Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this St Martin’s Press ebook To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way Copyright infringement is against the law If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy For my family: Debra, Steve, Richard, and Alex Preface When I first heard about the “future of work” in 2011, I was working as a reporter at a tech blog—a job that involved wading through an endless stream of startup pitches This future, dozens of young entrepreneurs explained to me, didn’t involve jobs Nobody liked jobs: The boredom! The rigid structure! The obedience! What the world really needed were gigs The pitch came in different versions Some startups had created ecommerce stores for labor Small businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike could sift through worker profiles by skill and hire them on a project-by-project basis Other startups worked more like dispatchers Drivers, dog walkers, and errand runners could get notifications on their phones when a job became available and choose to either accept it or reject it A small handful of companies had taken a third approach, breaking work into tiny tasks that took only minutes and paid only cents They assigned online crowds of people to work on large, tedious projects, like transcribing audiotapes, or checking to make sure that grocery stores across the country remembered to put a certain brand of cola in a prime location The rise of these new apps, their founders assured me, meant that soon we would all be working on the projects we chose, during the hours that we wanted We would no longer be laboring for the man, but for our own tiny businesses This meant that in the future, it wouldn’t matter how many jobs got shipped overseas or were taken by robots We could work for our neighbors, connect with as many projects as we needed to get by, and fit those gigs in between our band rehearsals, gardening, and other passion projects It would be more than the end of unemployment It would be the end of drudgery The idea was deeply appealing to me In addition to sounding like more fun than a job, this version of the future of work relieved a deep uncertainty I had about the future From a young age, my baby boomer parents had instilled in me that the mission of becoming an adult—the path to dignity, security, and independence—was to obtain a job Most adults I knew in my rural Wisconsin town had a straightforward profession like teacher, lawyer, or mechanic They worked at the grocery store or for the postal service A large Nestl é factory in a town nearby made the air smell like chocolate if the wind blew just right, and another factory made Kikkoman soy sauce Becoming employable—not following dreams, seeking some sort of personal fulfillment, or whatever it is they tell kids in coastal states—was in itself deserving of respect and dignity So eager was I to become a real person, a person with a job, that I’d spent a good chunk of my summer vacation before high school at a greenhouse, picking aphids off of herbs and pulling the hardto-reach weeds (being 13, I was skinny enough to squeeze between plant stands) My parents didn’t need the money I didn’t need the money Jobs just felt instinctively important I’m told most millennials don’t feel that way, but I haven’t really met many people in general who don’t value stability and safety Maybe what makes millennials different is that those things feel particularly elusive My peers and I came of age at a time when everything everyone believed about work was at best in flux and at worst already clearly no longer the case In 2005, when I was a junior in high school, I decided I would become a journalist In 2007, as newsrooms were scrambling to move their business models online, the Great Recession started And three years after that, the winter of my senior year of college, the unemployment rate in the United States hit double digits Only the computer programmers, it seemed, were excited for graduation As I conjured a frantic storm of resumes, informational interviews, and job fair mailing lists, I had trouble sleeping and, at times, breathing Though at the time I was narrowly focused on my own employment prospects (or lack thereof), my anxiety was small by comparison to many I had a college degree, parents willing to help me, and connections at a local greenhouse that would have been happy to have me back for another summer I was going to be ok About the future, the world around me, I wasn’t so sure Media wasn’t the only industry being remade by technology As newsrooms were announcing layoffs, other companies were using internet freelance marketplaces and staffing agencies to zap white-collar jobs overseas Artificial intelligence and robotics were replacing others Many of the jobs that remained in the United States no longer came with security Companies