OMS 405
Senior Capstone on the Gig Economy
Reading List (version 2.0; v. 1.0 here)
Prof. Alice Brawley Newlin, Gettysburg College, Fall 2018
(see syllabus here)
1. What is gig work? (Aug 29)
- Alternative work arrangements: Two images of the new world of work (Spreitzer, Cameron, & Garrett, 2017)
- Micro-entrepreneurs, dependent contractors, and instaserfs: Understanding online labor platform workforces (Kuhn & Maleki, 2017)
- Organization theory and the dilemmas of a post-corporate economy (Davis, 2016)
- Moneyish: Soon more people will be driving Ubers and renting out Airbnbs than working in finance (Pesce, 2017) https://moneyish.com/ish/soon-more-people-will-be-driving-ubers-and-renting-out-airbnbs-than-working-in-finance/
2. This ain’t a new problem, folks!
2a. Some historical and big picture perspective (the changing nature of work) (Sept 3)
- The legal context of the management of human resources (Murphy, 2018), pp. 2-5 (“Historical Context”) and pp. 16-17 (“Who is an Employee…?”)
- Labour is not a technology: Reasserting the Declaration of Philadelphia in times of platform-work and gig-economy (de Stefano, 2017), pp. 4-6 (Section 2. “Uber: Digital service…?”) and pp. 8-14 (Sections 4 and 5)
2b. A primer on employee classification, taxes, and tax forms (Sept 10)
- IRS standards for self-employment https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/independent-contractor-self-employed-or-employee
- Forms and Associated Taxes for Independent Contractors https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/forms-and-associated-taxes-for-independent-contractors
- DOL FLSA Fact Sheet: “Am I An Employee?” https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs13.htm
- Gettysburg College: Independent contractor or employee http://www.gettysburg.edu/dotAsset/a9759b9a-8860-44fc-b296-4dfb76b211c1.doc
- Making Money on Youtube and Paying Taxes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdpiYnIPB4w
- Sundararajan, 2016, The Sharing Economy Ch. 8 “The Future of Work: What Needs to Be Done,” pp. 177-192
2c. Employee classification in light of the gig economy (Sept 10)
- NY Times: How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons (Scheiber, 2017) nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/uber-drivers-psychological-tricks.html?_r=0
2d. Recent rulings, etc. (Sept 12) – pick any two
- AP: NYC drivers for Uber, other apps to get vision care coverage (Matthews, 2018) https://www.apnews.com/39270aa6dabf484688d179c894ccad77
- CBS: Thousands of Uber drivers to get settlement checks https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thousands-of-uber-drivers-to-get-settlement-checks/
- Cullinane v. Uber Technologies, Inc., No. 16-2023 (1st Cir. 2018) https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca1/16-2023/16-2023-2018-06-25.html
- Fisher Phillips: Another gig economy misclassification win delivered in New York, this time for Postmates (Meneghello, 2018) https://www.fisherphillips.com/gig-employer/another-gig-economy-misclassification-win-delivered-in
- Fisher Phillips: State court concludes ABC test should be applied retroactively (Meneghello, 2018) https://www.fisherphillips.com/gig-employer/state-court-concludes-abc-test-should-be
- GMB: GMB scores landmark win against Hermes (GMB, 2018) http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/gmb-hermes-win
- Independent: Union defeats Deliveroo in latest round of gig economy rights case (Chapman, 2018) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/deliveroo-riders-rights-job-employment-union-case-gig-economy-iwgb-a8400336.html
- Politico: Uber loses a ‘precedential’ victory, and some New York state drivers win ’employee’ status (Rubinstein, 2018) https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2018/07/18/uber-loses-a-precedential-victory-and-some-new-york-state-drivers-win-employee-status-518782
- Reuters: San Francisco subpoenas Uber, Lyft on driver classification (Somerville, 2018) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ridehailing-sanfrancisco/san-francisco-subpoenas-uber-lyft-on-driver-classification-idUSKCN1IU2IX
- State of New York Unemployment Insurance Appeal filing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8j6gW0YxEa7R19FaF80aDBtVWlpMGFVOTAzcVVHNS1GZVdJ/view
- The Conversation: Why gig workers may be worse off after the Fair Work Ombudsman’s action against Foodora https://theconversation.com/why-gig-workers-may-be-worse-off-after-the-fair-work-ombudsmans-action-against-foodora-98242
- The Hill: Uber to pay $10 million to settle discrimination case (Breland, 2018) http://thehill.com/policy/technology/380550-uber-to-pay-10-million-settlement-in-employee-discrimination-case
- The New York Times: New York City considers new pay rules for Uber drivers (Fitzsimmons & Scheiber, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/nyregion/uber-drivers-pay-nyc.html
