Labour market trends that assess who is most impacted by precarious work all show up the same patterns; these folks are black and brown, often women, and often working class. Precarious work includes digital apps such as Uber, abuse of zero-hour contracts, or those most at risk from losing a job due to automation. As this ‘new economy’ thrives, we need to be aware that race inequality will worsen because white supremacy is a systemic feature of neoliberal capitalism. This article suggests seven concrete steps that progressives can take towards a genuinely new and transformative economy for all workers. 

Play the race card 

Our economic system inherently disadvantages marginalised groups, and this trend is consistent through history. To better understand why this happens, we need to consciously develop a deeper analysis of the problem we are trying to address. In this case, how are Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) workers impacted by the rise of precarious work practices? 

Research conducted by the Resolution Foundation think tank shows that ‘minority ethnic’ families currently earn nearly £9000 a year less than their white British counterparts. This is supported further by the tuc’s Insecure Work and Ethnicity report that identified one in every 13 BAME workers were in insecure employment, compared to one in 20 for white workers. The same report also identifies that of the 3.1 million BAME workers in the UK, nearly a quarter were in insecure work or were likely to be underemployed. Additionally, the number of BAME workers in insecure jobs rose by 2% in five years, whilst the number of white workers remained the same. 

Wages and earnings aren’t the only issues here. Precarious work is often not a choice, but a result of systemic racism in which BAME workers find it harder to access stable employment. In addition, expecting digital platforms to deliver some utopian democracy ignores the reality of white supremacy. When your customer base is largely white affluent middle class, this plays into the race and class power dynamic, sometimes influencing who gets chosen for work. And as independent contractors, these workers are also at risk of abuse or attacks with very little protection. And in a society where the new norms are xenophobic rhetoric and hate crime, this leaves many unsupported workers vulnerable to discrimination, hurt, and shame. 

If you need any more evidence on the broader systemic failures around employment and work, the Race Disparity Audit commissioned by the government offers a sobering and heartbreaking reality check on the lived experience of the BAME population in the workplace. What is important to take away from this evidence is that marginalisation of communities is active, not passive. There are multiple systems at play that are responsible for race inequality; white supremacy, elitism, and patriarchy to name but a few. 

Decolonise economics 

How is this data shaped by the characteristics of neoliberal capitalism? For this we need to look to the origins of capitalism as an economic model and, as a result, how deep white supremacy is embedded in the functions of our society – even today. 

Many people argue that the modern economy has brought us substantial material benefits, better rights for workers, and flexibility in work practices. Whilst this may be the case, these benefits have, by design, been disproportionately distributed amongst a privileged few. For the global majority (non-white people/people of colour), capitalism is a system that is historically tied to colonialism and racism. Colonialism is a project that led to the demolition of sacred land and cultures, extraction of natural resources, sale of black bodies as property, and sent brown bodies to war for the British Empire. 

The colonial mindset continues to this day and is justified by the pursuit of economic growth that is centred around white superiority. We can connect capitalism with white supremacy, and come to understand racism as the tool by which white European colonisers wielded economic power over large parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Well known critical race theorist F.L. Ansley helps us understand the colonial mindset here:

By ‘white supremacy’ I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily re-enacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.”

500 years of colonial rule and settler colonialism has created an economy so entrenched in systems of oppression that we must connect this to the reality of inequality today. In Britain, a colonial mindset dominates the way institutions control our media, legal system, education, financing and policing, and the way we respond to them. As a result, white supremacy is normalised as an invisible force that is subtle and powerful. The evidence for structural racism is clear, and the only justification that is viable is the lasting legacy of white supremacy. Future alternatives to neoliberalism need to be informed by confronting our economic history of colonialism, mercantilism, and imperialism. 

How to centre race in the new economy

Neoliberalism is a particularly vicious form of capitalism that has destroyed so much of the fabric of our society, including public services, decent housing, and stable employment. No one should be surprised that BAME workers are the first to be impacted by precarious work. If anything, it is evidence that neoliberal capitalism is functioning as intended: through the exploitation of people of colour. In responding to this, however, we cannot escape the rapid development of technology and the way this is reshaping our work practices. Wage equality and workers rights can only be realised if we centre the BAME community at the heart of our efforts to build alternatives, so that we can truly challenge the foundations of neoliberal capitalism. We can do this in many ways. 

Stronger movements

In the past century, people of colour in Britain have fought for equal rights alongside white-centred movements, be it through the Suffragettes or labour strikes. They’ve done this in the margins, achieving part but not all of the rights that have been afforded to their white British counterparts. By centreing the lived experience of BAME workers in all our actions, be it labour strikes, protests, or workplace organising, we can be sure to attend to those that are feeling the impact of the gig-economy now, not just the fear of it hitting us in the future. Investigate which sectors are predominantly BAME in identity, and understand their concerns, and do this without essentialising or tokenism of any one identity. Use your time to follow groups such as Hotel Workers Branch and Justice for Domestic Workers, and interrogate campaigns that are whitewashed or lack depth and integrity. 

Intersectional analysis

In our work, we need to recognise the overlapping – or intersecting – nature of discrimination that plays a role in our understanding of wage inequality. In this article I’ve concentrated on ‘people of colour’ as one group without doing the necessary work of breaking this down into gender, ability, class, sexuality, migration status and the many other social factors that influence how society influences the workplace. Uncovering this evidence will open our eyes to the reality of inequality, and a deeper understanding of the structure of the economy. Be mindful that using intersectionality as a tool to better understand different lived experiences does not absolve us of our privilege and the work we need to do on ourselves. 

Challenging narratives

An intersectional analysis also allows us to challenge ideas that are designed to divide us. An example of this is the widespread use of the term ‘white working-class’, which routinely excludes the reality of black, brown and Asian working class communities in Britain. Evidence consistently shows that a higher percentage of the BAME community are working class when compared to the white British population. Let’s also challenge the narrative of ‘Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic’ that comes from a Eurocentric view of our globalised world. Whilst I have embraced this terminology in this article, a vision for a new economy should use terms such as people of global majority, people from formerly colonised nations, or people of colour in order to free us from our colonial mindset. 

Relevant alternatives

The progressive ‘new economy’ scene in the UK is full of ideas for alternative practices to neoliberalism when it comes to work and wages. Consider ‘new economy’ projects that build co-operatives or use the gift economy. They are often designed for a lived experience that is so disconnected from those who need it, it renders them inaccessible and irrelevant to the broader goal of economic systems change. The irony here is that many of the alternatives are rooted in a non-European indigenous history, and have been appropriated by those who already have social power. When designing alternatives, take inspiration from some excellent organisations who are decolonising these ideas to make them work for black and brown communities. Explore why Black Lives Matter adopted Universal Basic Income as a central demand in their manifesto, and how one black community in Jackson, Mississippi is using technology and data to reinvent their local economy. 

So, ask yourself now “where is this work happening in the UK, and who knows about it?” We all want to commit to building a new economy that works for everyone. To do so we need to get our analysis clear, and recognise that capitalism will always be one step ahead of us unless we are willing to centre people of colour in the solutions we build.

If we do so, we will have built the foundations for alternatives that are powerful enough to uproot neoliberal capitalism for good. If we don’t then the ‘new economy’ will be little more than the successor to what we already have.

Gurpreet Bola is an organiser, trainer, researcher, and writer. She is committed to political and social systems change. Her economic analysis has supported activists to identify the root cause of social inequalities and oppression.

This is a print first feature published in STIR magazine.

The post Race and Intersectionality in the New Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Steven Tufts: 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 for workers. Do emerging ‘sharing-economy’ platforms such as Uber and Airbnb mark a significant shift in production and distribution systems? Are they emancipatory or exploitive? How can they be regulated across multiple jurisdictions and multiple platforms (e.g., Airbnb, Homestay, Uber, Lyft)? These and other questions have been raised by those emphasizing the platforms as a growing source of employment for contingent workers and their power to transform waged work into different relationships such as dependent contracts.¹ Kim Moody recently offered that these platforms are simply advanced ways for workers to ‘moonlight’ in an age characterized by depressed wage growth and the majority of new employment being in low wage, precarious jobs.² Despite the success of these services with consumers, there are contradictions for the future of work and implications for organized labour that unions are only starting to address – albeit in contradictory ways.

In mid-July 2016, the interim report on Ontario’s Changing Workplaces Review was released. The 300 plus page report said very little specifically about the gig-economy with the exception of a few sparse mentions on the role technology plays in changing employment relations.³ The Review is interested in how to extend workplace protection to workers using platforms such as Uber, TaskRabbit and Airbnb to supplement their incomes.⁴ Indeed, much of the report focusses on the general challenges of misclassification of workers as contractors.⁵ Here, the options presented to deal with gig-economy work are to either: maintain the status quo and exclude many of these workers as independent contractors; recognize these workers as ‘dependent contractors’⁶ (e.g. Uber drivers) and extend employment standards to them; or develop new regulations and standards that are specific to dependent contractors with exemptions for some sectors and workers.

Gaps and Exemptions

The narrow framing of the options misses some important points. First, regulation of ‘dependent contractors’ in the gig-economy will be subject to exemptions for specific sectors and workers just as other sectors managed to be exempt from the Employment Standards Act (ESA) in the past. Exemptions in the present ESA have been documented, such as the exclusion of a disproportionate numbers of women, young people, and racialized workers in sectors such as agriculture and hospitality.⁷ Second, there is an ‘enforcement gap’ that persists even when innovative and appropriate standards are established and applied to broad sectors.⁸If employers in small workplaces cannot be held accountable to the ESA, then how can the state ever enforce standards in a hyper-fissured gig-economy with private platforms organizing thousands of contractors? There are legal challenges to classifications, but the courts are inefficient in finding timely resolutions through litigation over classification and enforcement.⁹ Third, and perhaps most important, is the fact that new platforms continue to erode traditional employment relationships and threaten unionized jobs in existing sectors. Taxi drivers are replaced by Uber drivers and unionized hotel labour is replaced by Airbnb hosts and subcontracted cleaners. The platforms effectively download risk and investment to individuals as personal assets (i.e., cars and homes) are more deeply integrated into processes of accumulation. Workers earning substandard income in precarious employment are trapped in a vicious circle where they are forced to moonlight using Uber or rent out their homes via Airbnb to make ends meet.

At same time, capital is also able to use the platforms to create new types of operations. For example, property owners with multiple housing units can now rent out their properties on a short term basis at a daily rate much higher than longer term rentals with minimal transaction costs. These economic activities, mistakenly all lumped together as ‘home-sharing’, undermine unionized jobs and employment in sectors such as accommodation and have wide ranging impacts on rental housing markets.

The Rise of Airbnb

While the social costs of Uber were the first to be discussed at length,¹⁰ there is also the case of Airbnb and smaller short-term rental platforms. The rapid expansion of the Airbnb platform in Toronto is astounding. There are currently over 12,000 listings for Toronto on the Airbnb platform as the number of listings doubled in 2016 from 2015.¹¹ Airbnb’s recruitment and marketing image as an opportunity for individual ‘hosts’ to share their rooms or their homes to earn money for vacations and holidays is challenged by the data.¹² First, a majority of rentals and revenues are ‘entire homes’ not extra room rentals or shared accommodations. Second, over 50 per cent of revenues from Airbnb are generated by ‘multi-unit hosts’. These are professional operations holding multiple units – sometimes in the same condo facility – using the platform to enter the short-term rental accommodation sector.¹³

The result is the rise of ‘ghost hotels’, buildings or properties in close proximity with one another owned by a single operator renting out multiple units as short-term rentals on platforms such as Airbnb. The impact on the hotel sector is not insignificant. Airbnb has grown from almost nothing in 2010 to over 12,000 listings in the Greater Toronto Area and it is estimated to have already captured over 5% of the market share in Toronto and Vancouver. With over 1,000 rooms booked through Airbnb each night in Toronto, it is the equivalent of Toronto’s Chelsea hotel, the largest hotel in Canada, being rented to almost full capacity. There have been relatively few new net rooms added to the city’s hotel room supply over the last 15 years. Development has largely been restricted to smaller co-developments which include hotels and condos. At the same time, the owners of the Chelsea and other hotels are seeking to convert their properties to condominiums, further removing significant hotel room supply from the market. Conversions not only threaten unionized hotel jobs, but also diminish the city’s capacity to attract and host large conventions and events.

Even more significant than the employment effects is the removal of units from the rental housing stock. The shift of entire units from long term to short rentals has implications for Toronto’s housing supply. Research from David Wachsmuth and colleagues at McGill University has found that Airbnb alone removed 13,700 units from the housings stocks of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.¹⁴ The bulk of these listings are in high demand neighbourhoods. The expanding short-term rental units do not pay commercial property taxes (which are double that of residential property taxes) or any special hotel taxes, reducing the municipal revenues that are needed to pay for public housing and tourism promotion.

Other impacts have also been reported in the media. The disruption of Toronto neighbourhoods by ‘party Airbnbs’ where multiple unit hosts operate are a concern.¹⁵ Even more disruptive and contentious is the explosion of Airbnb rental units in condominiums, some of which have bylaws prohibiting short-term rentals. In a recent twist, Airbnb is now partnering with condo developments, engaging in one-on-one agreements with condo boards over issues such as security and complaints and agreeing to revenue sharing with the boards themselves.¹⁶ This privatized regulation allows the Airbnb platform sole access to condos that might otherwise pass bylaws to restrict ghost-hotels in the property or allow competing platforms to operate. Airbnb is also used by hosts to secure mortgages for homes they might not get financing for without the additional short-term rental revenue stream. It is hardly surprising that Airbnb has even floated the idea of building its own brick and mortar properties.

Airbnb is currently valued at $31-billion and growing rapidly in major urban areas. The company aggressively lobbies municipalities seeking to regulate its operations and does not hesitate to litigate.¹⁷Currently, there are multiple battles to regulate short-term rentals and Airbnb as the largest platform. There are a number of issues at play, ranging from restricting short-term rentals to in-home units, forbidding multiple listings by ghost hotel owners, and platform accountability. Unions have engaged with the rise of short-term rental platforms in different ways, with UNITEHERE taking the lead in Canada with the formation of the Fairbnb.ca coalition to fight against Airbnb’s unregulated expansion in Canada’s largest urban markets.

Union Response to Airbnb

Fairbnb.ca is a coalition founded by UNITEHERE Local 75 in July 2016. The coalition includes some tenants’ rights organizations, neighborhood groups, condo owners’ associations, hotel ownership groups, and sympathetic academics (including the author). It is best described as what Amanda Tattersall and David Reynolds term a ‘support’ coalition.¹⁸ Such coalitions are initiated by a union and largely resourced and administered by a single organization with some input from supporters. The coalition can operate at multiple scales, but in this case focuses on municipal bylaws. Fairbnb.ca is organizationally driven by UNITEHERE Local 75 representing 7,000 hospitality workers in Toronto. The coalition is entirely union-financed with in-kind contributions from coalition partners. The motivations for supporters range from primary concerns with lack of affordable housing in the city, to neighbourhood disruption, to the loss of hotel jobs. Further, there is a cross-class component to the coalition with the union partnering with some hotel employers fearing the loss of market share to short-term rentals.

Despite the structural limits of support coalitions, Fairbnb.ca has had significant success in raising the issues related to short-term rentals in Canada’s large cities. It has also been successful in getting municipalities to consider the impacts of short-term rentals seriously and regulate online platforms through municipal bylaws. This has been achieved primarily through media campaigns and lobbying efforts countering the superior communications and lobbying resources of Airbnb. In Toronto, proposed legislation will establish a licensing and registration system and restrict ‘multiple listings’ from a single host. Still contentious is the issue of allowing home owners to list ‘secondary suites’ (self-contained units in homes) which can potentially be used as long-term rentals. There also remains a lack of clarity over how accountable platforms such as Airbnb will be in reporting violations and sharing data with the city.¹⁹

Though UNITEHERE has had significant success in engaging Airbnb through its coalition strategy, other unions have chosen a quite different path of engagement with the platform. Unifor in particular has publicly supported Airbnb as ‘progressive’ capital given the company’s support for a higher minimum wage, partnerships with settlement agencies housing refugees, and alleged openness to fair regulation. In a statement submitted to Toronto city council, Unifor President Jerry Dias argues that:

“Airbnb is setting an example for a path forward that couples the potential of the digital economy with the reality of working people across the country, and has demonstrated its willingness to operate in a manner consistent with the goals of broader society. Because of Airbnb’s progressive approach, Unifor is exploring ways to work together with them. We will continue to explore areas of mutual interest to improve the public good, and if possible work toward a national partnership.”²⁰

This ‘partnership’ is indeed politically useful for Airbnb as it conveniently gives the company some progressive legitimacy and provides councillors who wish to side with Airbnb against Fairbnb.ca some political cover. Less clear is what Unifor has to gain through such a social ‘partnership’. In the USA, SEIU did attempt to undermine UNITEHERE with a similar partnership with Airbnb that promised the union access to organizing short-term rental room cleaners. But this deal collapsed after SEIU faced public criticism (and perhaps also recognized how difficult it would be to organize workers in ghost hotels).²¹ Unifor may be seeking a similar arrangement or even an understanding that would allow the union to represent brick and mortar hotels being planned by Airbnb.²² Here, we see echoes of the union’s controversial strategy to form a partnership with Magna with its ‘Framework for Fairness’ agreement a decade ago.²³ Yet short-term rentals employ far less workers than the auto parts sector. In a recent report released by The Hotel Association of Canada, it is estimated that the hotel sector in Canada generates 191,600 full-time equivalent jobs, while Airbnb generates only 1,037.²⁴ At this time, evidence indicates that short-term rentals simply do not generate nearly the same number of jobs as the traditional hotel sector which provides a full range of hospitality services. It is difficult to see how large numbers of new members might be organized through this strategy and whether any partnership with Airbnb will give Unifor any leverage in reaching these precarious workers.

