Sharing Economy Workers: Selling, Not Sharing Presentation.pdf · Sharing Economy Workers: Selling, Not Sharing Alexandrea J. Ravenelle ... gig employment ... • Entrepreneurism

Sharing Economy Workers:

Selling, Not Sharing

Alexandrea J. Ravenelle

CUNY, The Graduate Center

Sarah, 29, Taskrabbit

• Your Text here

• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

• Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

Rhetoric better than reality

• Many free sharing economy sites are defunct– Snapgoods, Share Some Sugar, Crowd Rent,

Neighborrow– Or nearly so: Neighborgoods

• Or superseded by for-profit sites– Airbnb instead of Couchsurfing– Taskrabbit and Thumbprint for gig work as

opposed to Craigslist


• Your Text here



Commoditizing services

• Exponential growth– July 2015, Uber was valued at north of $50 billion

(Macmillan & Demos, 2015) – Airbnb, $24 billion in June 2015 (Winkler &

Macmillan, 2015)

• Short-term, gig employment – In the words of one CEO: "you can hire 10,000

people for 10 to 15 minutes. When they're done, those 10,000 people just melt away" (Associated Press, 2013)

• Critics charge:– Shifting of risk to workers– Rolling back social protections (discrimination in

public accommodation and hiring; lack of workplace protections & rights)

– Low-wage, precarious work

• Entrepreneurialism for all?


• Your Text here



Sharing is caring?

• Sharing economy feel-good messaging:– Sharing is caring– Trust

• Rachel Botsman, author of The Rise of Collaborative Consumption: "We now live in a global village where we can mimic the ties that used to happen face to face.”

– Community• John Zimmer, a co-founder of the taxi-app Lyft

compares the sharing economy to his time spent on the Oglala Sioux reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota: “'Their sense of community, of connection to each other and to their land, made me feel more happy and alive than I’ve ever felt before,' he says. 'I think people are craving real human interaction—it’s like an instinct. We now have the opportunity to use technology to help us get there'” (Tanz, 2014).

– Efficient use of resources

• Entrepreneurism for all


• Your Text here



What about the workers?

• There is a little discussion of the experience of workers in the sharing economy. – Are these workers fledgling entrepreneurs who are

entering small business ownership in droves?

– Or are sharing economy ranks comprised of quietly-desperate workers who have been unable to find jobs in the mainstream economy?

– Is this an actual opt-out, where college-educated workers, frustrated with the lack of work-life balance in mainstream companies, are cobbling together piecework in exchange for added flexibility?


• Your Text here



Methodology

• Recruited through websites and direct interaction– March to Nov 2015

• Mixed methods– Qualitative – in-person interview

• Average length: 2+ hours• Weiss’s (1994) interview matrix

– Quantitative – demographic survey• Race, Age, Income, Education Levels, Political

Affiliation, Reasons they were attracted to the sharing economy, etc.

• Interviews transcribed and coded, then analyzed using grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), an inductive approach that allows concepts and theories to emerge from the data

Demographics


• Your Text here



Conflicting messages


• Your Text here





• Your Text here





• Your Text here





• Your Text here





• Your Text here



Platform requirements reduce

entrepreneurial identity

"I just think TaskRabbit is more like working for them."

Taskrabbit pivot led to an organization that was more focused on profit and, "not really caring about these workers. There were people complaining and like in tears and because they were like 'I don’t have any income now. I was your top TaskRabbit and you are treating me like shit' and kind-of felt like a betrayal."

---Sarah, 29, Taskrabbit

I don’t see myself as an entrepreneur. I see myself part of a system to help somebody else make money.... Even though legally as a Taskrabbit, I'm an independent contractor, I see myself as a Taskrabbit employee.

--- Jamal, 25, Taskrabbit


• Your Text here



Sharing economy confusion

I’m not sure if the sharing economy is the best name for it. I’m not sure what exactly they’re getting with the idea of sharing economy but when I think of sharing economy I think of a culture where there’s bartering. I mean, with a lot of the sharing economy things that are going on, people are paying for a product, that’s basically what they’re doing.

