Today, Explained - The Future of Work: The gig is up

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

A third of American workers do gig work. In the third part of our series, The Future of Work, learn how the pandemic helped them discover their power. Today’s show was produced by Will Reid, edited by Jillian Weinberger, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Okay, let's see what's on the radio. The workforce, that a large share of white-collar workers are simply never going to think of the office the way they did in 2019 ever again. True. They're going to think of it as something that is optional, something that is part-time, something that they do on a hybrid basis.

Mm-hmm. Ha-ha! Is it worth it? Let me work it. It's too early for this. Don't want to work. I just want to bang on the drum all day. Give it to me, Todd. We're not gonna take it Hmm Mm-hmm If the people say it's a S-O-B Tell them to S-H-O-V-E

The J-O-B Turn it up Now I'm free Yeah Hey Free falling It's the future of Yeah It's the future of work on Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos for them. Last week, we focused on white collar work, the future of the office and how to make remote work more functional,

maybe forever. This week, we're going to talk about a very different kind of work, gig work. It's a phrase that was hardly even used a decade ago. Now, something like a third of American workers do gig work. A third. Modern gig work, the stuff tied to apps on our phones and laptops, has kind of reshaped our cities, our counties, our country, the world. And on the show today, we counties, our country, the world. And on the show today, we're going to ask about the growing pains of that revolution and try and figure out where gig work might be heading next.

And we're going to start in New York City, where delivery workers for apps like Uber or DoorDash are everywhere. There are 65,000 delivery workers in New York. You can spot them on their e-bikes cruising at top speed, faster than pretty much anything else on the street. And this summer, New York's delivery workers kind of figured out how much muscle they had, and they flexed. Josh Jezza wrote about it for The Verge. Food delivery has existed for a long time in New York, but it used to be that delivery workers worked for a long time in New York, but it used to be that delivery workers worked for a restaurant.

Hello, thanks for calling Mario's Pizza. Hello. And it would be a restaurant that kind of specialized in delivery. Canonically, it's your pizza place, your Chinese restaurant. We've got to get something. I don't want to go to that meeting on an empty stomach. Let's get some Chinese. All right, but then we've got to get some work done.

And they employ a few delivery workers who they'll send out in the immediate vicinity to the neighborhood. And that was the way it was until the 2000s and then especially the mid-2010s. What happened then is you got these apps like DoorDash, Caviar, Postmates. A new company called Seamless is transforming the food industry one click at a time.

And they promised not just delivery online, like online ordering, which had existed for a bit, but delivery from anywhere. Let's say you have a large beer, liquor, or wine order. Now, in D.C., there's an app for that. Drizzly, an alcohol delivery app. They had their own workforce. They had their gig workers. And so you could order something from a restaurant that didn't offer delivery or was miles away, and they would dispatch a worker to bring it to you.

All these companies are part of the new world where everything is at your fingertips everywhere you go. And so this meant for customers, it meant unlimited choice. It was amazing. For workers, it meant they were no longer tethered to a restaurant. So they no longer had shelter. They also had to be plugged in all the time because they needed to get the work. So they had to have a smartphone. They had to be plugged in all the time because they needed to get the work. So they had to have a smartphone.

They had to go longer distances. And so you end up with this situation where they're running to and fro long distances, and they adapt in various ways. And one of those is they start using these high-powered electric bikes, which really let them zoom around 30 miles an hour. Look at this. You see this vehicle? That's basically a motorcycle. For long periods of time and not get tired. That's where we are today. We have workers who are extremely online on extremely fast vehicles, racing around, working for apps. And beyond this changing how this kind of work looks, it fundamentally alters the economics of it, right? You could be zooming across town to deliver like some McDonald's

french fries that cost like two dollars, right? That's right. All these apps are subsidized with billions in venture capital money. So it doesn't have to make economic sense to deliver French fries three miles away. So the workers end up with all these orders that a restaurant never would have allowed you to make before, like a single order of fries or some chicken nuggets or one coffee or something like that.

And for the workers, because they're getting paid per job and because tips make up a large portion of it, it becomes a bit like gambling. You're working, you get an order. Maybe it's a dinner for a family of four and they tip well. Or maybe it's an ice cream cone. And even if the person tips 20%, that's like 20 cents. And so they're barely getting by, if getting by at all, and they have to work extremely long hours. Most work six days a week. A lot of them work 10, 12 hours a day just to be able to survive. And on top of all of this, the pandemic comes along.