It may be that Unifor’s involvement with Airbnb is more related to recent conflicts among unions. In July 2016, Airbnb made a great deal of fanfare of its hiring of Alex Dagg as its Canadian Policy Lead to head-up its municipal lobbying efforts. Dagg, once heralded as a promising and innovative labour organizer in Toronto was a leader of UNITE when it merged with HERE in the mid-2000s. Following an intense internal fight, the UNITE portion of the UNITEHERE merger left the union to form Workers United and joined SEIU. The relationship between Dagg and what now constitutes UNITEHERE Local 75 might be charitably described as ‘strained’. Dagg soon left SEIU to become Director of Operations for the National Hockey League Players Association. The hiring of Dagg to counter Fairbnb.ca would appear to be more than coincidence and quite strategic on the company’s part. Airbnb in its press release announcing Dagg’s appointment focused – in keeping with its progressive capital image – on Dagg’s career experience ‘championing social justice’ in the union movement.²⁵

Unifor established a presence in the accommodation sector decades ago with its merger with railway workers in the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Transport and General Workers, which also represented the workers employed at the grand railway hotels. UNITEHERE has historically defended itself against raiding from a number of large unions operating in Canada. As part of this experience, it is not unexpected that UNITEHERE endorsed a letter to the CLC from a number of its affiliates harshly criticizing Unifor’s disastrous attempt to take over the Amalgamated Transit Union Local in 2016. In short, the opposing forms of union engagement with Airbnb may be inseparable from patterns of divisive labour movement internal conflicts which the company is trying to exploit to its advantage.

Beyond Cross-Class Coalitions

As a support coalition, Fairbnb.ca is not primarily designed to build a movement for affordable housing or broader regulation of the gig-economy. Fairbnb.ca’s success to date as a specific issue public campaign lies with a single organization setting strategic goals and partners deciding how best they can provide support (e.g., joint-lobbying, deputations). Admittedly, it is an effective structure for this type of campaign. In the case of short-term rentals, it can be argued that UNITEHERE’s and Unifor’s strategic choices engaging the gig-economy are also shaped by the persistent sectarianism that continues to plague the labour movement in Canada.

UNITEHERE, a small union relative to large general unions in Canada, is understandably cautious about working closely with other unions given that it has been targeted for raiding in the past. Also important is the fact that Fairbnb.ca is a cross-class coalition that does include hotel employers. While the few employers formally in Fairbnb.ca do not provide anything beyond in-kind support, the inclusion of capital from the outset structures the aims of the coalition in a very specific manner. The decision to not initially build a larger class-based coalition with multiple unions and a more expansive list of community groups limits Fairbnb.ca primarily to a media campaign and lobbying effort.

Unifor’s opposing strategy of embracing cross-class ‘progressive capital’ is as cynical as it is short-sighted. Partnership with Airbnb is unlikely to yield many new members from ‘ghost hotels’ and it remains unclear how Dias will explain partnership with a company undermining traditional hotels to his members working in the sector. Dias will also have to explain to activist members why their union is supporting a multinational firm that is removing thousands of rental units from the housing stock of large cities. While it is difficult to imagine that Unifor has embraced the partnership deal solely in response to a political difference with a smaller union, this cannot be easily dismissed as a partial explanation.

No single union is able to take on such immense and growing sectors of the economy alone. Central labour bodies and local labour councils do not have the capacities (or the affiliate support) to coordinate sectoral responses and strategies, so new formations are needed. In the case of short-term rentals, a local sector council of unions representing hotel workers may be useful. UNITEHERE represents the majority of unionized hotel workers in Toronto, but there are other large and well-resourced unions representing hotel workers in large cities. A common sectoral strategy and approach is what concern for workers in the sector demands. On this front, UNITEHERE has begun the process of re-establishing relations with the CSN fighting against short-term rentals in Quebec. At the same time, Unifor has participated in informal local sector councils such as the Toronto Airport Workers’ Council (TAWC) as it counters efforts to privatize Pearson International Airport.²⁶

New spaces of solidarity such as local sector councils where local unions representing workers in the same sector can talk to each other about common shop-floor issues are important. Further, local united fronts will more effectively confront large gig-economy firms lobbying against progressive municipal regulation – an increasingly important arena of engagement for labour, capital, and the state.²⁷ While unions require an urban strategy, local sector councils do not need to abandon the arenas of provincial or national regulation or fail to engage with the Changing Workplaces Review and its implications for gig-economy work. Successful local sector councils with an urban focus will have a multi-scalar sensibility as all social movements do. Local level formations can, however, address common concerns free from national and international leadership and start to overcome destructive sectarianism. If organized labour fragmented, workers will continue to suffer in – or be displaced from – regressive gig-economy workplaces. •

Endnotes

1. Ursula Huws is a leading voice of critical gig-economy analysis in this respect. See: “Platform labour: Sharing Economy or Virtual Wild West?,” Journal for a Progressive Economy, January, 2016, 24-27.
2. C. Brooks, “Interview with Kim Moody: Busting the Myths of a Workerless Future,” Labor Notes, July 26, 2016.
3. C.M. Mitchell and J.C. Murray, Changing Workplaces Review – Special Advisors’ Interim Report. Prepared for the Ontario Ministry of Labour to support the Changing Workplaces Review, 2016. The review does briefly mention the gig economy on p. 146.
4. The Changing Workplaces Review comments: “The growth of ‘the sharing economy’ continues to challenge business, lawmakers and regulators,” p. 19.
5. The Changing Workplaces Review acknowledges that for labour advocates:“Their concern about misclassification was not limited to one business or sector, but was expressed as likely more prevalent in certain segments of the economy including: the “gig” or “sharing” economy, cleaning, trucking, food delivery and information technology – to name but a few.” p. 146.
6. “Dependent Contractor” is the ‘common law compromise between standard employment relationship and independent contractor. See also G. White, “When will labour laws catch up with the gig economy?,” The Atlantic, December 9, 2015; D. Doorey, The Law of Work: Common Law and the Regulation of Work. Emond Publishing, Toronto, 2016.
7. L. Vosko, A.M. Noack, M.P. Thomas, How Far Does the Employment Standards Act, 2000 Extend and What Are the Gaps in Coverage, Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Labour, (Submission prepared for the Ontario Ministry of Labour to support the Changing Workplaces Review) 2015.
8. L. Vosko and M. Thomas, ‘Confronting the employment standards enforcement gap: Exploring the potential for union engagement with employment law in Ontario, Canada’ Journal of Industrial Relations 56 (5), 2014, 631-652.
9. M.A. Cherry, ‘Beyond Misclassification: The Digital Transformation of Work’, Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, 37(3), 2016, 544-577.
10. See for example B. Rogers, “The Social Costs of Uber,” University of Chicago Law Review Dialogue, 82(1), 2015, 85-102.
11. For a thorough report on the impact of Airbnb on Toronto’s housing market see T. Wieditz, Squeezed Out: Airbnb’s Commercialization of Home-Sharing in Toronto. Toronto: Fairbnb.ca, 2017. The report and other data can be found at fairbnb.ca
12. M. Lecuyer, M. Tucker, and A. Chaintreau, “Improving the Transparency of the Sharing Economy.” International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2), April 3–7, 2017, Perth, Australia published under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License WWW 2017 Companion, 2017.
13. Recent data has found that 84% of Airbnb revenues in the GTA come from entire home rentals and 57% of revenues from multi-unit hosts. See HLT Advisory, AirBnB… & the Impact on the Canadian Hotel Industry, Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto. June, 2016.
14. D. Wachsmuth, D. Kerrigan, D. Chaney, and A. Shillolo Short-term cities: Airbnb’s impact on Canadian housing markets. A report from the Urban Politics and Governance research group School of Urban Planning McGill University. McGill University, Montreal, August 10, 2017.
15. Bleecker Street in Cabbagetown is one such case. T. Kalinkowski, “Bleecker St. residents say ‘ghost hotels’ ruining neighbourhood,” Toronto Star, August 5, 2016.
16. L. Xing, “Toronto condo signs on to 1st agreement in Canada to regulate Airbnb rentals,” CBC News, October 25, 2017.
17. In 2016, Airbnb sued both New York and San Francisco over its regulations of short-term rentals. K. Benner, “Airbnb in Disputes with New York and San Francisco,” New York Times, June 28, 2016.
18. A. Tattersall, and D. Reynolds, ‘The Shifting Power of labor-community coalitions: identifying common elements of powerful coalitions in Australia and the US’, WorkingUSA, 10, 2007, 77–102.
19. Toronto City Council is scheduled to vote of AirBnB bylaws in early December 2017.
20. J. Dias, Letter to Mayor John Tory and the Executive Committee EX26.3.29, June 16, 2017. A similar letter was submitted to Vancouver’s Mayor and City Council on October 24, 2017 as the city debates a short-term rental policy.
21. S. Levin, “Airbnb’s controversial deal with labor union falls apart after intense backlash,” The Guardian, April 21, 2016.
22. The company is hesitant to call these ‘hotels’ and prefers ‘branded home-sharing units’ or ‘community centres’.
23. On the Magna deal see S. Gindin, “The CAW and Magna: What if Magna Builds an Assembly Plant?,” The Bullet, Socialist Project E-Bulletin No. 71, November 3, 2007.
24. CBRE, An Overview of the AirBnB and the Hotel Sector in Canada, Hotel Association of Canada, Ottawa, 2017.
25. Airbnb, ‘Airbnb names new Canadian Executive’, Press release posted on CNW, July 25, 2016.
26. See T. Heffernan, “Mobilizing Workers at the Toronto Airport: Interview with Sean Smith,” The Bullet, Socialist Project E-Bulletin No. 1260, May 24, 2016.
27. On this point see the recent books: I. MacDonald (ed), Unions and the City: Negotiating Urban Change. ILR Press, Ithaca, NY, 2017; M. Greenberg and P. Lewis (eds). The City is the Factory: New Solidarities and Spatial Strategies in an Urban Age ILR Press, Ithaca, NY, 2017.

Steven Tufts is an Associate Professor in Geography at York University.

The post Unions and the Gig-Economy: The Case of AirBnB appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Guy Standing: Given that wages cannot be expected to provide the precariat with security, the system must find alternative ways of doing so. The secret lies in capturing rental income for society. We should want what Keynes predicted but which has yet to pass—“euthanasia of the rentier.” One way of capturing rental income for society would be to bring the commons into policy discourse. In the neoliberal era, the commons—natural, social, civil, cultural, and intellectual—have been plundered via enclosure, commodification, privatization, and colonization. This rent-seeking is an injustice and should be reversed.

The income from using commons resources should belong to every commoner equally. Accordingly, the tax system should shift from earned income and consumption to taxing commercial uses of the commons, thereby helping in their preservation. Levies on income gained from using our commons should become major sources of public revenue. This means such measures as a land value tax, a wealth transfer tax, ecological taxes such as a carbon tax, a water use levy, levies on income from intellectual property and on use of our personal data, a “frequent flyer levy,” and levies on all income generated by use of natural resources that should belong to us as commoners.

Fed by these levies, a Commons Fund could be set up as a democratic variant of the sovereign wealth funds that exist in over sixty countries. Then, the questions would become how to use the funds in a transformative way. The Fund should be operated on proper economic lines, adhering to investment rules geared to socially beneficial forms of capital, taking into account ecological principles and tax-paying propriety.

The Fund’s governance must be democratic and separated from the government of the day, to minimize the possibility of manipulation by politicians before elections. And every commoner should be an equal beneficiary, their stake in the Fund being an economic right, rather than dependent on contributions, as was the case with laborist welfare schemes. Everybody, regardless of taxpaying capacity, should gain, by virtue of being commoners.

The commons has been nurtured by many generations and exists for future generations. As Edmund Burke recognized, we are “temporary custodians of our commonwealth” and have the responsibility of passing on to the next generation our commons in at least as good a condition as we found it. Thus, levies on exhaustible commons resources should be preserved for future generations as well as serve existing generations. To respect this principle, only revenue generated by the Fund’s investments should be distributed to today’s commoners—you and me. This rule is applied in the world’s outstanding example, the Norwegian Pension Fund Global, which, drawing from Norway’s share of North Sea oil, generates a net annual return of 4% that can be disbursed to the populace.5

What is proposed here is even more transformative. The levies would be placed on all forms of commons, including non-exhaustible commons resources. Land, water, air, wind, and ideas are among non-exhaustible resources, and part of our commons. Some commons resources are replenishable, such as forests. Including non-exhaustible commons resources in the financing of the Fund is key to the transformative strategy. The only equitable way of disbursing proceeds from the Commons Fund is to give equal amounts to everybody deemed to be a commoner, and the easiest way would be to distribute “social dividends” or “commons dividends.”

Sharing the commons is one ethical rationale for basic incomes, which are justifiable for other ethical reasons as well, including ecological justice, freedom, and basic security.

Photo by acb

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Join us for this intensive two-week study programme with Schumacher College and Synergia Institute. This course offers participants a practical guide on how we can shift our economy to put people and planet first This programme brings together international scholars and experts who will explore all key areas of society; food, democracy, housing, social care, the commons and social finance. This course is useful for people involved in developing social enterprises and co-operative organisations, students, activists and academics.

An intensive two-week study programme with Schumacher College and the Synergia Institute

What is the ethical economy and how does it work?

• Comprehensive exploration of economic democracy and sustainability as viable bases for system change at local, regional and international scales.
• Unique combination of history, theory, and practice.
• Strong focus on personal & professional experience & participation as key elements of the course.

The Synergia Programme will include

The Problematic with John Restakis
How might we frame the historic moment in which we find ourselves from a political economy perspective? This session presents both a historic retrospective on the movement for economic democracy and how the current configuration of global capitalism demands new perspectives, models, and action strategies for change makers world-wide.

The Partner State with John Restakis
The current crisis of the welfare state is the culmination of a process of de legitimation that has been in the making for more than a generation. For many, the very notion of the state as a force for the good is untenable. But is there a way to reclaim and re conceptualize the state as an institution in service to the common good? This session introduces the concept of the Partner State as an extension of the principles that characterize co-operative economic democracy as a political, economic, and social ideal.

Labour and the Precariat with Cilla Ross
With the emergence of revolutionary digital and informatics technologies, traditional forms of labour are rapidly being replaced with the rise of a new class of precarious and atomised work that threatens not only the livelihoods millions but also the very meaning of work itself. This session examines the implications of this revolutionary shift in the forms of labour, what this entails for the well-being of workers, local communities, and society, and how co-operative and human-centred models of work can challenge the dominant paradigm.

The Commons with Michel Bauwens
Over the last decade, the idea of the commons has emerged as a powerful antidote to the prevailing private property and free market notion of how economies, markets, and social relations might be organized. In particular, the rise of digital platforms and the restructuring of online work through the operation of peer-to-peer networks has offered a revolutionary re think of how co-operative and commons-based principles are redefining both economic and societal relations in service to the common good. This session examines what the idea of the commons means for re visioning models of political economy as alternatives to the status quo.

For more information and registration, visit the Shumacher College site

The post The Synergia Programme – Transition To Co-operative Commonwealth appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This incident is likely to be treated as so many others before it: it will cause a commotion and attract attention, some fire-fighting measures will be announced, then it will slowly fade in the background and it will be business as usual.

The governor of Arizona, where the accident happened, has already withdrawn support for Uber and recalled its licence to conduct self-driving tests in Arizona. Others like Nvidia, the company providing much of the technology used in self driving cars, have called for giving Uber a chance, while at the same time holding off further testing on the streets, and rolling out simulations. It may seem preposterous to justify Uber at a time like this, but there are some important points to be made here.

It has been argued that the goal for self-driving cars is not to be perfect, but to be better than humans. This sounds like a pragmatic position. And it is true that no technology is introduced without having its side effects and its wild west period. But this was literally an accident waiting to happen.

