Platform workers without platforms

• In Event: 30606 - Exploring the Impacts of Platform Work

Abstract

In the gig economy, platform organizations are often critiqued for implementing algorithmic management tools, which not only evaluate work in the absence of human managers, but also optimize extracted data to induce more intensive, flexible ways of working. Thus, the datafication of work can be seen as a uniquely powerful process in allowing platforms to dictate the terms of labor. These critiques of the organization of platform labor assume that workers and platforms have a one-on-one relationship; nevertheless, work on platforms like Airbnb increasingly takes place in more conventional work contexts, as hosting labor is largely carried out by property management companies. Within such organizations, work is coordinated both by the Airbnb platform and human managers, who mediate workers’ relationship to the platform. This arrangement raises questions about how workers engage with the platform and its non-human systems of management in the presence of human managers. Using participant observation data from a case study of one such property management company called SmartStay, I argue that it is the workers without any relationship to the platform, such as cleaners, who are made to work in the most intensive conditions yet have the least agency over their work. In this paper, I highlight three reasons for this; first, SmartStay’s cleaners are dependent on coworkers to relay time-sensitive, platform-derived information, second, they are unable to turn down jobs on the platform, and third, their lack of platform literacy makes it difficult for them to contest human managers’ decisions. Thus, rather than emphasize datafication as a site of precarity, I demonstrate how, the experience of domination can still come from human management. In this way, I show how workers can be abstracted from the platform—as cleaners’ relationship to the platform is entirely mediated by human managers and co-workers who reinterpret and reimagine its values-- and that this distance from the platform makes workers more vulnerable to mistreatment.

Author

• Quinn O'Dowd, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign