More Obligations for Uber & Co.

Taxi rides, childcare, domestic cleaning, food deliveries – lots of services are arranged via online platforms nowadays. They’re provided by people who work on call. Like many musicians who perform from one gig to the next, these digital workers in the gig industry survive from job to job. The gig economy originated in the USA, where the transport service provider Uber became well known as one of the first such companies in 2009. The market has been expanding ever since – including in Switzerland. In the EU, around 23.8 million people worked for digital job platforms in 2022. Forecasts suggest the figure will rise to almost 43 million by 2025.

“When they first emerged, these digital platforms promised great freedoms,” says Karin Schwiter, “namely being your own boss and working whenever you can and want to.” The geography professor works with her team at UZH to research what it’s like to work in the gig economy, among other topics. This promise of freedom is not entirely misplaced: people who don’t rely on gig work for their livelihood and just earn a bit of extra income with a few odd jobs can really benefit from it. For example, lots of students work for online providers while studying at university. This easy way to pick up work on digital platforms can also present an opportunity for newly arrived migrants, says Schwiter. “The gig work enables them to actually get a foothold in the labor market when other doors remain closed to them.”

It’s more difficult for people who earn their living entirely from gig work. “They often live in precarious circumstances and have hardly any other way of picking up work,” says Karin Schwiter. They rely on receiving enough jobs to make ends meet. That’s why they’re more or less constantly on call, with their cellphone always available to accept the next job. “We really notice this level of nervousness, waiting for the next job, when we meet gig workers for our research,” says the academic, “there’s not much evidence of a sense of freedom here.” There’s a particular risk of them not getting enough jobs to enable them to pay their bills at the end of the month. This is because the companies that arrange jobs digitally don’t provide any guarantee that workers will earn enough income to support themselves.

Until now, Uber and similar companies have taken little responsibility for the people who work for them. They regard themselves primarily as a mediator between service providers and customers, but not as an employer with all the obligations that entails. The risks – of not getting a sufficient monthly wage, for instance – are borne entirely by the gig workers. “This is why there’s currently such a controversial debate around the question of how much responsibility these companies should take for their workforces,” says Schwiter, who is a professor of labor geography.

Providing an answer to this question is not so easy, says the geography professor. That’s because digital job postings define the work and lives of gig workers to different degrees. For example, there are simple websites that put babysitters in touch with parents who are looking for someone to babysit their children. They then negotiate the terms under which this happens independently among themselves. “In this case, the platform operators are barely involved at all and have little influence over the work pattern,” says Karin Schwiter.

By contrast, other gig companies define in great detail how and under what conditions people work and how the jobs are allocated. “This is where the work is controlled and monitored to a much greater extent,” says the academic. The crucial question is therefore when an intermediary platform actually becomes an employer that must then also accept more obligations and make social security contributions or provide sickness pay, for example. Another controversial issue is whether transport costs and travel time should be covered, says Schwiter. This is because the platforms generally only provide remuneration for the actual services, but not the full cost of delivering them. “This can mean that a person only gets paid for a few hours, even though they’ve been working for a full day.”

In recent years, there have also been multiple court cases examining the conditions of employment in the gig economy in Switzerland. For example, this spring the company Batmaid, which arranges cleaning staff, had to pay compensation to a former employee whom it dismissed without notice following a ruling at the labor court in Lausanne. And it had to pay outstanding travel time and transport costs. Batmaid was effectively required to meet its obligation as an employer. The EU has now adopted directives that should improve the rights and working conditions in the gig economy and provide better protection for those working in it. Among other things, it’s assumed that gig workers who work for a platform have the status of employees. If this isn’t the case, the companies must provide the evidence to support this.

Switzerland does not yet have such regulations in place. “The Swiss Federal Council still considers gig work to be a marginal phenomenon that primarily enables people to earn some extra income,” says Schwiter, “it hasn’t recognized that some people are actually attempting to earn a living from it.” However, the new EU directives are an opportunity to broaden discussion of this issue in Switzerland as well. It’s inevitable that more binding working conditions in the gig economy will also be required in Switzerland in the future – the academic is very sure of this. She hopes that her research and analyses will help to spark a differentiated debate about platform working in the future. 

This article comes from the dossier ‘With brains and AI’ from UZH Magazin 3/2024