An accident waiting to happen. Image: Reuters

Part of it has to do with the process of developing and introducing new technology, and it can be that in the long run the benefits will outweigh the side effects. But there is another part of it, the wild west part, that has to do with the lack of will and ability to oversee and regulate the use of technology.

Recent research on the deep learning algorithms used in self driving cars revealed thousands of errors. This somewhat expected outcome, given the technology’s breakneck progress and rapid application, seems to have been ignored by companies and authorities alike. In all fairness, the accident that Uber’s car was involved in may not have been related to this.

The fact that this research has been ignored however should be telling. It’s not the first time Uber has been in the limelight, scrutinized and criticized, for all the wrong reasons.

Uber is still operating in London, in you case you did not notice. Uber will continue to do so while a legal appeal process that could take a year lasts. What’s more, the fire-fighting statements and apologetic tone adopted by newly appointed Uber top management seem to appease some, including London’s mayor.

But to focus on Uber’s misconduct and ethics, to lay personal blame and to seek and accept apologies and promises is to miss the point entirely. Uber, and organizations like Uber, are neither good nor bad – they are signs of the time. Even if Uber was ran by Arizona’s Governor or London’s Mayor, it would still have the same defining qualities and effects.

Its efficiency is based on optimized and evolving algorithms, clever marketing and big data. Its self centered nature is inevitable, as it has no one to answer to except its shareholders.

Uber may be revolutionary, but not for the reasons you think. A future in which car ownership is obsolete and you can be picked up in no time and driven safely and efficiently to your destination for cheap is something many people would stand behind. Except there won’t be drivers in those cars, and it will be up to Uber to run things as it sees fit.

It’s clear that the combination of big data, processing power and algorithms can progressively automate every task to the point of making it more efficient than what humans are able to achieve. Driving and dispatching is no exception, and that’s what Uber and its ilk are doing.

But that’s only part of the reason why Uber is displacing traditional taxis. The other part is Uber’s employment model. Instead of employing full time, properly trained drivers, Uber will employ just about anyone with a car and willing to spend hours behind the wheel.

These people will be precarious workers with minimum rights and income, be manipulated to stay on the road as long as needed, and be disposed of when self driving technology and legislation are in place – which should not be too long.

In the meanwhile, Uber can sit back and watch the divide and conquer strategy that has played out so well throughout time work in its favor. Uber drivers operating as an army of low-paid disposable contractors before the algorithms take over completely are inadvertently helping dispose of everyone else’s rights and livelihoods as well.

As Wired reports, New York City’s cab drivers are in crisis, and they’re blaming Uber and Lyft. Since December, four taxi drivers have killed themselves, seemingly in response to the intense financial pressures that have accompanied an increase in for-hire vehicles on the city’s streets.

So it’s freelancers versus full time employees, and now Uber sympathizers versus the people and regulators. Uber sympathizers who have signed an Uber petition to keep it in the streets of London are closing the one million mark, citing safety and loss of jobs. Many would probably cite innovation and better service as well.

While these claims are not entirely unfounded, they are hollow. These jobs will be soon lost anyway, and there have been enough reported incidents to undermine security claims. But this brings us to the core of the issue: the emerging data driven monopolies.

Efficiency and safety are both based on a foundation of data. Data collected, processed and used by Uber to power its algorithms in complete opaqueness. By gaining market share, Uber is amassing ever more data, in a reinforcement loop that makes it harder and harder to compete against.

The fact that Uber ditches every notion of ethics and legality in the process, by doing things such as collecting data from user devices without consent even when the application is not running, using that data to drive analytics that determine pricing and using backdoors to spy on users and apps to evade control is just adding insult to injury.

But, should not the market self-regulate, and will there not be competition from other innovative companies? Let’s look at another part of the world for answers: Russia.

In Russia Uber was facing stiff competition from Yandex. Yandex is a Russia-based technology giant that dominates its home market in search, cloud services and ride hailing among other things.

Both companies have been using similar approaches to capture market share, resulting in driving prices down and owning a combined near 90% of the local market. Now Uber and Yandex Taxi have made a deal to work together, in essence forming a monopoly. What are the chances of anyone else, let alone independent drivers, competing in this landscape?

Greg Abovsky, Yandex CFO, responded to a request for comment by citing the deal is subject to approval by Russian regulators, and the argument is that since there is room for growth in the market this is not a monopoly.

Yandex is often called the Russian Google, and this does sound a bit like what Google would sound like if they said they are not a monopoly in search because more people will be searching online in the future.

First mover advantage in the big data and AI age will be tremendously important if left unchecked. There’s an interesting implication of this however. These technologies will make the market smarter and make it possible to plan and predict market forces so as to allow us to finally achieve a planned economy.

If you’re wondering where such a bold claim may be coming from, it’s none other than Jack Ma, the founder of another one in the league of giants: Alibaba. Companies of this caliber already dwarf governments in nearly every aspect, including their ability to gather and process data.

Some economists argue that the online platform monopolies resemble central planning institutions, so it would be more “legitimate and rational” for the state to become a “super-monopoly” platform.

This may sound scary and big-brother-ish. But before we get lost in the arguments in favor of one or the other monopoly, let’s think about the real issue: allegiance and control. Where does corporate allegiance lay, and how much control do we have over it? Then what about the state?

In a world that is increasingly becoming data-driven, reinventing algorithms and institutions seems like more than a realistic option – it seems inevitable. The real question is by whom, and for whom. If we want to be actors and citizens rather than users and consumers, it’s time we reinvented our collective identity and started taking control.

This assassination of character is what we should be really worried about.

This article was first published as Keep on Uberin the free world, on the Linked Data Orchestration blog.

Photo by marki1983

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With 7.1 million workers engaged in ‘precarious’ employment and 77 per cent of the self-employed living in poverty, the report ‘Working Together: Trade Union and Co-operative Innovations for Precarious Work’ calls for increased protection for those operating in the so-called gig economy.  

“Not only do they have almost no security, but while the average employed worker is losing out year by year in real terms, the self-employed are doing even worse, earning less each year in cash terms,” said co-author Alex Bird. “1.7 million of those in precarious employment are earning less than the national minimum wage, with no real enforcement of the law, and the self-employed are not even covered by the existing legislation.”

There are solutions according to Working Together. The report, commissioned by Co-operatives UK and The Co-operative College, and supported by the Network for Social Change, Wales Co-operative Centre and the Institute for Solidarity Economics, identifies ‘co-operative solutions’ as well as partnerships with trade unions as a way of ensuring a fair deal for workers in an expanding gig economy.

It calls for the UK to replicate the ‘umbrella co-operative model’ for supporting freelancers and other precarious workers and points to Belgium-based SMart. The non-profit organisation enables precarious workers operating in the arts sector to obtain a range of welfare benefits – including unemployment benefit.

SMart also provides its 70,000 plus members with tax support and advice. Sarah de Heusch Ribassin, Project Officer for the Development Strategy Unit at Smart, said:

“Many of those who were self-employed found the legislation around taxes to be so complex and were afraid to do things wrong. SMart offered an alternative that meant they no longer had to worry about making errors that would affect their income.”

Working Together also identifies Indycube as a blueprint for how partnerships between trade union and co-operatives can flourish. Indycube is a rapidly growing network for freelancers and the self-employed and offers access to workspace in more than 30 locations, predominantly across Wales.

The not-for-profit co-operative works with the trade union Community to offer a range of benefits including advice on tax, insurance, pensions and employment law.

Mark Hooper, Founder of Indycube, sums up how the relationship with Community has developed. He said:

“We see this as the way to grow with Community’s resources, capacity and knowledge, and the plan provides an opportunity for third party representation of our self-employed members.

“On a practical level, freelancers often find themselves presented with complex contracts full of legal jargon, which can result in problematic agreements and issues with payment.

“Community’s legal team are able to advise on these sorts of documents which many independent workers wouldn’t otherwise be able to access. Likewise, Invoice Factoring is a service which is generally only available to bigger companies and organisations, but banding independent workers’ voices together and working in partnership with Community has allowed Indycube to secure access to Invoice Factoring services, effectively putting an end to late payments for our members.

“Fifty-one per cent of invoices are paid late, a figure we think is far too high, and Community’s support has enabled us to make progress in this area. Thanks to Community’s status as an established union, Indycube has been able to cement itself in the minds of policy-makers and others as a voice for the fast-growing group of independent workers.

“The more members we have, the stronger our collective voice, and the more work we can all do to make our futures better.”

