Hustle and Gig Read online

  In many apps, such as Airbnb and Uber, the worker can also provide a rating for the employer. But as I discuss in later chapters, workers—who are intimately familiar with the often-damaging implications of a four-out-of-five rating as opposed to a five-out-of-five—rarely give low scores. Additionally, as service providers, although they may prefer to not work with an employer with a low score, there will always be someone who needs the income enough to risk it. A low rating has a much bigger effect on a worker than an employer.

  Although I approached interviews with some general questions (available in the appendix), the interviews were participant driven and averaged two hours, with some exceeding three hours. For most workers, the interview was the second, third, or even fifth time that I had seen them. Instead of creating the power imbalance usually found in the worker-employer interaction, I made it clear that I was relying on them as experts; interviews were often done over lunch or at cafes where I provided snacks. Even with my attempts to build rapport, many of the stories presented in these pages didn’t come up until well into the interview. These are not the stories that workers bring up in a fifteen- or twenty-minute interaction.

  While I used a survey to obtain basic demographic information, qualitative interviews allow for more detail. Interviews allow for follow-up questions and clarifications, such asking why something happened or how it made someone feel. And the participant-driven model enabled respondents to branch off into tangential stories that often became theoretically rich data. It was these tangents that first brought the issues of sexual harassment (chapter 5) and crime (chapter 6) to my attention.

  PLAN FOR THE BOOK

  In chapter 2, I provide a background on the sharing economy and an overview of the four platforms I studied: Airbnb, Uber, TaskRabbit, and Kitchensurfing. I discuss participant recruitment and worker demographics in more detail and frame my research within the larger literature available to date on the sharing economy.

  In chapters 3 and 4, I address the lived experience of the workers and the dangers that result from the gig economy’s shifting of risk and liability as part of a larger casualization of labor.31 I focus on the past by describing how the gig economy resembles the industrial age, in which workers worked long hours in a piecemeal system, workplace safety was nonexistent, and there were few options for redress for injustices. I outline how the gig economy’s lack of responsibility for workers results in an effective destruction of Occupational Safety and Health Administration protections and worker’s compensation as workers clean ponds and remove construction dust with their bare hands, get bitten by dogs, and experience on-the-job injuries for which they have no financial recourse.

  Although the workplace protections dealing with safety and the right to unionize date back to the early industrial age and the beginning of the 1900s, American protections against sexual harassment are a direct outcropping of second-wave feminism and the current #MeToo movement. Yet even the latest workplace policies are no match for the sharing economy’s bulldozing of workplace protections. Chapter 5 examines sexual harassment in the sharing economy and how the egalitarianism of peer-to-peer employment results in the loss of political language as workers “explain away” sexual harassment.

  In chapter 6, I explore the shady underbelly of the sharing economy through stories of workers who find themselves engaging in illegal or at least legally questionable activities as part of their sharing economy work. I argue that the anonymity of the sharing economy can make it easier to source otherwise law-abiding workers for drug deliveries and can lead to unsuspecting workers involved in various scams. In many ways, the gig economy creates a new future for criminal activity even as it rolls back worker protections.

  Finally, in chapter 7, I discuss gig economy workers whose higher skills and capital give them many more choices in the sharing economy: successful Airbnb hosts and Kitchensurfing chefs. I found that workers on these two platforms were much more likely to view themselves as entrepreneurs and to take advantage of the outsourcing opportunities of the gig economy to hire others. By juxtaposing the stories of those who are thriving with those who are barely surviving, I highlight the role of capital and skills in the gig economy.

  My concluding chapter provides interviews with the leaders of services who are working to change the sharing economy status quo by paying their workers a living wage and providing benefits and workplace protections. I also provide policy recommendations on how to best address the differing challenges experienced by Strugglers, Strivers, and Success Stories.

  In the debate between capitalism and community, the experience of gig workers often gets lost along the way. Workers’ stories suggest that while the sharing economy offers a select few an opportunity to manage a small business, the experiences of many others are decidedly less pleasant. In many ways, the sharing economy is the millennial’s version of the minimum-wage, precarious work that Barbara Ehrenreich detailed in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.32 Workers are underpaid, they’re subject to capricious policies, and ultimately, they are expendable. Studying the experiences of workers in the sharing economy—and the different challenges encountered by Strugglers, Strivers, and Success Stories—can provide a better understanding of the costs, benefits, and societal impact of this new economic movement and help us create a new narrative rather than an equally exploitative sequel.

  2

  What Is the Sharing Economy?

  Be Your Own Boss. Make $7,000 in December, Guaranteed.

  —Uber

  Find jobs you love. At rates you choose. Make a schedule that fits your life.

  —TaskRabbit

  Airbnb provides supplemental income for tens of thousands of New Yorkers.

  —Airbnb

  Mimic a restaurant experience . . . without all of the chaos and uncertainty that inevitably comes with running a NYC kitchen.