had, under pressure from shareholders, cut the fat from their benefits packages for employees, piling more and more risk onto their shoulders As the economy recovered, the companies hired temp workers, contract workers, freelancers, seasonal workers, and part-time workers, but full-time jobs that had been lost to the recession were never coming back Over the next five years, nearly all of the jobs added to the US economy would fall into the “contingent” category That “job” that we’d all been told was the key to our secure life no longer seemed like a natural path As a young person, you’re not allowed to sit out the future You don’t get to put off learning how to use email because you’d rather fax Nobody thinks that’s endearing When you see a trend coming down the pike, you know it’s going to hit you So perhaps when entrepreneurs described for me a world in which work would be like shopping at a bazaar (a gig economy startup had picked up this concept in its name, Zaarly), it appealed to me more than it would have to someone with more gray hairs: I’ll take that vision of the future—no need to play that horrifying mass unemployment and poverty vision that I had all lined up and ready to go I wrote my first story about the gig economy in 2011, long before anyone had labeled it the “gig economy.” The headline was “Online Odd Jobs: How Startups Let You Fund Yourself.” Though my job changed throughout the next seven years, my fascination with the gig economy didn’t I first watched as the gig economy became a venture capital feeding frenzy, a hot new topic and a ready answer to the broader economy’s problems Then, as stories of worker exploitation emerged, I listened as the same companies that had once boasted about creating the “gig economy” worked to distance themselves from the term I saw the gig economy start a much-needed conversation about protecting workers as technology transforms work The more I learned, the more I understood that the startup “future of work” story, as consoling as it was, was also incomplete Yes, the gig economy could create opportunity for some people, but it also could amplify the same problems that made the world of work look so terrifying in the first place: insecurity, increased risk, lack of stability, and diminishing workers’ rights The gig economy touched many people Some of them were rich, some poor, some had power, and some didn’t Its impact on each of them was different The chapters of this book alternate between five of their stories It’s not intended to be a complete, bird’s-eye view of the gig economy Any economy is built by humans, and this book is about them PART I THE END OF THE JOB CHAPTER A VERY OLD NEW IDEA At South by Southwest 2011, the napkins featured QR codes Flyers rained down from party balconies, and the grilled cheese—provided by group messaging app GroupMe—was free Startups looked forward to the tech-focused “Interactive” portion of the famous music festival in Austin, Texas, like a popular high school student looks forward to the prom One of the new companies among them, it was widely assumed, would be crowned a “breakout hit,” just as Twitter had once “broken out” by introducing its app to the tech-savvy SXSW crowd It was only a matter of attracting enough attention—an effort that usually involved a marketing gimmick At the time, Uber was a little-known app that worked as a dispatch service for local owners of licensed private car companies Its attempt at guerrilla marketing was an on-demand pedicab service The startup decorated 100 rented pedicabs with banners that said “I U” next to a solid black shape of Texas (“I Uber Texas,” I suppose), and in interviews with bloggers, its executives hopefully suggested that riders post photos of themselves with the hashtag #Uberspotting “If you’re an Uber virgin, prepare to experience the future of transportation,” its blog explained, helpfully noting that the process of calling an Uber pedicab would be easy to navigate “even when drunk.” Within a few short years, Uber would become one of the most valuable companies in the world It would allow anyone—not just the professional drivers with which it had begun—to earn money as a taxi driver, and its fares (then $15 at minimum) would drop so low that in some cities they’d compete with public transportation The startup would raise more than $12 billion in venture capital funding at a valuation that made it, on paper, worth more than 100-year-old companies like GM and Ford, and the Uber business model would give rise to an entire category of startups The transportation service would also set a new expectation among consumers: that everything should come to them “on demand,” at the push of a button—an idea that would reshape service industries, retail, and digital interface design But at SXSW 2011, Uber just looked like yet another dream At the time, I was