Les Bayliss, National Officer and Head of Special Projects for Community, said: “Our partnership with Indycube is one of a number of newly developed initiatives where, as a trade union, we are reaching out to new workers in today’s world of work.

“We will continue to listen to and understand what they need from a trade union, providing support, representation, mediation and settlement. Working together we hope to develop a ‘one voice’ approach to the needs of self-employed, freelance workers, speaking out and campaigning on the issues that affect them most.

“As a trade union we will continue to learn from our new initiatives and our new members, building new alliances with others in the private, co-operative and not for profit sectors. We will reach out to workers by being relevant to them and their needs.”

The rise in the gig economy means businesses, trade unions and government must do more to protect workers according to Ed Mayo, secretary general of Co-operatives UK, the trade body that works to promote develop and unite co-operative enterprises. He said:

“The number of zero hours workers has increased by over 800,000 within the past decade. Some 77% of self-employed workers are living in poverty…

“These are incredible numbers. With increased precariousness comes the need for increased protection and support and we know that co-operatives and trade unions can be part of the solution to this growing need.”

Cilla Ross, Co-operative College Vice Principal and co-author of the report said,

“The experience of growing numbers of workers in education, from teachers in the compulsory (pre-16) sector through to further, higher and adult education, is one of casualisation and precarity. This report pulls together examples of how unions and co-ops are successfully working together and offers real solutions on how precarious work can be challenged.”

The full Working Together report can be viewed and downloaded here.

Additional Notes 

The Working Together report profiles a number of examples where trade unions and co-operatives are working together including:

Musicians Union (MU) and Musicians co-ops: Local Authority music service closure in 1998 led to the launch of Swindon Music Co-operative. The MU was an active supporter of the co-operative which is now the main provider of instrumental and vocal tuition in over 70 local schools. The co-op and trade union partnership has set up seven other musicians’ co-ops across England and Wales.

Actor Co-ops: There are 30 actors’ co-ops in England and Wales. Their development and success has been through a close working partnership over many years with the actors union, Equity. The partnership has secured workers’ rights through negotiated industry agreements.

Community Lives Consortium: This social care organisation has operated as a co-op since 2001. It provides housing and social care services for severely disabled adults in Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot. Unison has supported the development of the co-operative since 2001 and has a place on the board of directors.

Key findings and recommendations in the report include:

• Co-operative sector share of GDP is 2% in the UK while in Italy and other EU countries it is over 10%. There are only 474 worker co-ops in the UK versus over 23,000 worker and social co-ops in Italy where public policy support (including tax reliefs) and legislative changes in 1985 and 1991 have been transformative.
• A wider partnership with local authorities can make a real difference. Cities in the US are supporting programmes to establish an eco-system of support for co-operative development including legal and technical advice as well as enabling finance. Local government partnerships in Italy have assisted the significant growth of social co-operatives in the fields of social care and jobs for disadvantaged groups in the labour market.
• Platform co-operatives co-developed by trade unions and worker co-ops are emerging in the USA as an alternative to Uber. Other trade unions in the USA are working on Union Co-op platform solutions for childminders and district nurses. Union Co-op solutions like this are needed in the UK.
• Mutual guarantee societies were developed in Italy and considerably reduce the cost of development finance for co-operatives. 19 EU countries have adopted this innovation and the UK should do the same.
• Universal Basic Income could be introduced in the UK in tax neutral ways that would significantly benefit those in precarious work. Trade union interest in this reform is growing as an alternative to the widespread problems with Universal Credit.

About The Co-operative College, Co-operatives UK and Wales Co-operative Centre

The Co-operative College is an educational charity and has been a leading provider of education, training and research for the co-operative sector since 1919. As a membership based organisation, we work across the UK and internationally to promote co-operative values, ideas,  principles and practices. www.co-op.ac.uk

Wales Co-operative Centre is a co-operative development agency, working across Wales to promote social, financial and digital inclusion through a range of projects. For further information visit http://wales.coop.

Co-operatives UK is the network for Britain’s thousands of co-operatives. Together we work to promote, develop and unite member-owned businesses across the economy. From high street retailers to community owned pubs, fan owned football clubs to farmer controlled businesses, co-operatives are everywhere and together they are worth £37 billion to the British economy. www.uk.coop

For further information, please contact:

Dominic Mills:

Tel: 0161 2141767

Email: [email protected]

<small>Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-coffee-meeting-team-7096/</small>

The post The UK is failing its ‘precarious’ workers says new report appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Both off-line and online ‘on demand’ work is escalating – including a 10-fold increase in zero-hours contract work since 2006. There are 4.8 million self-employed (15 per cent of the workforce). Self-employment is also a pre-condition for gig economy jobs. Not surprisingly the growth of freelancing has expanded in a decade by over 1 million and two in three new jobs in the UK are being created by the self-employed. Jobs with limited rights are becoming the new normal.

The brave new world of on-demand work operates with no guaranteed hours, workplace or rates of pay and with risks and costs shifted from capital to labour. The median income for freelance workers and those on zero-hour contracts is 40 percent below the median of those in traditional employment. 77 per cent of the self-employed are in poverty with 1.7 million earning less than the national minimum wage.

As an expanding army of labour the self-employed will surpass the number of public sector workers during 2018. Crowd-sourced labour corporations are spreading to all services sectors, including: Deliveroo, Hermes and CitySprint for deliveries; MyBuilder and Handy for repairs, cleaning and gardening; TaskRabbit for odd jobs; Clickworker for office work; TeacherIn for supply teachers; SuperCarers for social care; and UpWork for higher skilled freelancers.

The profitability of the gig economy model is intrinsic to a design that saves 30% on labour cost overheads plus further savings on equipment, debt collection and insurance. Double standards are evident. Deliveroo in Germany and the Netherlands employs its riders and provides tools of the trade while UK riders have no such protection, provide their own bikes and are charged £150 for the company kit. Legal cases by UK trade unions challenging false self-employment by Uber, Deliveroo, CitySprint and others have secured ‘worker rights’ (including the minimum wage, holiday pay and sickness benefits) but the court decisions are subject to appeal.

Disruptive technology is ‘hollowing out’ corporations by eradicating conventional jobs and substituting casualised ones. Consequently the squeeze on real wages is greater today than any time since 1850. Between 2009 and 2015 the labour share of national income fell from 57 to 53 percent with a corresponding 4 percent increase to capital.

The mutual aid pushback historically by trade unions and co-ops against the unrestrained free market in the 1840s led to social justice solutions. A similar push back is kicking off today. Key innovations profiled include:

1. Freelance co-operatives have emerged in Europe in trades where self-employment is the norm. A good example is the network of 30 local actors co-ops in England and Wales. They collectively negotiate, manage and renew work contracts. Moreover they provide services complementary to the trade union bargaining services of Equity for the same members. Similarly there are 9 local Musicians co-ops in England and Wales that work collaboratively with the Musicians Union. A new co-op for educational psychologists has been set up backed by their trade union. There is enormous scope for more joint trade union and co-op partnerships like these and especially with the current growth in new freelance co-ops in the UK for tech workers, filmmakers, translators, interpreters, bakers and in many creative industries.

2. Business and employment co-operatives developed in France and Belgium during the 1990s. They provide a wide range of services that secure ‘worker rights’. Smart in Belgium with over 70,000 members is a good example. It handles for freelance members their invoicing and debt collection in ways that smooths out cash flow through guaranteed payment within seven days. Smart secures decent work by providing workspace, ongoing vocational education, equipment rentals and by managing social security arrangements to access benefit entitlements. Indycube a co-operative provider of workspace with more than 30 locations in England and Wales has formed a partnership with Community Union to develop a Smart solution for the UK. Smart co-ops have already been developed in seven other EU countries.

3. Social co-operatives developed first in Italy from the 1970s and operate in the fields of social care, community and public health, education and in the creation of employment for disadvantaged groups. In Italy they are supported by a national trade union agreement and provide services for over 5 million people with an annual turnover of more than €9 billion. The model has been developed in Canada, Japan, France, Spain, Portugal and other EU countries. There are a growing number of social co-operatives in England and Wales including Cartrefi Cymru Co-operative, Community Lives Consortium, the Foster Care Co-operative and CASA.

4. Union Co-op platforms are an emerging strategy aimed at advancing worker ownership and control in service industries. For example, the SEIU public services union in the USA is developing apps and a platform for community nurses and childminders. The CWA union in the USA, for example, has assisted taxi drivers in Denver to set up Union Taxi and Green Taxi co-ops and to become highly successful with their own apps. There is trade union support in the UK for developing apps with the highly successful Taxi co-ops (City Cabs and Central Taxis) in Edinburgh being a good example of partnership with Unite to negotiate rates and license conditions.