---Robert, 28, Taskrabbit


• Your Text here



Impetus: Money, not sharing

The sharing economy, I think, by large is a misnomer. It would be sharing if you were Couchsurfing but you're giving me money and I probably wouldn’t let you stay with me if you weren't giving me money, so we're not sharing. You're paying me and I'm giving you something, a product, a service. That’s just good marketing but it’s not very honest.

---Andrew, 28, Airbnb host

I got into it because it was so profitable. I wasn't thinking in terms of I want to be involved in the sharing economy. I didn't think of it as the sharing economy. Now, I only think of it as a sharing economy, sort of like in a general and philosophical sense. To me, it's still sort of like a hustle.

---Josh, 32, Airbnb host


• Your Text here



Do you think of yourself as an

entrepreneur?

I’m an entrepreneur in general. I don’t know about this particular Airbnb. ---Aalia, 30, Airbnb Host

I think of myself more as I’m just here to help you and call it a day. OK, next person. If I didn’t have my [full-time job] probably yes, but because I have my job, I don’t see it as me having to be an entrepreneur. It’s just me putting myself on a Craigslist without Criagslist...

---Ashley, 28, Airbnb Host

Somewhat but mostly not... I'm trying to start my own business so more for that reason than because I use Airbnb. ---Andrew, 28, Airbnb Host


• Your Text here



Do you think of yourself as an

entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurs are people that start companies. I rent my house to people.

I work for Facebook and Instagram, so it’s like the entrepreneurial-type culture. And we kind of breathe that. But I work with entrepreneurs, like people who are building businesses around our platform. They’re employing multiple people and their livelihood is based on the success of entities they started. I don’t do that.

If my place doesn’t get rented out, it’s vacant.

So I’m definitely not an entrepreneur.---James, 36, Airbnb Host


• Your Text here



Stigmatized work

"Uber for me is a feeling like 'when you get really drunk and regret whatever you did last night.' That's exactly it. I really don't want to be associated as an Uber driver at any point of my life. I really don't want it to come up when people search my name on Google."

---Baran, 28, Uber driver


• Your Text here



Kitchensurfing: An Exception

• Traditional Kitchensurfing– Pick a chef & meal– Manhattan– Chefs pay 10% fee

• Kitchensurfing Today– Weeknight, $25/pp

all-inclusive– 7 cities in the US– Chefs paid $75 for shift– Weekly Metrocard

• 15 chefs interviewed to date

• Majority consider themselves to be entrepreneurs


• Your Text here



Kitchensurfing Chefs =

Entrepreneurs

• I want to exit what I do right now. That’s one of the reasons why I got on Kitchensurfing because I wanted to create my own brand of African food.

So it's a great testing ground for me, to test, “Do people even like the food?” Because people haven’t heard of Western African food.

---Ashaki, 35, Kitchensurfing Chef

• I’m mostly using Kitchensurfing as a resource to build my future business.

---Ladu, 39, Kitchensurfing Chef

• It’s a cheese-tasting company. I talk to the clients and give them my cards.

---Rachel, 29, Kitchensurfing Chef

•


• Your Text here



Airbnb ‘Syndicate’ Owner

This has become a business… I have lots of places, I have cleaning people I have to pay, I have, you know, responsibilities.If I stopped paying attention to it, it would collapse, right?

---Joshua, 32,

Corporate Attorney, 8 Airbnb listings


• Your Text here



Airbnb ‘Hotelier’

I own a hotel. I’m a hotelier. I just have a room here and apartment there, but I currently have 25 guests in this city staying in my places. They all have my phone number. Anything happens; I’m in charge of them. That’s the exact same thing as in a hotel.... Until I have that chain of hotels, I just have a chain of different apartments all over this island.

---Yosef, 27,

Student, 13 Airbnb listings

Wrapping Up

Alexandrea Ravenelle

CUNY, The Graduate Center

Excelsior College

[email protected]

Documents

Sharing Economy Workers: Selling, Not Sharing Presentation.pdf · Sharing Economy Workers: Selling, Not Sharing Alexandrea J. Ravenelle ... gig employment ... • Entrepreneurism