Why The Gig Economy Is A Scam | James Bloodworth | TEDxManchester
TEDx Talks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xImchItd52w

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0:06 I've come to talk about something called the gig economy so back in back in 2016 I was trying to think of an idea for a book and if we if you think back like
0:21 four or five years there was a lot in the news at the time about how the economy was there was that there were a record number of people in work the
0:29 economy was well on the way to recovery after the 2008 recession yet behind the scenes if we looked more closely something more disconcerting was going
0:41 on there was a big rise in the number of people on things called zero hours contracts where you had no guaranteed hours each week
0:48 there was something cook this this word this phrase I kept hearing the gig economy which summoned up it sounds very glamorous the gig economy
0:58 almost like summons up this kind of glamorous image of kind of rock stardom you turn up to a gig when you want you have freedom you have flexibility you
1:06 have autonomy you are your own boss so I kept seeing adverts for things like companies such as uber and delivery where it would say come and get a job
1:17 with us and be your own boss so I mean I wanted to find out what you know whether this kind of this this this imagery the the companies presented correspond to
1:28 the reality so I set out in 2016 for six months to work in this section of the economy to go undercover as it were and to find out what the reality of life was
1:40 like in the in the gig economy the first company I worked for doing in this in this kind of area I works for Amazon which is a company I'd used myself of
1:52 course we imagine we've all pretty much used Amazon at some point I got a job in an Amazon warehouse in the town of Rugeley in the West Midlands and I was
2:04 on a zero it was a temporary job so so a nine-month job this was all the contracts of the offered it was a zero hours contract
2:12 and upon joining the company upon upon getting the job I first encountered some of the vocabulary that's very popular in the in the gig economy so I got a job in
2:23 this way how this Amazon warehouse and we were told during off on our first day that we we weren't allowed to call it a warehouse at all we had to call it a
2:31 fulfillment center we were we were also told that we weren't allowed to call it should refer to each others as workers or managers or bosses but we were all
2:43 associates so we were told that Jeff Beezus is an associate and so are you we're all one big happy family at Amazon nevermind that Jeff Beezus you know in
2:55 an average day we done about 30 40 pounds where a chef bees lost his share price would maybe go up by several million we're all one big happy family
3:04 we're all associates we also to get the job Amazon we also had to be drug and alcohol tested which I'd never had to do in any job before which as a journalist
3:18 is probably lucky because well I probably won't what won't her expand on that anymore but um there were there also cardboard cutouts around the
3:31 warehouse of supposed Amazon workers with speech bubbles coming from their heads saying things like we love coming to work we miss it when we're not here
3:42 North Korea style but this kind of this this kind of rhetorical universe if you like this kind of this kind of language we were bombarded with it didn't
3:58 correspond with the reality of the job perhaps unsurprisingly so you was in as an Amazon worker you received if you receive six disciplinary points
4:10 you lose your job and you received these these points for minor infractions of company policy so if you took a day off sick
4:21 even with a letter from the doctor you receive a disciplinary point if you took too long going to the bathroom this would be referred to as idle time and
4:31 you would receive a disciplinary point one time the coach bringing workers to work it broke down so everyone was five minutes late clocking in and everyone
4:43 received a disciplinary point for this as well so it was it was it was very easy to it was very easy to lose your job and yeah it didn't correspond with
4:57 kind of the promises of the so-called so-called gig economy there were also you know massive issues with underpayment so one one girl I
5:04 interviewed who was working at Amazon was paid 62 pence an hour by one of the employment agencies and it took her six weeks to get the money back from the
5:13 employer and it was over Christmas and she told me that if she hadn't she she'd had to move back in with her mother and she told me if that hadn't been possible
5:21 she would have been she would have made homeless essentially you had to pass through giant airport style security every time you went in out of work
5:30 because they were you were under constant suspicion that you were going to steal things and this was the biggest employer in this in this English town so
5:40 it created this great deal of resentment in the time and it was probably one of the worst places I've ever worked and it was a level of exploitation I'd never
5:51 seen before some of the most vulnerable people you know it was mainly migrant workers some of the most vulnerable people in our society being treated like
6:01 this by the biggest multinational in the world headed by the richest individual in the world and it's something that I didn't feel like people really knew it
6:11 really shocked me to put it bluntly the most kind of striking thing I saw while I was working at Amazon and it became a bit of a meme out after this was one day
6:22 one afternoon I was I was I was doing my job at Amazon which was an order picker where you pick the orders off the shelf for the put them in baskets put them on
6:31 a convey about and then send them on their way for the Amazon delivery drivers I stumbled across a coke bottle which
6:39 was half filled with urine which was on the shelf amongst all the miscellanea of amazon's goods and it was there because someone had been so afraid to go to the
6:48 toilet because people were being punished for this that they the people had started to urinate into coke bottles and the like because they were terrified
6:57 of losing their job if they if they use the bathroom on the job another company I worked for that was the office of the Amazon experience so if you buy my book
7:07 after this maybe don't use Amazon to do it the other company another company I worked for three months for uber as an uber driver that was in London and ubers
7:20 probably the company that's most associated with with with the gig economy and being your own boss so my onboarding session which is like your
7:28 induction to be an uber driver I turned up on the job and was greeted by this kind of hip character in a jeans and t-shirt a kind of bro
7:39 like a tech bro if you like with a beard and whatever very matey trying to be my friend even though he's kind of my boss and he told us you know he explained to
7:52 us you know we were here to make money as an uber driver you're now you're right you're an independent business person now he said he came out with all
8:01 this stuff you know freedom flexibility autonomy but and for this kind of freedom of flexibility being our own boss what we'd what we'd sacrifice is
