Tag: Gig-Economy
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Amazon Is a 21st-Century Digital Chain Gang
When Amazon announced plans to locate a $5-billion, 50,000-employee complex as its second headquarters somewhere in North America, state governments and municipalities fell over themselves offering billions of dollars in tax abatements and corporate subsidies to secure the prize. Keep reading »
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Workers are the Heart of the Algorithm
Antonio Casilli, a professor at Télécom ParisTech, is considered one of the leading experts in the capitalism of digital platforms. He was interviewed by Roberto Ciccarelli.
“We are the ones who make the robots, with our own labour,” he says. “We make the criteria according to which they operate. And then we teach them to learn how to improve. The problem is not that robots are stealing our work, but that we continue to work more and more, and that the platforms are fragmenting and rendering invisible the labour that is necessary to make the algorithms work.“ Keep reading »
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Unions and the Gig-Economy: The Case of AirBnB
The so-called gig-economy is celebrated, maligned, fetishized, and qualified by analysts. Whether it is called the collaborative, platform, crowd-sourcing, or sharing-economy, the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges does raise important questions … Keep reading »
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Corbyn’s Manifesto on Digital Democracy
Technological advancements have transformed our daily lives, and politics is changing too. The issues may not change that much – people want decent housing and decent jobs, they want access … Keep reading »
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Neoliberalism’s World of Corruption
The Panama Papers’ revelations about the rich and powerful hiding untold billions in ‘offshore’ tax havens may be shocking, but it’s hardly a surprise to anyone who knows the first … Keep reading »
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Two Essays on the Uber-Taxi Wars
Uber and the Luddites Michael Rozworksi The fight against the sharing economy, and Uber in particular, can be disorienting. Opposition is often painted as techno-phobia. The good guys in this story are … Keep reading »
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Work Overload: Time for a Union Strategy
Talk to workers in any sector, in any workplace and sooner or later they’ll get to their frustrations with their ever-increasing workloads: ‘I’m struggling’, they’ll lament to fellow workers or … Keep reading »