  —Kitchensurfing

  We’ve probably all daydreamed about quitting our jobs to pursue our passion: to open a cupcake shop, pursue novel-writing full time, or simply lead guided tours through exotic locales. For many of us, that daydream is a refuge from daily stresses and pressures.

  But there’s a new economic game in town that promises to place the dream of setting one’s own hours, being one’s own boss, and deciding one’s own paycheck in the hands of ordinary Americans. These companies comprise the sharing economy and include such services as Airbnb, Uber, TaskRabbit, Etsy, and Kitchensurfing.

  Sharing economy is a catchall term for “‘peer-to-peer’ firms that connect people for the purposes of distributing, sharing, and reusing goods and services.”1 The concept encompasses everything from multibillion-dollar companies such as Airbnb (room rental) and Uber (on-call taxi service) to free durable-goods-sharing sites such as Neighborgoods. Definitions of the field vary and often seem arbitrary: Airbnb is seen as the epitome of the sharing economy, but traditional bed-and-breakfasts are not. eBay, the online marketplace of essentially everything, is hailed as an early founder, but free local libraries and parks are not—even though libraries involve sharing and eBay requires payment. Juliet Schor, a preeminent researcher in the field, notes that definitions of the sharing economy tend to be “pragmatic, rather than analytical: self-definition by the platforms and the press defines who is in and who is out.”2

  After the Great Recession in 2009, there was increased attention on utilizing unused assets for economic gain, with particular focus on “durable goods, such as lawn mowers, tools, or expensive equipment for specialized uses.”3 These efforts, although often compared to Zipcar (the hourly car rental service, which was an early entrant in the sharing economy),4 are perhaps most similar to the tool libraries that had developed decades earlier in low-income communities. Much like the tool libraries, most of the free websites that originally comprised the sharing economy are now defunct: Snapgoods, Neighborrow, Crowd Rent, and Share Some Sugar.5 The somewhat better-known Neighborgoods lingers, but only as the pet project of an investor; among i
ts forty-two thousand members, only ten thousand users are active.6

  The technological version of the sharing economy, also described interchangeably as connected consumption, collaborative consumption, or the gig economy, is often dated back to the 1995 inventions of Craigslist by Craig Newmark and PayPal by Pierre Omidyar.7 Later contributory organizations included the free hospitality-exchange website couchsurfing.com, founded in 2003. The increased interest in the sharing economy is thought to be fueled by the convergence of three technological advancements: smartphone ubiquity; secure, cashless payment systems; and customer review sites. But not all of the impetus is technological. The recession and postrecession fallout led to the rampant underemployment of college graduates—with almost half working in jobs that didn’t require a college degree—and to a need to monetize possessions and make do with less.

  As noted in the journal Contexts, “The sharing economy is a floating signifier for a diverse range of activities. Some are genuinely collaborative and communal, while others are hotly competitive and profit-driven.”8 Juliet Schor groups sharing economy activities into four broad categories:

  • Recirculation of goods. These services reduce transaction costs (such as consignment shop fees and the risk of financial loss) and provide reputational information on sellers to reduce the risks of financial transactions with strangers.

  • Increased utilization of durable assets. These services, such as Airbnb and its earlier, free predecessor, Couchsurfing.com, allow some people to earn additional money to supplement traditional incomes, while providing others with low-cost access to goods and space.

  • Exchange of services. These services, such as TaskRabbit, Handy, and Zaarly,9 pair users who need tasks done with individuals who need or want work.

  • Sharing of productive assets. These services enable production rather than consumption and include hackerspaces (for programmers) and makerspaces, which bring together shared tools and coworking spaces.10

  While Schor’s definition seems clear, others argue that there are distinct differences between the sharing and the on-demand economies. For instance, a team of Dutch researchers defines the sharing economy as limited to “consumers (or firms) granting each other temporary access to their under-utilized physical assets (‘idle capacity’), possibly for money” (see fig. 2). Under this definition, UberBLACK, the luxury car service, while innovative, is just an app-based black car service. UberPOOL is part of the sharing economy because, when someone requests a car, a ride is already under way and excess space is then used, while “UberX is only a form of the sharing economy if the driver would have made the trip anyway.” Under this definition, TaskRabbit and Kitchensurfing are part of the on-demand economy, while eBay, with its focus on consumer-to-consumer sales (C2C), is part of the secondhand economy. Airbnb is further differentiated by the method behind the rental: if a person is hosting while on-site or while on vacation, it is part of the sharing economy; but “if people live permanently in another house, and continuously rent out their own house, they are actually just running a (often illegal) hotel.”11

  Figure 2. The sharing economy and related forms of the platform economy. Source: Frenken, Meelen, Arets, and van de Glind (2015). Used by permission.

