A labour geography exploration of gig work, job quality, labour market inclusion and time

Abstract

This paper, co-authored with Dr Alex Veen, Dr Caleb Goods and Prof. Marian Baird examines the job quality and working experiences of rideshare drivers from three traditionally disadvantaged categories of workers: older workers, workers with disability and workers with caring responsibility. The paper draws upon 59 interviews with workers working via a major ride-share platform collected in 2021. Using a labour geography lens the work considers how agency constraints, life stories and individual objectives from work shape drivers’ perceptions of job quality. Findings suggest that workers are aware of their labour market positionality and choose and adapt elements of gig works to meet their personal objectives, whilst also being aware that these are constrained choices in whether, and on whose terms, they do gig work.

In the second part of the presentation, I will build upon the theoretical and empirical findings to chart the theoretical directions for my DECRA fellowship, using a labour agency approach and drawing upon ideas of thick, thin and dead time, as well as labour market advantage, to explain the articulation between gig work and gig workers’ wider lives.

*co-authored with Dr Alex Veen (WOS USYD), Dr Caleb Goods (UWA) and Prof Marian Baird (WOS USYD)

Presenter

Dr Tom Barratt is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Western Australia. As a labour geographer he examines how work is a geographically contingent phenomenon and how workers act to improve their working lives. He currently holds a DECRA Fellowship examining Work Fragmentation and the Gig Economy (see www.gigfragments.org). Empirically his work focuses on work in resource extracting peripheral regions, as well as various aspects of the now established (once emerging) gig economy. He has also been active in a policy space, including engaging with multiple parliamentary inquiries, publishing on ‘The Conversation’ and has been interviewed in the New York Times.