How does that change the nature of this work? The pandemic changed things in a couple ways. One, there was more work and the routes got longer. As every restaurant switched to 100% delivery and was trying to stay afloat, a lot of them expanded their delivery radiuses, radii. So delivery workers were suddenly going five miles, six miles, just incredible distances. A lot of them fell sick. Obviously, COVID itself was a threat. The few restaurants that sort of let them use their restroom before

closed their doors. So suddenly that became a pressing issue. And robberies, especially recently, because they're riding around $2,000 vehicles, they've become a target for thieves who will often violently attack them for their bikes. And at the same time that the job was getting worse, the city, the apps, everyone was calling them heroes and talking about how essential they were. We turn now to some of the unsung heroes of this pandemic, the delivery workers who have kept our lives running as we safely hunkered down. And I think the combination of those two things really galvanized the delivery workers to start bringing their working conditions into line with that rhetoric. How does that happen?

Well, let me take you to this bridge, because I think it illustrates a lot of what was happening in the city over the summer. Which bridge? Manhattan? Brooklyn? Williamsburg? Queensborough? It's called the Willis Bridge, and it connects northern Manhattan to the Bronx. And it's the bridge that a lot of food delivery workers cross each night as they return home after finishing their dinner deliveries. I spent a lot of time at this bridge over the summer, and then in September, I went back with a producer for the show, Will Reed. Oh wait, here goes a guy that's just by himself. Is that bad?

It's risky. All summer, workers there have been getting attacked for their bikes. It was fairly organized. People would jump out from these alcoves that are along the bike path. The perfect spot for an attack on food delivery workers. A dark, isolated stretch along the Willis Avenue Bridge connecting Manhattan and the Bronx. You know, with bottles, with knives, with guns, and demand their bikes. Who's stealing these delivery guys' bikes? That's so brutal. Some of it is, you know, crimes of opportunity. You know, they're easy to resell because there's a big demand for bikes and they're expensive. There are signs that there were organized cohorts

there too. There were sort of groups of motorcyclists who would steal the bikes. But there were a lot of thefts. It was really rampant. In a recent survey, 54% of delivery workers, many of them immigrants, reported being robbed. And so this bridge was a particular hotspot. And last summer, some workers who live nearby, who had started a Facebook group partly in response to the thefts, formed kind of a night watch. They stood on the corner. They flagged down delivery bikers who were coming home, told them to cross in a group. It says, crossing groups of five or more with a drawing of a man with a flag.

It's sort of a DIY warning sign they've set up. They formed this WhatsApp where they would respond if someone nearby got in trouble and basically started taking matters into their own hands. That's where I met Juan, Juan Solano. He said he worked every job and he liked delivery the best. I tried construction, I tried gardening, I tried cleaning, I tried everything. And food delivery is more dangerous, but I liked it.

I don't know. And several of his family members had started this watch. It had come out of a Facebook group that they started. And they were one of several groups that had formed, mostly online, these sort of spreading WhatsApp networks and Facebook groups, you know, initially for self-defense, but then increasingly for activism. The background context of all this, sort of why they felt they needed to take matters into their own hands, is they'd really been struggling to get the police to respond to these thefts.

If there's a robbery and nobody's here, they'll call the police or 311. And the police arrive in two hours and the bike's already gone. Here, the two months we've been on guard, I've seen a cop car on patrol just three times. Three times in two months. There's no security. The police didn't have a great understanding of delivery work in the city. And they tended to just ignore these reports. And so they felt that they needed to protect themselves. Separately, a group of workers got so frustrated with the police

in Midtown that they marched on a precinct and demanded the police take action. And that snowballed into a movement. My name is Gustavo Achche, and I'm from Guatemala. It's me who started the movement of Los Delibristos Unidos. It means United Delivery Workers. I think we have done a lot of good things for the community of the delivery workers so far.

Here in the city, the delivery worker is essential work. Through the pandemic, delivery work is not delivery just like food. We deliver medicine, we deliver all kinds of stuff. So we did a lot for the city. The Workers' Justice Project, a nonprofit that works with day laborers and other workers in the city, got involved. They'd separately been talking to workers and they organized sort of increasingly large rallies, thousands of workers that would march on City Hall. They formulated explicit demands and started meeting with city council members and really

getting a lot of attention and becoming like a highly effective political movement in just a matter of months. For nearly two years while New York City battled the COVID-19 pandemic and fought for a just recovery, delivery workers have put their lives and livelihoods at risk to keep New Yorkers fed and our beloved restaurants afloat. This culminated in September when the city council passed a package of bills that would, among other things, set minimum pay standards, allow workers to set maximum distances that they will travel, require restaurants to provide them restroom access. And it was really a major piece of legislation that passed remarkably quickly. New York City is capable of far greater for our essential workers than what the liberistas receive.