  “A WORD . . . MEANS JUST WHAT I CHOOSE IT TO MEAN—NEITHER MORE NOR LESS”

  Adding to the confusion, the sharing economy regularly feels like a trip through Alice’s looking glass or into Bizarro World, where the meaning of standard words is twisted and changed. The first of these is, of course, sharing. Although early sites such as couchsurfing.com and ShareSomeSugar.com didn’t charge fees, most current “sharing economy” sites do charge them. An Airbnb host isn’t so much “sharing” her home or “hosting guests” as she is renting her home out. TaskRabbit assistants and Kitchensurfing chefs aren’t “sharing” their services but being paid. Likewise, even though Uber and Lyft describe themselves as “ride-sharing,” charging for private vehicle transportation is simply a taxi or chauffer service by any other name. While Lyft (slogan: “Your friend with a car”) originally encouraged riders to “sit in the front seat like a friend, rather than in the backseat like a fare,” such “friendship” didn’t eliminate the need to pay the fare.12

  The reinvention of terms isn’t limited to the companies themselves but can also carry over into descriptions of the services by researchers. For instance, TaskRabbit and Handy are often grouped in the category “exchange of services.”13 Yet these two services aren’t time banks, and they don’t allow for bartering. They are not an “exchange” of services but instead operate according to the usual practice of offering services for cash. Likewise, used-goods-sale sites are also often included in the sharing economy. While these services may have helped create the sharing economy, once an item is sold on eBay it is no longer available for “sharing.”

  Also integral to the sharing economy is the idea of trust. Although trust would seem to be at odds with the idea of background checking, many sites promote their background checks and identity verification as part of the trustworthiness of their service. In an unintentional irony, the section of Airbnb’s website dealing with trust and safety is unreachable unless one agrees to the site’s terms of service, which leads with an arbitration clause. One is reminded of the motto “In God we trust, all others pay cash.” While Airbnb markets trust, the company prefers to rely on lawyers.

  The sharing economy claims to make trust easier because electronic trails are supposed to make it easier to know everyone. In the small community of old, reputations could follow a family for forever; today one’s Facebook trail is everlasting. Sharing economy services often link through Facebook accounts for identity verification, making a “digital re-creation of the neighborly interactions that defined pre-industrial society.”14 In addition to linking to Facebook, these services often ask users to post pictures of themselves and, in the case of Airbnb and TaskRabbit, to communicate before each stay or task. Although almost every sharing platform requires users to create a profile, and many utilize community ratings, organizations such as Traity, and the now-defunct TrustCloud, work to collect information on people’s online reputations based on their social media footprint and information data exhaust, the trail that users leave as they engage with others on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TripAdvisor.15 This information could possibly be used to calculate “reliability, consistency, and responsiveness[,] . . . a contextual badge you’d carry to any website, a trust rating similar to the credit rating” of the off-line world.16 Relying on a credit rating is the antithesis of trust.

  Trust is generally defined as a firm belief in the reliability, truth, and ability of something; but in the sharing economy, trust is easily conjured—Airbnb’s website even features a TED Talk by cofounder Joe Gebbia on how the service “designs for trust.” TaskRabbit also markets its “trust and safety” efforts, which include an identity check, criminal-offense screening, and a two-hour orientation that discusses the best practices for success on the TaskRabbit platform. As the TaskRabbit website explains, “We share knowledge of what creates a great task so that [Taskers] can deliver safe and superior experiences.” Again, trust is something the user demonstrates to TaskRabbit and its workers—not something TaskRabbit is willing to rely on. This expropriation of positive terms such as trust and sharing is often crucial to the marketing of the sharing economy and serves to mislead and redirect, painting an image of trustworthy friends as opposed to workers and de facto temporary employers.

  Likewise, in regard to the use of disrupting, many sharing economy companies use this term to describe their services, even though their use of the term is often at odds with commonly accepted definitions of disruption as “groundbreaking” or “wreaking havoc.” Instead of truly changing the world, the services are just taking standard services and putting them on an app. They’re not inventing hoverboards to replace taxis; they’re simply making it easier to get a for-hire vehicle.

  The popularity of the sharing eco
nomy as a concept means that companies regularly declare themselves to be part of the sharing economy. For instance, a recent white paper by PricewaterhouseCoopers grouped Spotify and Amazon Family with Airbnb and Uber as part of the sharing economy.17 Amazon Family allows adult members of the same household to access books and videos purchased from different Amazon accounts. Although these are definitely sharing activities—and involve more sharing than is entailed in renting out an apartment on Airbnb—this is simply the technological equivalent of family members accessing the same communal DVD collection or family-room bookcase. If family members’ acts of sharing the same TV or tube of toothpaste are part of the sharing economy, the term is essentially meaningless.

  In my research, I define the sharing economy as a collection of app-based technologies that focus on the lending/renting of assets or services either for profit or for a higher good. While food swaps and makerspaces are useful and raise a number of theoretically interesting issues regarding race, class, and the creation of “belonging,” I am especially interested in sharing economy platforms that provide a source of work and income and that claim to be bringing entrepreneurship or financial sustainability to the masses.18 I categorize these platforms as part of the gig economy, owing to their focus on short-term income opportunities. While not all aspects of the sharing economy are part of the gig economy, platform-based gig-economy services fall under the sharing economy heading, and I use these two concepts interchangeably.