Who Bears the Burden of a Pandemic? Covid-19 and the Transfer of Risk to Digital Platform Workers

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3758596
AutoresP Tubaro (0000-0002-1215-9145, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, autor de correspondencia), Antonio A Casilli (0000-0003-2025-1627, SID-SES Department, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3), Telecom Paris /Polytechnic Institute of Paris, Paris, France)
Año2024
Volumen68
Número8
Páginas961-982
Fecha de publicación2024-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00027642211066027
OpenAlexW3205682931
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas33

In this paper, we analyze the recessionary effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital platform workers. The crisis has been described as a great work-from-home experiment, with platform ecosystems presenting as its most advanced form. Our analysis differentiates the direct (health) and indirect (economic) risks incurred by workers in order to critically assess the portrayal of platforms as buffers against crisis-induced layoffs. We submit that platform-mediated labor may eventually increase precarity, without necessarily reducing health risks for workers. Our argument is based on a comparison of the three main categories of platform work-"on-demand labor" (gigs such as delivery and transportation), "online labor" (tasks performed remotely, such as data annotation), and "social networking labor" (content generation and moderation). We discuss the strategies that platforms deploy to transfer risk from clients onto workers, thus deepening existing power imbalances between them. These results question the problematic equivalence between work-from-home and platform labor. Instead of attaining the advantages of the former in terms of direct and indirect risk mitigation, an increasing number of platformized jobs drift toward high economic and insuppressible health risks

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Business · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) · Disease · Environmental health · Geography · Outbreak · Pandemic · Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Employment and Welfare Studies · Medicine · Sharing Economy and Platforms · Virology