8:09 our right to a minimum wage our right to holiday pay and our right to sick pay because we were now independent contractors we were now freedom fighters
8:18 in this new economy but it didn't I mean we'll be really our own boss I mean I drove through before three months and we were told on this this induction day we
8:31 were told that you know you can't pick and choose what jobs you do so whatever whatever job whoever sends you you have to do that we didn't really feel like
8:41 self-employment you know if you're a plumber or something and there's a job a hundred miles away and it's not your work worth your while to go and do that
8:47 job you're free to turn it down but with uber you didn't have that freedom you were told that any job they send you you have to do it we were even
8:56 told what what subjects we could talk about with the passenger in the back of our car so we were told that we were not allowed under any circumstances to talk
9:05 about politics religion or sport which as a taxi driver what the hell else are you supposed to talk about so it did I mean it didn't feel like the person in
9:17 the back of your car was your customer it felt like they were ubers customer the this you know this for those of you who've used tuber there's like a star
9:27 rating system where you you say you you order your uber through your through your smartphone you are you go on your journey then it asks you to rate the
9:36 driver between one and five stars and if you're rating as a driver fell below 4.7 stars on average you would be brought into the office and pretend to
9:48 potentially deactivated as they caught it which you know fired this was reminding me of of Amazon as well where if you lost your job you weren't sacked
10:02 or fired you were released or as we used to joke you'd actually been promoted to the role of a customer but it was I mean the the uber experience what happened is
10:17 you you weren't you you are your own boss what what it was this kind of this model was a ruse to kind of offload business risk from the company onto you
10:26 as a worker so you were very tightly controlled by uber friends of mine who I interviewed who I made friends with an interviewed for the for my book who
10:35 worked for delivery and other courier companies like this it was a very similar experience they'd sacrificed their workers rights which has been
10:44 fought for by by generations before them their rights a holiday pay their right to sick pay if they got ill and their right to a minimum wage they sacrifice
10:54 these things on the promise of freedom and flexibility and the only freedom of flexibility we really had in the gig O'Connor
11:03 was the freedom to turn our phone off so there was that I mean you could you didn't have a boss who was in your ear all the time you could turn your phone
11:10 off if he didn't want to work but then you wouldn't make any money when you're actually working for the companies you were very tightly controlled so ubers
11:19 ubers kind of is mo its mo if you were as it were was I remember I remember when uber first came on the scene they said they wanted to make transportation
11:29 as reliable as running water and I said what did they mean by this they mean so you know if you turn on the tap you don't want to wait ten minutes for the
11:39 for the water to come by it's there at all times there's like is there at all time so like the electricity grid or something you turn the light switch on
11:47 it's always there the traditional model of safe transportation is you stand out on the street waving your arm in the rain especially in Manchester and you
11:56 wait ten minutes for a cab to stop and pick you up but uber wants this kind of network effect where you turn your phone on and at all times there's like a fleet
12:05 of taxis driving around all the time so that there's so you turn your phone on you order an uber and it's there immediately
12:11 which from a customer's perspective is great but who pays for that who pays for that Network effect who pays for that fleet of drivers swarming around the
12:20 city at all times now in a traditional business model say in a shop or something you as a worker you don't only get paid when someone
12:30 comes into the shop you get paid an hourly rate you get paid a minimum wage and you have safeguards the uber model means that you only get paid when a
12:39 passenger is in the back of your car the rest of the time you're paying for for the for the business yourself when you're driving around the city is your
12:47 petrol money that you're spending it's your time that you're accruing so you're carrying the risk of the business you're carrying a big pot percents a big part
12:55 of the the business risk for companies like uber this is this is much more radical than than it sounds like initially this is much more radical than
13:05 I think many people have realized this offloading of business risk onto the back onto the worker but also onto the taxpayer because delivery couriers
13:14 bicycle couriers I interviewed this is a very arduous job cycling around all the time delivered making these deliveries and
13:22 sometimes they get injured so remember I interviewed one one delivery courier and and he injured ligaments in his arm so he couldn't he couldn't work for a
13:33 period of about a month I think and normally a company would pay you you know sick pay for this but with with this like gig economy model he had to
13:42 sign on for Housing Benefit during this time because he had no income so the taxpayer was picking up the tab for this company as well so it's the worker and
13:50 the taxpayer picking up the tab for this which is again this is quite revolutionary and this model of work is spreading so I kind of wanted wanted to
14:00 kind of leave you with this for those of us who who don't work as you know is in an Amazon warehouse or in kind of as a courier for like a food for ubereats or
14:12 or as an uber driver or for delivery or whatever it's easy to just kind of shrug our shoulders and just see the benefit of this as a consumer but this this kind
14:22 of model of work is spreading as a journalist I know I know worked to some extent as a freelance journalist in the gig economy I don't have holiday pay and
14:30 sick pay anymore my employment conditions are much more precarious and if we don't if we don't nip some of this stuff in the bud if we don't take a
14:37 concern for the first of all a moral concern for the people who who are being forced to urinate into bottles for the when they're working for the biggest
14:45 company and the richest company in the world that's a moral issue but it's also an issue of self-interest a pragmatic issue if we don't nip this these
14:53 conditions in the bud this type of work is gonna is spreading and one day we could wake up to find that we've all we've all of us have lost our employment
15:03 rights so this is why I'd say that it's important to for all of us to to fight for workers in the gig economy and to see through some of this euphemistic
15:15 that they that they put out there and let's let's defend some of the most vulnerable people in our economy thank you very much
15:29 you you