- ArsTechnica: GrubHub “gig economy” trial ends with judge calling out plaintiff’s lies (Mullin, 2017) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/grubhub-gig-economy-trial-ends-with-judge-calling-out-plaintiffs-lies/
- Bloomberg: U. S. Labor Board Complaint Says On-Demand Cleaners Are Employees (Eidelson, 2017) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-31/u-s-labor-board-complaint-says-on-demand-cleaners-are-employees
- Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S222732.PDF
- London @Uber drivers are workers: summary & analysis of today’s Employment Appeal Tribunal decision #ukemplaw #gigwork Thread. 1/n (Prassl, 2017) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/928999294933327872.html
- NY Times: Uber dealt setback after European court rules it is a taxi service (Alderman, 2017) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/business/uber-europe-ecj.html
- NY Times: Uber drivers ruled eligible for jobless payments in New York state (Scheiber, 2016) https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/business/state-rules-2-former-uber-drivers-eligible-for-jobless-payments.html
- NY Times: Uber hit with cap as New York City takes lead in crackdown (Fitzsimmons, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/nyregion/uber-vote-city-council-cap.html
- O’Connor v. Uber http://uberlitigation.com/index.php
- Quartz: Uber said raising driver pay couldn’t be done. That’s about to change (Griswold, 2018) https://qz.com/1350905/uber-drivers-are-about-to-get-a-minimum-wage-in-nyc/
- San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco to Uber, Lyft: Tell us what drivers earn (Said, 2018) https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/San-Francisco-to-Uber-Lyft-Tell-us-what-drivers-12951396.php
- Sky News: Taxi app Uber places limit on driver hours (Staton, 2018) https://news.sky.com/story/taxi-app-uber-places-limit-on-driver-hours-11210378
3. Exploring platforms
3a. Student mini-presentations on selected various platforms (in class Sept 17-19), to possibly include: 99Designs, Airbnb, AirGarage, Airport Sherpa, Band of Hands, CAD Crowd, Challenge.gov, Chaordix, ClickWorker, Craiglist, CrowdSpring, DesignCrowd, Doctor on Demand, Etsy,Eyeka, Figure Eight (formerly CrowdFlower), Fiverr, Freelancer, Guerra-Creativa, Guru, Idea Connection, IdeaScale, InnoCentive, Instcart, Kaggle, Lyft, Microworkers, NineSigma, People PerHour, Rover, Silk Road, TaskRabbit, Topcoder, Toptal, Thumbtack, Twitch, Uber, Upwork, YourMechanic, Youtube, ZOOPPA… (any platform but MTurk)
3b. Limits of uberization? (Sept 24)
- The Policy and Internet Blog: The limits of uberization: How far can platforms go? (Lehdonvirta, 2016) http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/policy/the-limits-of-uberization-how-far-can-platforms-go/
- HuffPost: High Tech Comes to the Sex Worker Industry (Spieler, 2017) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/high-tech-comes-to-the-sex-worker-industry_us_59ab4d9de4b0bef3378cd935
- Business Insider: An umbrella-sharing startup unintentionally gave away 300,000 free umbrellas (Weller, 2017) http://www.businessinsider.com/umbrella-sharing-startup-loses-300000-umbrellas-2017-7
3c. Organizing what we know so far about gig work platforms (Sept 24)
- The Sharing Economy (Sundararajan, 2016), Ch. 3 “Platforms: Under the Hood”
4. Being a gig worker
4a. Who gig works? (Sept 26)
- Gig workers in America: Profiles, mindsets, and financial wellness (Prudential Financial, 2017) http://research.prudential.com/documents/rp/Gig_Economy_Whitepaper.pdf
- Upwork: Freelancing in America 2017 https://www.upwork.com/press/2017/10/17/freelancing-in-america-2017/
4b. Firsthand experience (Oct 1)
- “Being an MTurk Worker” participation prep assignment
4c. Secondhand experiences (Oct 1-3)
- PBS NewsHour (2015) “Inside the world of a Mechanical Turker” (4:43)
- Wired: The crazy hacks one woman used to make money on Mechanical Turk (Kessler, 2018) https://www.wired.com/story/the-crazy-hacks-one-woman-used-to-make-money-on-mechanical-turk/
- Note to Self: “Meet the humans who protect your eyes” – interview with Rochelle LaPlante (audio, 23:45) https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/moderating-content-facebook/
5. Measuring the gig economy
5a. Variations in findings (Oct 3)
- BLS: Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements, May 2017 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.nr0.htm
- Aspen Institute: Five takeaways from the 2017 Contingent Worker Supplement (Fitzpayne, Steward, & Pollack, 2018) https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/five-takeaways-from-2017-contingent-worker-supplement/
- BLS: “Electronically mediated employment” portion of the May 2017 Contingent Worker Supplement https://www.bls.gov/cps/electronically-mediated-employment.htm
- For analysis and discussion in-class (randomly assigned one):
- Online labour index: Measuring the online gig economy for policy and research (Kassi & Lehdonvirta, in press) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162518301331
- Pew: Gig work, online selling and home sharing http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/17/gig-work-online-selling-and-home-sharing/
- Pew: Sharing and on-demand services attract a small but active group of ‘super users’ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/30/sharing-and-on-demand-services-attract-a-small-but-active-group-of-super-users/
- Pew: Shared, Collaborative and On Demand: The New Digital Economy http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/05/19/the-new-digital-economy/
- Pew: On-demand: Ride-hailing apps http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/05/19/on-demand-ride-hailing-apps/
5b. Limitations of measurement methods (in class Oct 3)
- BLS: Frequently asked questions about data on electronically mediated employment https://www.bls.gov/cps/electronically-mediated-employment-faqs.htm
6. Worker issues
6a. Benefits (Oct 10)
- Futurism: People in two U.S. states will get $1,000 a month in a new basic income trial (Jones, 2017) https://futurism.com/people-in-two-u-s-states-will-get-1000-a-month-in-a-new-basic-income-trial/
- Fisher Phillips: Can gig businesses offer benefits to their workers? Recent developments may shed light on answer (Smith, 2017) https://www.fisherphillips.com/gig-employer/can-gig-businesses-offer-benefits-to-workers
- The Finnish experiment (30:00 audio, 99 Percent Invisible episode #276, 2017) https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-finnish-experiment/
- Etsy: Economic Security for the Gig Economy (2016) https://extfiles.etsy.com/advocacy/Etsy_EconomicSecurity_2016.pdf
- Bregman, 2017, Utopia for Realists chapter “The Bizarre Tale of President Nixon and His Basic Income Bill,” pp. 115-131
6b. Occupational health (Oct 15)
- Finding meaning in a hopeless place? The construction of meaningfulness in digital microwork (Kost, Fieseler, & Wong, 2018) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563218300025
- Polygon: YouTube’s top creators are burning out and breaking down en masse (Alexander, 2018) https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/1/17413542/burnout-mental-health-awareness-youtube-elle-mills-el-rubius-bobby-burns-pewdiepie
- The New York Times: Another taxi driver in debt takes his life. That’s 5 in 5 months. (Stewart & Ferre-Sadurni, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/nyregion/taxi-driver-suicide-nyc.html
6c. Collaborative efforts (Oct 15)
- The crowd is a collaborative network (Gray, Suri, Ali, & Kulkarni, 2016) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/collab_paper21.pdf
6d. Collective action: Unions? Manifestos? Protests? (Oct 22)
- Algorithms that divide and unite: Delocalisation, identity and collective action in ‘microwork’ (Lehdonvirta, 2016)
- Quartz: The gig economy is a disaster for workers. Hollywood’s unions can help them learn to fight back (Fortuna, 2017) https://qz.com/1052310/hollywood-unions-offer-the-perfect-model-for-the-beaten-down-workers-of-todays-gig-economy/
- We are Dynamo http://www.wearedynamo.org/
- On Labor Blog: Uber, Lyft & Airbnb Respond to Trump’s Muslim Ban (Weinberg, 2017) https://onlabor.org/gig-news-uber-lyft-airbnb-respond-to-trumps-muslim-ban/
- Evening Standard: Uber drivers ‘working together to drive up prices’ (Gillett, 2017) https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/revealed-how-uber-drivers-work-together-to-drive-up-prices-a3601806.html
7. Fairness
7a. Defining fairness (in class Oct 24-29)
7b. Ratings – general intro (Oct 24)
- Buzzfeed: That four-star rating you left could cost your Uber driver her job (O’Donovan, 2017) https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/the-fault-in-five-stars
7c. Discrimination in ratings (Oct 24)
- Skim this article for main points only: Simulation experiments on (the absence of) ratings bias in reputation systems (Thebault-Spieker et al., 2017) http://www.brenthecht.com/publications/cscw2018pacm_ratingsbias.pdf
- Discriminating tastes: Uber’s customer ratings as vehicles for workplace discrimination (Rosenblat, Levy, Barocas, & Hwang, 2017)
- The Conversation: The gig economy may strengthen the ‘invisible advantage’ men have at work (Galperin, 2018) http://theconversation.com/the-gig-economy-may-strengthen-the-invisible-advantage-men-have-at-work-86444
- Prompt: What features would a “perfect” rating system for Uber have? What changes would you make to the existing system to achieve this?
7d. Pay (Oct 29)
- Skim this article for main points only: The gender earnings gap in the gig economy: Evidence from over a million rideshare drivers (Cook, Diamond, Hall, List, & Oyer, 2018) https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf
7e. Discrimination in access (Oct 29)
- Racial and gender discrimination in transportation network companies (NBER Working Paper; Ge, Knittel, MacKenzie, & Zoepf, 2016) http://www.nber.org/papers/w22776
- Racial discrimination in the sharing economy: Evidence from a field experiment (Edelman, Luca, & Svirsky, 2017) http://www.benedelman.org/publications/airbnb-guest-discrimination-2016-09-16.pdf
- #airbnbwhileblack: How hidden bias shapes the sharing economy (25:06 audio; NPR Hidden Brain, 2016) https://www.npr.org/2016/04/26/475623339/-airbnbwhileblack-how-hidden-bias-shapes-the-sharing-economy
- NY Times: Unemployed Detroit residents are trapped by a digital divide (Kang, 2016) https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/technology/unemployed-detroit-residents-are-trapped-by-a-digital-divide.html
8. “Bigger picture” impacts of the gig economy
8a. Housing (Oct 31)
- Reuters: Airbnb, NYC settle rental lawsuit (Raymond, 2016) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-new-york/airbnb-new-york-city-settle-rental-law-lawsuit-idUSKBN13S03U
- CBC: Toronto tackles long-term rental supply with new Airbnb rules (Rieti, 2017) http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/council-airbnb-vote-1.4437321
8b. Artificial intelligence (Oct 31)
- Bloomberg: The Future of AI Depends on a Huge Workforce of Human Teachers (Hutson, 2017) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/the-future-of-ai-depends-on-a-huge-workforce-of-human-teachers
- The Guardian: Uber plans to buy 24,000 autonomous Volvo SUVs in race for driverless future (Gibbs, 2017) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/20/uber-volvo-suv-self-driving-future-business-ride-hailing-lyft-waymo
8d. Marrying traditional business and the gig economy (Nov 5)
- The Verge: Uber is testing an on-demand staffing business called Uber Works (O’Kane, 2018) https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/10/18/17995398/uber-works-staffing-business-test-trial
- The Washington Post: Liquor, home, hobbies and cars — an obsessively detailed look at sectors that are surviving the retail apocalypse (Van Dam, 2018) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/06/liquor-home-hobbies-and-cars-an-obsessively-detailed-look-at-sectors-that-are-surviving-the-retail-apocalypse/
- WSJ: MTA blames Uber for decline in New York City subway, bus ridership (Berger, 2018) https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/mta-blames-uber-for-decline-in-new-york-city-subway-bus-ridership-1532386865
- HBR Ideacast: “The Era of Agile Talent” (13:00 audio) https://soundcloud.com/hbrideacast/534-the-era-of-agile-talent
- Gizmodo: Ikea Just Bought… TaskRabbit? (Estes, 2017) https://gizmodo.com/ikea-just-bought-taskrabbit-1818964095
