The Gig Economy is increasingly seen to reward hustle, flexibility, autonomy, specialised skills, deep expertise, or in-demand experience and creative abilities along with entrepreneurial work formats that demand skills such as comfort with developing income streams, marketing and connecting yourself to gig offers. The gig economy offers both good and bad jobs and opens new opportunities—but also exploits workers. Therefore, it’s imperative to identify vulnerable categories, areas and scopes of intervention to inform regulatory responses and frameworks within the emerging Gig Economy, especially in the developing nations.
The gig economy’s disruptive force (much celebrated in its early days) comes from a distinction that they establish between independent contractors and employees. The contractual distinction has played a critical role in the digital economy at large and regulation of gig economy. Globally, the phenomenon has been described as a weakening of labour market standards because increasingly complex supply chains and sub-contracting makes it hard to enforce protections. However, without doing so, we cannot combat the increasing levels of inequality and instability in the labour market where the legal distinctions between employees and independent contracts play out as a constant state of trade-offs in standards such as guaranteed minimum wages, regulated hours of work, healthcare and other benefits.
The expansion of the gig economy within developing countries has been the product of a steady rise in adoption of tech-enabled platforms as a consistent labour trend. An overview of the issues at play across different labour markets would help us pre-empt a mid-ground and try to imagine what the new industry standard and a 21st century work contract could look like. Consequently, a responsive but sound regulatory model can be predicted to emerge at the intersection of legal innovation to redefine labour rights and corporate organisational innovation. The impact on our cultural, social and economic lives has caught the interest of economists and policy makers over the last five years and most recently in the post-pandemic context where the severe economic implications for informal labour has become an important political concern. Therefore, policy makers must acknowledge the strong dual tone of challenge and opportunities, noting in particular, that areas of sustainable opportunity will overlap with the fault lines of the labour crisis and vulnerable categories on a global scale.
In the post-pandemic world, there is a reported post-pandemic surge in the adoption of ‘Gig Economy’ style work globally, the uptake is also supported by the realities of radical ‘behavioural’ changes and shifting attitudes towards flexible work necessitated by physical distancing. Together, the shift in perception presents a significant opportunity for tech-enabled augmentation of vulnerable labour categories at scale. The development of digital platforms may fuel growth in the market for individual services. In recent years, the adoption rates of digital technology has seen a growth trajectory that is expected to continue if not accelerate in the post pandemic economy. Over the last decade, digital platforms were poised to fuel growth in the market for individual services globally. This trend will only spike upwards while dealing with the adaptation of work behaviours in response to physical distancing.
In an era of accelerating automation, technology is often blamed for exacerbating strains in the labour market. However, there is no question that Online Platforms are fundamentally altering the way in which individuals search for work and the way employers approach hiring and skill development. Undoubtedly, tech platforms have a unique opportunity to be a proven part of the solution to the ‘future of work’ problem. Shared platforms have a lot to offer in a new paradigm that increasingly embraces the digital and the risk perceptions of tech-enabled work environments. Hence, the topmost priority for tech companies will be to distinguish its internal policies for benefits and incentives for full time employees versus contractual workers. Florian Schmidt states how a key opportunity would be to set industry standards for ‘decent work’ with relevant labour categories. Thus, it is recommended that the companies take a look at workforce composition across highly skilled, administrative support staff and customer services to device targeted incentives and benefits.
Since the Gig Economy is guaranteed to bring about a systemic overhaul in the future of work, it is postulated that labour-centric analytic frameworks serve dual functions as the need of the hour in the political context and a potential blueprint for intervention design. While the perception of the Gig Economy is rapidly shifting away from reluctance, adoption is being driven up by realities of a political economy necessitating physical distancing. Thus, ‘appropriate classification’ with reference to labour (worker/employee) categories and ensuing costs, benefits and protections is a key theme in the current regulatory ecosystem and will serve as the foundation of any corporate or government intervention in this new economy.