Our responsibility as a council is clear, and if the growth of this movement is any evidence, the entire city knows it too. Oh, you get it to the the point like I was going to cry because there's a lot of people talking to me that you're crazy, why you doing that? But this is the power of the working class people. It's really the first major attempt to set some protections around food delivery gig work.

The story has a bit of like a David versus Goliath feel to it. Tell me what we can glean from this story where a bunch of undocumented immigrant delivery workers in New York City who are being abused and robbed end up accomplishing against huge tech companies like, I mean, Uber, right? The big guys. Yeah, I think there are a couple interesting things we can learn from what happened there. One is gig work often is a pretty isolated job. You know, you're a worker and you work for the

app and you don't see a lot of other workers. In New York, food delivery work is not like that, mostly out of necessity, partly because it's often immigrant communities that are already close. And then also partly because, you know, they have no shelter, they're not working for a restaurant. And so they congregate in parking garages and certain other public spaces. And so there's a real community there. And that when they got connected, you know, initially for their own protection, they were able to become a potent political force really quickly. I think the apps are quite good at hiding the labor behind the services they offer. And I think consumers, when they're forced to pay attention to it, they feel bad and think it should be different. And I think when those two things collided, the sort of mobilized and united workers and the consumers and citizens and voters who weren't okay with the status quo, things can change quickly. So should people stop ordering delivery?

I asked a lot of the workers that and they all said no. Obviously, they need the work. But I think one thing consumers can do is tip well. And to think about the work involved, I think it's easy to tip 20% because that's what you would do at a restaurant. But if it's a single bagel that's coming from four miles away, obviously it's worth more than that. Yeah. Also, maybe don't order a single bagel from four miles away. Yeah. Or you could go outside and get a bagel. We're going to hear about some sponsors, and then we're going to zoom out and see if gig workers outside of New York City are feeling empowered too. Thank you. to help you save time and put money back in your pocket.

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Well, for workers, I think it really depends on what you're looking at. So, you know, gig work encompasses a lot of different types of categories, things from, you know, ride, hail, like Uber, Lyft, you know, grocery delivery like Instacart, parcel delivery like Amazon Flex, and of course, food delivery. And that is sort of in addition to a lot of other types of online work that's performed remotely. So like with all the stay-at-home orders and remote work, demand for ride-home services went down. On the other hand, there was increased demand for other types of services, specifically for things like food delivery and grocery delivery. So it sounds like it's a bit of a mixed bag. Yeah, definitely a mixed bag. And as a result, that had a really wide range of effect on workers.

Gig workers aren't typically eligible to receive unemployment. But during the pandemic, special provisions were made that gave them access to unemployment. At the same time, in the research that we've been doing, we've spoken with a lot of workers who also switched platforms. So they moved, for example, from like ride hail services to food or parcel delivery, where work was more readily available. And as we sort of discussed in the first half of the show, there was this sort of rethinking of gig workers as essential workers, as frontline workers. I mean, that was always the case, but people seem to come to appreciate that during the pandemic. Has that turned into something sort of tangible feeling across the board?

I think there is sort of a greater cultural acknowledgement of the essential nature of a lot of work that's been traditionally sort of underpaid and undervalued. So yeah, I would say that that had played a role in winning this particular piece of legislation, but I think it's also something that you do see sort of increasingly reflected in the conversations that are taking place around the rights, benefits, and protections that these types of workers should have generally. There's also this debate as to whether, you know, gig workers should be full-time employees and get a bunch of rights and benefits or whether they should be independent contractors. We made an episode about that fight in California. This particular measure has national implications, not just for everybody

who uses Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, which are the companies that are most affected by it, basically for the future of work. I'll say. What's the latest on that front? Yeah, so California has been a big battleground for the question around employment status in the gig economy. There was the state law, AB5, which was introduced, among other things, a new way of determining employment status. Using a three-part test, the worker is free of control and direction. The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business.

And the worker is engaged in an independently established trade or occupation. And this would have had a really significant impact on gig workers because it would have essentially reclassified them as employees rather than as independent contractors. And resulting from that offered them a host of rights and protections that are associated with the employment relationship. So this was followed by a referendum last year, Prop 22, that was funded by many gig companies to overturn this provision. Prop 22's passage allows gig companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart to classify workers as independent contractors. And most recently, Prop 22 blow to Uber and Lyft... Prop 22 has been ruled unconstitutional by a judge.

A legal battle over the ruling could take a long time to be resolved. Given how long it can take to come to some sort of clarity, legal clarity about these questions, workers have continued to organize in search of better legal clarity about these questions. Workers have continued to organize in search of better terms and conditions at work. And this has sometimes caused them to look for alternative ways to achieve improvements. And that's really how you get laws like the one that

was just passed in New York City for food delivery workers. So while the benefits that they have won through this law still fall short of what you would get in an employee-employer relationship, those local laws can do a lot to provide workers with concrete and real improvements in terms of their working conditions and also their wages. The ongoing debate in California and these new protections in New York, it feels obviously like this would all be easier if there were some sort of clearer federal standard, maybe. Is Congress doing anything about this? Is the Biden administration doing anything about this to sort of clarify where gig workers stand? Yeah, so there is something called the PRO Act, which has passed the House. The yeas are 225 and the nays are 206. The bill is passed. But not the Senate. If it were to get through Congress,

it would give workers all kinds of sort of rights and protections that they don't currently have. In addition to making it easier for gig workers to organize, the bill would amend many previous labor laws and bolster workers' collective bargaining rights. It would change the way that employment classification is determined, and this could in turn have a big impact on gig workers, again, by potentially reclassifying them as employees. And this PRO Act passed the House but not the Senate. Any chance it could? I know they have some disagreements in the Senate.

I, it would be beneficial to working people if they did pass it. So that's why I'm calling on Congress to pass Protect the Right to Organize Act, the PRO Act, and send it to my desk so we can support the right to unionize. Where do the stakeholders who have a lot to potentially lose in profits stand on the PRO Act? Like, you know, the Ubers of the world, or the Lyfts, or the Seamlesses and DoorDashes and what have you?

If the sort of battle that took place in California is any indication, they are really quite opposed to this type of legislation. California was the most expensive ballot initiative in history. You know, they put a lot of money behind it to ensure that workers continue to be treated as independent contractors. And for gig workers who don't want to wait for the right legislation to come around or who find their organization efforts less fruitful than, say, this recent effort in New York City, do those workers have any other recourse? Yeah. I mean, workers are engaged in sort of a lot of different efforts to improve their working lives. You know, one hopeful

direction that some workers have taken is through establishing something called platform co-ops or platform cooperatives. These essentially function like gig platforms, but with a different ownership and management model. So the idea is that similar to like an Uber or a Lyft or a Care.com, right? But the idea here is that workers own the app, you know, that they are their own bosses. And this gives them obviously greater control over the work process, how work is organized, how much they're able to charge for the services that they provide. But those apps are unlikely to gain the kind of user base that their competitors have, right? So yeah, I mean, these co-ops do tend to be small, and they are operating in competition with other apps, including some really big market players.

So when it comes to the question of sort of scaling up and the resources that are required to that, there are definitely some challenges. But I think they are still a hopeful example because they present kind of a radically different way of having platform work as an option. Right. But structuring it in a way that works for workers, you know, and there are examples, you know, across the U.S. and the world. What are they called? Yeah. So the one in New York City for cleaning is called Up and Go. It's a great song by The Starting Line. There are also taxi co-ops that are located in places like Denver and Austin, Texas, in the States, Edmonton, Alberta. There's a pretty vibrant co-op movement actually in France, including on, you know, dealing with some platform and

gig-related work. And there is a group that's based at the New School in New York City, and they maintain a database where you can do a search for platform cooperatives that are located all over the world. It sounds like there are just a lot more options than you might know you have. And really, the key takeaway here seems to be like, we should think about how the gig work we use and depend on actually works. Yeah, I think a lot of the success of the gig economy is based on the convenience that it provides to consumers. But none of this work would be possible without the people who are sort of behind the app. The people who are delivering the food, providing you with transportation, cleaning your homes, taking care of your children.

And so I think it is important to be mindful about how we engage with these platforms and how these platforms are treating the workers who are often providing these really essential services. Hannah Johnston is a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University. Special thanks to Salma Aguilar for her help with today's episode. It was produced by Will Reed, and it's the penultimate in our series on the future of work. We're going to wrap this thing up next Friday with one on retirement and whether any of us are going to make enough money to do it.

Stay tuned. It's Today Explained. Thank you.