Games, Gigs, and Automobiles: Power Dynamics and Labor Control in the Gig Economy

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Abstract

Sociologists and scholars of labor studies have long been interested in questions of labor control. Early ethnographic accounts show how workers strategize to thwart managerial efforts to micromanage their labor process, and historical accounts trace how Tayloristic practices like deskilling made workers replaceable and shifted power towards management. Research has also shown how workers engage in “shop floor games” to maintain a sense of themselves as autonomous, or even to foil managerial attempts at control. Power disputes between workers and managers have long been central to the study of work, which raises new questions for labor scholars as the “gig economy” becomes an ever more entrenched facet of the labor market landscape. This paper asks how workers negotiate a sense of themselves as autonomous and powerful in the context of the gig economy, drawing on 50 in-depth interviews with individuals who work as rideshare drivers in a major Midwestern city. Findings show that rideshare drivers engage in forms of game-playing to provide structure to their workday and to maintain a sense of control and autonomy. Rideshare drivers engage in two forms of game-playing: “structure games,” which provide a sense of organization to the workday; and “comfort games,” which create a sense of control over an otherwise unpredictable labor process. These “games” function to provide workers with economic rewards in the forms of better ratings and higher tips, as well as the psychological rewards in the forms of mitigated anxiety surrounding the unstable nature of gig work and a greater sense of autonomy and control over their own labor and effort.

Author

• Laurie Ann Michaels, The Ohio State University