Supportive public policy and legislation is crucial for a transformative difference. The USA and the UK have weakly developed workplace co-operatives with less than 500 in each country. Italy by contrast has more than 24,000 worker co-ops and social co-ops that have created more than 827,000 jobs. This transformation was propelled both by legislation in 1985 (for worker co-ops) and 1991 (for social co-ops) and by public-co-op partnerships with local authorities. Italy has also pioneered innovations in co-operative capital funds and mutual guarantee societies that together make low-cost development equity and working capital readily accessible for workplace co-op development.

For a democratic sharing economy that is equitable for both workers and service users, a similar public policy framework is needed in the UK as well as an eco-system of local support including technical assistance, advice and co-operative finance tools. Our report shows how to connect these ways and means and highlights examples of emerging local authority strategic support for economic democracy solutions from New York to Bologna that should be pursued here.

Photo by DigitalMajority

The post Taking Joint Control – Trade Union and Co-operative Solutions for Decent Work appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Before we start talking about your book, can you tell us a bit about the context that prompted you to write it, and how it fits in your personal quest for understanding social change? I mean, can you say a few words about yourself, your engagement in green politics, and your work with OIKOS?

Twenty-five years ago, I started working as an academic researcher in the field of environmental philosophy and bioethics. With degrees in engineering and philosophy, I tried to understand the role of technology in how people shape their world and dominate nature, to analyse what the importance is of the dominant value system in a society. So, I learned how Modernity radically changed our relation with nature, which from then is an object we as subjects can dominate and manipulate. While this was a rewarding time, it was maybe my engineering background that made me feel that only writing articles and lecturing is not enough to stop the destruction of our living planet. So I joined the Green party and within a few years I first was elected as local councilor of the City of Ghent and subsequently as member of the Flemish Parliament. I learned that politics really matters, being in government we were able to introduce innovative changes in e.g. the care system and energy policy (a law as voted to close the nuclear plants the coming decades). At the same time I experienced that our representative democratic system, established in the 19th century, needs a thorough update. So the first book I wrote was about the need for Deliberative Democracy, acknowledging the value and importance of citizens engaging in an active dialogue.

After being a member of parliament, I founded the green foundation OIKOS, because I believe innovative ideas are the core fuel of societal change. You cannot develop new sustainable systems – think of mobility, energy or food- with old concepts. At the same I noticed how citizens are taking their future back in their hands, becoming from consumer producer again. These citizens’ collectives, commons, are the basis for what I see as the most promising actor of change in our current times.

Your book centers around the tension between freedom, which I read as individual freedom, and security, which I read as more of a collective reality. Can you describe how you see that tension and how you see it as resolvable or not.

In the dominant narrative of our society, we see freedom as an individual quality. But this creates the illusion that we are independent actors that can create our own future and lifeworld on our one. While freedom is maybe the most collective concept we now. How free is someone who is born in a poor country, without a decent educational system? What kind of choices (s)he can make? If freedom is the ability to influence the future development of our world, we can only do it if we work together. That was what the green thinker Ivan Illich meant with autonomy: ‘the joyful capacity to shape the world together’. Anyway, how free are we if the corporations and multinationals determine what we (can) buy. Everyday, we see thousands of advertisements and marketings signals (like logos). Do you really think they don’t influence us in a profound way? So the paradox is that enhancing you personal freedom is working together to change the environment you live. Like the Green mayor of Grenoble did, but getting rid of advertisements boards in public spaces and streets.

Does our welfare system have to change, and if so, how so.

Our current welfare system was built on the assumption of full employment with man working 40 hours a week, staying 40 years with the same employer, in the framework of a decent fiscal system with rich people and big companies paying the fair share of taxes. No need to say that our society has changed in many fundamental ways.

We need what I call a new ‘security package’ for the 21th century, empowering people and allowing them to enrich their community and society. This package is based on the fact that there are three different kinds of work: next to our job, the paid work, there is the care work we do while raising kids, cooking at home etc. and also autonomous work, things we find important, like establishing with people in your town a commons, think about an energy co-op or growing vegetables together. If our goal is a good life for all, we have to make sure people can combine these types of work in a relaxed way. Hence, I suggest the combination of a shorter working week of 30 hours with a universal basic income of 500 euros that for low and middle incomes compensates for the lower salary, in combination with an affordable education and health system.

The number of hours, 30 a week, is not randomly chosen. It is the weekly number most women work who have to combine their job with their family work and personal development. I see the ‘security package’ as a transition model, in the evolution towards a social-ecological society. The more things we do in our autonomous work, products and services who are cheaper and last longer than produced by corporations – think about Wikipedia or platform co-ops for car sharing – will enable to live better with less buying power, allowing to maybe lower the normal working week to 21 hours, as the New Economics Foundation proposes.

What I found very useful in your book is the historical context you are offering about how current social movements, and the surge for the commons in particular, are related to the earlier struggles post-1968. Can you elaborate a bit?

Big corporations – think about Apple – want to make us believe that they invented all the new stuff in our society. Mariana Mazzucato has in a convincing way shown that corporations only can make these products and profits because governments invested loads of money in research and development. On top of this, I want to add that quite a lot of crucial innovations where introduced not by companies or public authorities, but by citizens’ initiatives. Who build for instance the first wind mill to start the transition towards a renewable energy system? It where villagers in the north of Denmark in the 1970’s. Who invented the recycle or thrift shop, the starting point for the circular economy: wise citizens in the Netherlands. The same goes for sharing, with people in Amsterdam experimenting with a bike sharing system, already in the mid 1960’s? These initiatives are part of a broader emancipatory movement with a lot new social movements..

Overall, the emancipatory movement wanted to create more space for citizens by reducing the reach of the state, other traditional structures and multinationals. Looking back, we can say that this movement has been successful, but did not achieve its goal. This is connected with the greater success of the neoliberal freedom concept. This concept of freedom succeeded in reducing the build-up of identity into an individualistic project, where consumption plays a crucial role.

How did it happen? The 1980s and 1990s are the battleground of these two freedom-based concepts. A crucial difference lies in scale: while businesses are organised worldwide, this is less evident for new civil movements and unions. Only the anti-globalisation movement would later bundle forces across borders. Meanwhile, large corporations have taken up the free space for the most part.

A second explanation concerns the evolution of most of the new social movements. Starting mostly from a position of a radical critique, professionalisation and building a relationship with mainstream politicians leads to a pragmatic attitude. Proposals must now be feasible within the framework of the current policy. The increasing dependency on subsidies of many non-governmental organisations has sometimes led to uncritical inscription into government policy options. As said, at the same time, more and more citizens were seduced by the neoliberal narrative that a good life means work hard, earn money and spent it all to be happy. If you don’t feel well, just buy a ticket for a wellness club.

The biggest financial crisis since the 1930’s, which started ten years ago, changed everything again. The crisis is a real wake-up call for a lot of citizens, they realize that if they want a sustainable future for their children, they have to build it themselves. So, we see all over the world a new wave of citizens’ initiatives, rediscovering the emancipatory concept of freedom and autonomy. A crucial difference is that we know live in the age of internet, lowering the transaction costs of cooperation dramatically. What was very hard to realize in the post-68 period, e.g. sharing cars in a neighborhood, is now a piece of cake with digital platforms.

What can we learn from this history? That if social movements want to be successful in a globalized world, they also have to build translocal and transnational networks. It for instance makes no sense that in ten cities in the world, people are trying to build their own digital platform as an alternative for companies like Airbnb or Uber. Transnational networks of commons cities can be the fundament of a new governance model in the future.

Do you have a prescription for our future, and a way to get there? Also to which degree does your book also apply to non-European or non-Western countries?

I don’t have of course the prescription for our future, what I did in preparing my book was observing society carefully, looking for the places and processes of hope. I found two very relevant developments: citizens starting new collective initiatives, commons, for the production of sustainable products and services, and local governments implementing very ambitious policy plans in fields like climate, energy, food and mobility policy.

Slowly but surely, there is a new range of autonomous activities that together form a transformational movement towards a socio-ecological society. It is important to note that we are not only talking about small or isolated projects. Take, for instance, the 20 majestic wind turbines at the coastline of Copenhagen. This project was started by a group of habitants of the city who developed the idea and went with it to their Minister of Energy. Instead of refusing or taking it over, the government decided to start a co-creation process. Civil servants give technical and judicial advice. Half of the shares were owned by a citizens’ co-op, after completion, thousands of families every year receive a financial dividend. Similarly, following the Energiewende in Germany, half of the renewable energy installations are owned by citizens and their co-ops. Even in smaller towns, governments support the local population in setting up renewable energy projects. This adds up to really big business. So, citizens and local governments really can make a difference, and build together the counter current.

My book starts from the history and developments in Europe, so I am really modest on what it has to say to other continents. At the same time, I see the same developments in cities all over the world. There I think the crucial concept of action developed in my book based on the work of André Gorz, revolutionary reformism, really can be very useful. It answers the question how to move a step further, beyond all the individual great citizens’ initiatives and local policy proposals.

The two concepts are each in themselves insufficient. A political revolution that will change everything for good at once – we should not hope for that. And a few reforms of the existing system will not lead to a real structural change. For example, while it’s good that people share cars, this alone will not lead us to sustainable accessibility and mobility. This needs strategic cooperation and planning.

Revolutionary reformism can be defined as a chain of far-reaching reforms that complement and strengthen each other and, at the same time, raise political awareness. In system terms, it is a matter of implementing reforms that are complementary and reinforce each other. This will generate synergy and even positive feedback: virtuous circles. For example, in progressive cities like Ghent you see the establishment of commons if the field of renewable energy, mobility, food, etc. But for most of them they don’t cooperate beyond the borders of their domain. Imagine a food coop distributing their food boxes by another commons specialized in delivery by electric bikes, that in turn only uses green energy produced by the urban energy coop. When they then, supported by the local government, introduce and use the same local currency for connecting their economic transactions, you put in motion a chain in action that will reinforce itself. It is this kind of thinking and action that is crucial for the future, and can be useful all over the world.

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New Economics Foundation: 

• Four-fifths of Uber customers would use an ethical alternative – and over half would pay a higher fare to do so
• App-based companies like Uber and Deliveroo are facing multiple legal challenges relating to the treatment of their workers
• The New Economics Foundation is developing an ethical, driver-owned alternative to Uber to combat the trend toward insecure and precarious work.

New polling shows that 82% of Uber customers would likely use an alternative service with better rights for drivers.

According to the BMG poll [2] commissioned by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Left Foot Forward, 54% of Uber customers would be willing to pay more for their journey if it meant that drivers got a fairer deal.

This follows news that app-based companies like Uber and Deliveroo are facing multiple legal challenges relating to the treatment of their workers. While some workers in the gig economy say they enjoy the flexibility offered by these companies, many are campaigning for basic working rights including regular contracted hours, holiday and sick pay.

The UK’s gig economy is expanding rapidly, and a large section of the country’s workforce are already in jobs that fail to meet even basic employment rights. In London, the number of gig economy workers in the transport sector has grown by 82% since 2010, according to recent analysis of new Government data [3] by the New Economics Foundation [4].

At the same time, the number of Londoners working for companies in the conventional transport sector has dropped by 9%. This suggests an ever greater proportion of Londoners are moving into insecure and precarious work.

Recent research by the New Economics Foundation found that two in five people in the UK workforce are stuck in ‘bad jobs’ where they face insecure working conditions, are paid below the Living Wage, or both [5].

The latest findings come as the New Economics Foundation works to develop an alternative to Uber in the capital – a driver-owned platform app, provisionally called CabFair.

Stefan Baskerville, Director of Unions and Business at the New Economics Foundation, said:

These results show there is a strong demand for a more ethical alternative to Uber. The gig economy is employing more and more people, but there’s a huge imbalance of power. Customers want a fairer deal for cab drivers and many are prepared to pay a little more to ensure this.

At the New Economics Foundation we are seeking to develop a new ride-hailing app, owned by its employees and which would give a fair deal to both drivers and passengers. We want our alternative to keep transport accessible, low-cost, fast and easy for all.

We are working with trade unionists, tech partners and passengers to build something better than Uber – a driver-owned alternative that is just as convenient and competitive on price, but treats its passengers and drivers with respect.

We hope the new service will put drivers and customers firmly in control.

Josiah Mortimer, Editor of Left Foot Forward, said:

Clearly there is a huge appetite for a ride-hailing app which respects workers’ rights, and gives a fair deal to drivers. Londoners want reasonable fares – but they don’t want to throw their morals out in the process.

In the wake of Sadiq Khan’s decision to revoke Uber’s licence, this should sound the alarm for Uber to up their game when it comes to giving drivers decent pay and proper employment rights.

There’s some real competition on the way, which could be a game-changer for the industry. Rather than throwing ethics by the wayside, Uber and other ride-hailing companies should take note.

Notes to editors

1. The New Economics Foundation is the UK’s only people-powered think tank. The Foundation works to build a new economy where people really take control. www.neweconomics.org
2. Source note: BMG interviewed a representative sample of 1,509 adults living in Great Britain between 5th and 8th December. Data are weighted. BMG are members of the British polling council and abide by their rules. Full details atwww.bmgresearch.co.uk/polling. The questions asked were: ‘If there was an alternative to Uber that offered drivers greater employment rights, how likely would you be to use it?’ And ‘If there was an alternative to Uber that offered drivers greater employment rights, how likely would you be to use it, even if this meant paying higher fares?’ All respondents who answered ‘very likely’ or ‘fairly likely’ are categorised as being ‘likely’. The sample was of around 300 Uber users, with statistically significant results.
3. Data sourced from BEIS Business population estimates as published on 30th November 2017. Available at:https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2017
4. Methodology: The UK government does not directly publish figures on the size or growth of those working in the gig economy. The methodology used in these calculations has been adopted from the Brookings Institute, whereby “businesses” with no employees are used as a proxy for the gig economy: https://www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-the-gig-economy-new-numbers/. These “businesses” are often people who are effectively self-employed and being paid on a job-by-job basis. These figures also include those who have set up their own businesses but have not yet grown to employ staff. However, it is very unlikely that such cases could account for the dramatic increases in recent years. Analysis of similar trends in the US have found the growth of non-employer businesses tracks the adoption of platform economies in different cities.   https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-gig-economy-is-real-if-you-know-where-to-look . The calculations for London’s transport sector refer to SIC code H: Transportation and Storage. This category includes taxi services and couriers. A full list can be found here: https://www.siccode.co.uk/section/h
5. See http://neweconomics.org/2017/08/bad_jobs/

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1/ The current legislation under review by the European Commission’s Digital Single Market Strategy regarding “neighboring rights”, to be voted on by the European Parliament in late March 2018, has little if anything to do with author rights

2/ All arguments about protecting revenue streams for publishers indicate that the true purpose is to fortify the rights of publishers (who have arrogated to themselves the rights of authors)

3/ The arguments from the public domain side against this legislation are equally problematic and suspect for the same reason that author rights are not part of the rationale for propping up the knowledge commons against the disputed proprietary rights of publishers

4/ The central issue, which is also hidden in plain sight, is – after all – the moral rights of authors (“Lockean natural rights”) as established in the Enlightenment and as enshrined in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886)

5/ Both the EC and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) have shown no interest in addressing this set of rights, given the inherent abstract nature of such rights and given that both are operating on behalf of industry in a global IP campaign that resembles the “weaponizing” of IP rights

6/ Given that economic data (or any empirical proof) confirming that free copying of works or appropriation by platform cultures benefits the author is impossible to produce, whether justified through the murky term “transformative use” or “discoverability”, all such arguments, as used on both sides of the debate (by publishers to e-license copyrighted works and by advocates of Open Access to justify authors giving their works away for nothing) devolve to mere speculation based on the bias of the beneficiaries

7/ Given the origin of copyright in the Venetian Renaissance, via the granting of privilegio to authors for books published in the Republic of Venice, and given the almost immediate arrogation of privilegio by printer-publishers in the Republic of Venice, the arguments associated with “neighboring rights” today merely revisit historic arguments waged then against the damage done to authors and presses through illegal copying

8/ What has not advanced, and what needs to be fully disclosed, is how mass digitalization from both sides of this battleground has forced the lion’s share of authors today into a class conveniently labeled the “precariat” by critics of capitalism for the benefit of a global “vectorial class”

9/ What is less obvious regarding this widening chasm between the precariat and the vectorial class is that almost all academic proponents of fortifying the knowledge commons through an enforced neoliberalized open-access regime for scholarly works are part of the global vectorial class by virtue of participation in the production of platform cultures that decimate author rights from the so-called non-profit side, while “Capital” takes care of the destruction of author rights on the for-profit side

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