working as a reporter at a tech blog My list of “13 Potential Breakout Apps to Watch at SXSW 2011,” published the week before the festival, featured four group messaging apps, an app that turned a cell phone into a walkie-talkie (because I somehow thought walkie-talkies were better than phones?), and two nearly identical photo-sharing apps (one of which was Instagram) Uber didn’t make the cut I wasn’t alone in ignoring Uber Despite its earnest attempt at social media marketing, only about five of SXSW Interactive’s nearly 20,000 attendees that year participated in #Uberspotting Uber attracted nearly as little attention a year later with an offer to deliver barbecue to SXSW attendees The hype that year instead surrounded an app called Highlight, which made phones buzz Index The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below Accenture (professional services company) AFL AFL-CIO Airbnb (hospitality service) Amazon net sales See also Mechanical Turk Arise (customer service company) Artsicle (art rental service) A-Ryde (ride-hailing app) Aspen Institute Atlantic, The (magazine) Attenborough, David automated cars automation baby boom generation Backchannel (tech website) Bahá’í BBS (bulletin board system) Belsky, Scott Bernstein, Michael Better Business Bureau Bezos, Jeff Big Brother (reality television program) Bitcoin Black Car Fund blockchain technology Bloomberg (magazine) Bloomberg, Michael Borzi, Phyllis C Bravo Brio Restaurant Group Brustein, AJ Bureau of Labor Statistics Burton, Diane Bush, Jeb Camp, Garrett Campbell, Harry Care.com (marketplace for independent caregivers) CB Insights Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, The Chia, Stan churn (customer attrition) Clark, Shelby cleaning services churn (customer attrition) See Handy; Homejoy; Managed by Q Clinton, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton Global Initiative collective action See also labor and trade unions contingent work See also freelance work; subcontractors; temp workers and agencies cooperatives Costco Coworker (website) Craigslist crowd workers income of See also Mechanical Turk Crowdflower crowdsourcing Crumbaugh, Lindsey Danielson, Joshua Davenport, Terrence Deliveroo (courier delivery service) Democracy (journal) Depillis, Lydia Desai, Bhairavi Diallo, Abdoul Dickey, Roger DoorDash (restaurant delivery service) Drivers’ Guild Dumas, Arkansas Dynamo (crowdwork action website) ecommerce Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Elance (freelance marketplace) See also Upwork Employee Benefits Security Administration (US Department of Labor) employees alternatives to current classification of independent contractors versus at Instagram Managed by Q and misclassification of retention rights of social safety nets and Uber and unionizing and Etsy (ecommerce website) Even (income management app) Facebook employee benefits versus contract workers Instagram purchased by minimum wage Uber Drivers Network NYC page Uber Freedom page Fairmondo (digital cooperative) family leave Farr, Christina Fast Company (magazine) Fidler, Devin Fissured Workplace, The (Weil) Fiverr (freelance marketplace) flexibility employees and gender and gig economy and Mechanical Turk and millennial generation and traditional schedules versus Uber and Fortune (magazine) Fortune 500 Foster, Gary (Samaschool student) Fowler, Susan (Uber employee) freelance work earnings health insurance and history of online freelancing iCEO and internet freelance marketplaces statistics temporary employees versus traditional model unionization of See also Gigster; Upwork Freelancers Union Friedman, Thomas “future of work” “Future of Work” initiative (Aspen Institute) Getty Images Gibbon, Kevin gig economy automation and bonus structure capital investment and continued relevance of cooperatives decline of earnings employee model and flexibility and freedom and future of healthcare and history of independence and independent contractors and insecurity and instability and jury duty and lawsuits and Medicare politics and portable benefits and ratings systems retirement security and as safety net socioeconomics and startup valuations as stop-gap technology unionization and unit economics worker classification worker demographics worker retention worker training and motivation Gigster (software development website) interview and screening process Karma score remote talent workers worker earnings See also Larson, Curtis Global Entrepreneurship Summit Global Information Network (GIN) Goldman Sachs Gompers, Samuel Gonzalez, Maria Good Jobs Strategy Good Jobs Strategy (Ton) Google Google Images Google Scholar Google Ventures Great Recession Great Risk Shift, The (Hacker) Green, Shakira (Samaschool student) Griswold, Alison GroupMe (messaging app) Grubhub (food delivery service) Guardian, The (newspaper) Gumora, Michael Hacker, Jacob Hacker