Voices for Social Justice in the Gig Economy: Where Labor, Policy, Technology, and Activism Converge

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Proposal

Abstract

The “gig economy”-- the colloquial name for the constellation of app-based services that contract contingent, “on-demand” labor-- is situated at the nexus of transformations in communication technology, economics, and culture. As a global phenomenon, it is being embraced and challenged in a variety of ways in different countries by workers, labor movements, governments, and consumers. This roundtable brings together scholars examining the experience of and resistance to exploitative aspects of the gig economy with a range of expertise in the communication discipline (critical/cultural, feminist, labor, policy, and technology studies), employing multiple methodologies (ethnography, history, discourse analysis, community-based participatory research) in a variety national contexts. We consider how union organizing, policy activism, and online communities enable movements that resist the social injustices of digital capitalism and seek to empower workers to grapple with the impacts of automation, surveillance, overwork, and precarity.

The five speakers on this panel map the political economy of gig labor—how it is structured, regulated and experienced— and discuss how workers are resisting exploitation and seeking social justice. Laura Forlano discusses media representations of the gig economy and the future of work that eliminate labor all together. Applying theories from communications, design, and feminist technoscience to a year-long study of local manufacturing in Chicago, Forlano discusses design interventions that integrate local initiatives with voices from social justice organizations to re-imagine an economy that advances economic justice and environmentally sustainability. Drawing on interviews with Uber and taxi drivers and participant observation in Philadelphia, Todd Wolfson highlights different forms of worker consciousness that emerge from doing similar work under different conditions. Michelle Rodino-Colocino discusses how interviews of retail workers, “app-based” drivers, union organizers and policy makers demontrate resistance to exploitative aspects of algorithmic labor management. Brian Dolber highlights how Uber drivers, AirBnB hosts, and hotel workers are being mobilized by opposing sides in debates over regulation in the U.S. and Ireland. Drawing on surveys and interviews with crowd workers and new bodies representing them in seven European countries, Ursula Huws discusses gig labor and an emerging common platform of demands that unites gig workers with traditional employees.

Thus, our roundtable explores how “gig” work is transforming worker consciousness and forging new platforms for isolated workers to form solidarity with each other. We welcome attendees to participate in this conversation and invite scholars to become activists in the struggle to make work a socially just endeavor.

Sub Unit

• Activism, Communication & Social Justice

Chair

• Michelle Rodino-Colocino

Respondents

• Brian Dolber, California State U - San Marcos

• Laura Forlano, Illinois Institute of Technology

• Ursula Huws, U of Hertfordshire Business School

• Todd Wolfson, Rutgers SC&I