9. Is the gig economy good?
9a. “Good”? (Nov 7)
- Huffington Post: Uber and Lyft plan to offer free and discounted rides on election day (Barden, 2018) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/uber-lyft-free-election-day-rides_us_5bc41a38e4b040bb4e83a8ce
- The Daily Yonder: Making it easier to get transportation to rural health care (Seligman, 2018) http://www.dailyyonder.com/transportation-to-rural-health-care/2018/07/02/26305/
- Fast Co: The Airbnb for affordable housing is here (Schwab, 2017) https://www.fastcodesign.com/90151804/the-airbnb-for-affordable-housing-is-here
- Miami Herald: Airbnb homes in north Florida and Georgia welcoming Irma evacuees — for free (Herrera, 2017) http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricane/article171853352.html
- Houston Chron: I downloaded an app. And suddenly, was part of the Cajun Navy. (Hartman, 2017) http://www.chron.com/local/gray-matters/article/I-downloaded-an-app-And-suddenly-I-was-talking-12172506.php
- International Rescue Committee: With emphasis on safety, new report shows ‘gig economy’ could help Syrian refugee women in Jordan find work (International Rescue Committee, 2017) https://www.rescue.org/press-release/emphasis-safety-new-report-shows-gig-economy-could-help-syrian-refugee-women-jordan
9b. “Bad”? (Nov 12)
- Quartz: You could be flirting on dating apps with paid impersonators (Rose, 2018) https://qz.com/1247382/online-dating-is-so-awful-that-people-are-paying-virtual-dating-assistants-to-impersonate-them/
- The C-SATS – explore this site enough to determine how this surgery rating process works http://www.csats.com/
- The New Inquiry: The virtual watchers (Moll & Parizot, 2016) https://thenewinquiry.com/the-virtual-watchers/
- The New Yorker: The gig economy celebrates working yourself to death (Tolentino, 2017) https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-gig-economy-celebrates-working-yourself-to-death
- Motherboard: Uber’s phantom cabs (Rosenblat, 2015) https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mgbz5a/ubers-phantom-cabs
- Expensify Blog: Introducing: Private SmartScan on Amazon Mechanical Turk https://blog.expensify.com/2017/11/25/introducing-private-smartscan-on-amazon-mechanical-turk/ (This blog post has been deleted – another source that describes the same story is available via Ars Technica: Expensify sent images with personal data to Mechanical Turkers, calls it a feature (Gallagher, 2017) https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/expensify-acknowledges-potential-privacy-problem-by-calling-it-a-feature/)
- HuffPost: Gig economy gives child support scofflaws a place to hide (Fifield, 2017) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gig-economy-gives-child-support-scofflaws-a-place-to_us_5a2173c6e4b05072e8b56862
- Mother Jones: The crazy story of the professor who came to stay—and wouldn’t leave (Gordon, 2016) https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/berkeley-sarah-lawrence-professor-house-rental-saga/
10. What gig work means for us
10a. As managers and management scholars (Nov 14)
- The Economist: User-rating systems are cut-rate substitutes for a skillful boss (The Economist, 2018) https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/06/30/user-rating-systems-are-cut-rate-substitutes-for-a-skilful-boss
- Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a viable source for organizational and occupational health research (Michel et al., 2017)
- Nonnaïveté among Amazon Mechanical Turk workers: Consequences and solutions for behavioral researchers (Chandler, Mueller, & Paolacci, 2014) – skim for key points in conducting research using MTurk
- Crowdwork from an HRM perspective: Integrating organizational performance and employee welfare (Ellmer & Reichel, 2018) – read section 5 “Crowdwork from an HRM perspective”
10b. As people with “normal” jobs (Nov 19)
- WA Today: The gig economy is endangering wages, economists say (Martin, 2018) http://www.watoday.com.au/business/the-economy/the-gig-economy-is-endangering-wages-economists-say-20180306-p4z329.html
- The Sharing Economy (Sundararajan, 2016), Ch. 7 “The future of work: Challenges and controversies,” pp. 162-end
10c. Personally (Nov 19)
- Quartz: Are you a bad person if you still take Uber? (Griswold, 2017) https://qz.com/1164217/are-you-a-bad-person-if-you-still-take-uber/
10d. As people who want the future of work to be good (Nov 19)
- Your role in creating a fairer world of work (Graham, 2017, pp. 28-31)