News (tech forum) Hanauer, Nick Handy (cleaning service) customer complaints lawsuits ratings scale worker rates and benefits worker retention worker training Hanley, Dervala Hanrahan, Oisin Harris, Seth Hayek, Friedrich healthcare Affordable Care Act in Canada COBRA independent contractors and Medicare Hermes UK (delivery service) Highlight (social networking app) Holmberg, Susan Homejoy (home-cleaning service) household income H.U.G (Helping You Grow) Hughes, Chris Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) Husein, Mamdooh (“Abe”) iCEO (automated management system) IKEA Inc (magazine) independent business operators (IBOs) independent contractors alternatives to current classification of Arise and category of definition of earnings employees versus Gigster and misclassification of switch to employee model from Uber and unions and worker benefits and worker classification and See also subcontractors Independent Drivers Guild independent worker, proposed category of Industrial Revolution inequality Instacart (grocery delivery service) Instagram Institute for the Future International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers International Brotherhood of Teamsters International Labour Office (United Nations) Irani, Lilly iStockphoto Janah, Leila janitorial industry JCPenney jobs, traditional definition of Juno (ride-hailing service) jury duty Kalanick, Travis Kasriel, Stephane Kath, Ryan Kelly Services (“Kelly Girls”) Kinder, Shane King, Martin Luther, Jr Knight, Brandon Knox, Anthony Konsus (project outsourcing service) Koopman, John Krueger, Alan labor and trade unions AFL AFL-CIO collective action Freelancers Union International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers International Brotherhood of Teamsters Screen Actors Guild Unionen (Swedish white-collar trade union) United Construction Trades and Industrial Employees Union Lane, Ty Larson, Curtis Leadum, Mario LG Electronics limited liability companies Loconomics (service-provider cooperative) Logan, Kristen Lyft (ride-hailing service) lawsuits price war with Uber retirement savings and stop-gap technology and tips and Managed by Q (property maintenance service) career development and employee model and funding “future of work” and Good Jobs Strategy and knolling labor and marketplace mentors New York City office operator assemblies operators (frontline workers) origin and theory of positive touchpoints subcontractors and TechCrunch Disrupt 2017 and worker benefits worker earnings worker equity packages See also Knox, Anthony; Rahmanian, Saman; Schwartz, Emma; Teran, Dan Manjoo, Farhad Mas, Alexandre McDonald’s Mechanical Turk (Amazon’s crowdsourcing marketplace) crowd workers Dynamo (crowdworker action website) “good work” tasks Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) purpose of Turker Nation (online forum) Turkopticon worker income See also Milland, Kristy Medicare Mehta, Apoorva Milland, Kristy millennial generation minimum wage Arkansas Facebook and Managed by Q and Mechanical Turk and New York State tipped work and Uber and United Kingdom Upwork and Mishel, Lawrence Munchery (restaurant delivery service) Murray, Charles National Bureau of Economic Research National Domestic Workers Alliance National Employment Law Project (NELP) National Labor Relations Board Nestlé New America Foundation New Deal New York Taxi Workers Alliance New York Times New York Times Magazine Nixon, Richard Obama, Barack oDesk (freelance marketplace) See also Upwork O’Grady, Frances Pallais, Amanda pedicabs Peers.org (sharing economy support) pensions See also retirement security Perez, Thomas Pollack, Ethan Postmates (courier delivery service) poverty Prehype (startup accelerator) Quartz (business news website) QuickTrip racism Reich, Robert remote talent workers retirement security 401(k) contingent workers and decline in economics and Honest Dollar (independent worker retirement savings) Managed by Q and Peers.org (sharing-economy support) pensions portable benefit programs Social Security traditional employees and ride-hailing services A-Ryde income of drivers Juno platform cooperativism and tips and See also Lyft; Uber Rolf, David Salehi, Niloufar Samaschool See also Davenport, Terrence; Foster, Gary; Green, Shakira; Logan, Kristen Samasource Schneider, Nathan Scholz, Trebor Schwartz, Emma (Managed by Q employee) Schwarzenegger, Arnold Screen Actors Guild self-driving cars Shea, Katie Shieber, Jon Shyp (shipping service) sick days Silberman, Six Snapchat So Lo Mo (social, local, mobile) Social Security SpaceX Sprig (restaurant delivery service) Starbucks Stern, Andy Stocksy (stock photo cooperative) subcontractors Arise and earnings Managed by Q and Silicon Valley and Sundararajan, Arun Sweet, Julie SXSW (South by Southwest) Taft-Hartley Act Take Wonolo (staffing agency) Target TaskRabbit (odd job