-to-human politics that influence the worker’s experiences (There are orders coming from the app and the customers which may conflict and lead to tricky situation) Capricious & Mercurial, outside of workers control, human to human politics- conflicting demands

Answer 15

Algorithmically controlled orders ○ “Good orders” and “bad orders” ○ past actions of workers affects the future orders received ○ Pressure to keep taking a lot of orders to get “good” orders

soc of work 2 Flashcards

(39 cards)