marketplace) taxi industry EU regulation and New York Taxi Workers Alliance tips and Uber and US statistics See also Lyft; ride-hailing services; Uber TechCrunch (blog) TechCrunch Disrupt temp workers and agencies early history of earnings freelancers versus injury rate Kelly Services (“Kelly Girls”) Manpower permanent employees versus Silicon Valley and “temp worker” as a category US statistics work satisfaction Teran, Dan Tischen (labor marketplace) Ton, Zeynep Trader Joe’s trucking industry Trudeau, Kevin Trump, Donald Try Caviar (food delivery service) Turker Nation (online forum) Turkopticon Twitch (live streaming video platform) Twitter Uber (ride-hailing service) 180 days of change affiliate marketing program driver-led activism and protests Drivers’ Guild and FTC charges of exaggerated earnings funding growth of guaranteed fares history of independent contractor model lawsuits and legal issues “No shifts No boss No limits” pitch Pandora partnership politics and price war with Lyft rating system self-driving cars and surge pricing model SXSW and taxi industry and tips and Uber Freedom (Facebook page) #Uberspotting UberX unions and valuation worker benefits worker earnings worker equity packages worker expenses Xchange Leasing See also Campbell, Harry; Husein, Mamdooh; Kalanick, Travis; Leadum, Mario “Uber for X” model “Uberization” of work UN International Labour Office unemployment unemployment benefits unicorns (high-valuation startups) Unionen (Swedish white-collar trade union) unions See labor and trade unions United Construction Trades and Industrial Employees Union Universal Basic Income (UBI) UPS Upwork (freelance marketplace) US Department of Labor USA Today venture capital gig economy and Google Ventures Managed by Q and TechCrunch Disrupt and Uber and venture capitalists VentureBeat (blog) Walker, Anthony Walmart Warner, Mark Warren, Elizabeth Washington Post Washio (on-demand laundry startup) WeFuel (on-demand fuel startup) Weil, David Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation Wired (magazine) Woodhead, Carole workers advocacy groups workers’ compensation Xchange Leasing Y Combinator (tech incubator) Yelp (user review website) Zaarly (online marketplace) Zirtual (virtual assistant services) Zuckerberg, Mark About the Author SARAH KESSLER is a reporter at Quartz, where she writes about the future of work Before joining Quartz in 2016, she covered the gig economy as a senior writer at Fast Company and managed startup coverage at Mashable Her reporting has been cited by The Washington Post , New York magazine, and NPR You can sign up for email updates here Thank you for buying this St Martin’s Press ebook To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Dedication Preface PART I The End of the Job 1 A Very Old New Idea 2 No Shifts No Boss No Limits 3 The Best of Bad Options 4 Uber for X PART II Sunshine, Rainbows, and Unicorns 5 Like an ATM in Your Pocket 6 Uber Freedom PART III Fine Print 7 A Competing Story 8 Don’t Call Us 9 The Good Jobs Strategy PART IV Backlash 10 The Medium Is the Movement 11 Uber for Politics PART V The Future of Work 12 Pivot 13 A Very Serious Issue Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index About the Author Copyright GIGGED Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Kessler All rights reserved For information, address St Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y 10010 www.stmartins.com Cover photograph: woman in car © lightpost/shutterstock.com The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows: Names: Kessler, Sarah, author Title: Gigged: the end of the job and the future of work / Sarah Kessler Description: New York: St Martin’s Press, 2018 | Includes bibliographical references and index Identifiers: LCCN 2018000121 | ISBN 9781250097897 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250097903 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Temporary employment—United States | Flexible work arrangements—United States | Labor—United States | Labor market—United States Classification: LCC HD5854.2.U6 K47 2018 | DDC 331.0973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018000121 e-ISBN 9781250097903 Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com First Edition: June 2018 ... the rise Around 45% of accountants, 50% of IT workers, and 70% of truck drivers were working for contractors rather than as employees at the companies for which they provided services.7 And the. .. unprepared for the future of work But at the height of “Uber for X,” few people in the startup world batted an eye As the then-CEO of the odd job marketplace TaskRabbit put it, the gig economy was... standard elsewhere in the gig economy For some, these bonuses were another appealing aspect of the job Workers could use them to simultaneously supplement their income from fares and position themselves