By Sean Crawley
While the media focuses on stagnant wage growth, many workers’ incomes are shrinking. Their companies have developed smart phone apps which enable their services to be delivered 24/7. Scheduled hours with an hourly rate are a thing of the past, or, if not totally extinct, they are critically endangered, rapidly disappearing.
To earn, the worker must make themselves available on the app and be able to drop everything and get to the workplace, likely a computer, or get to the customer and start work within a tight time limit designated by the company. And, you will need to respond quickly to the app on the smart phone, or someone else, a work colleague whom you’ve never met, will snap up the work.
You’ll get paid by the minute or the piece. It will be a minimum casual rate, with no on-call allowance, no penalty rates and no questions welcomed. You will be persuaded to believe that this great new technical innovation will be beneficial for everyone involved. Most workers will know upfront that this company-speak is bullshit. Those initially fooled by the hyped-up propaganda will soon learn the truth as their income shrinks and their work becomes sporadic and thinly spread over every hour of every day.
It’s the gig economy. We didn’t ask for it, but we got it because the company gets what the company wants. And nothing’s as precious as increased profits.
This article was originally published on: wake up and smell the humans.
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I see business is beginning to object to the Gig economy. I wonder why?
I cannot recall when it was but I remember my Grandfather (a miner) telling me they had to go to the mine gates – and the pit head man would hand pick a minor for a days work.
Often the miner who got the most days work was the miner with a handsome willing wife?
Children were picked to go into the small and recently blasted hole to scoop the coal back to the men who would shovel it in the carts, pulled by women and other children.
The gig economy is nothing new.
We are being conditioned to return to the days of Dickens.
Workers never stop moaning, they’ll want money for luxuries like food and clothes next.
One boy,
Boy for sale.
He’s going cheap.
Only seven guineas.
That — or thereabouts.
Small boy…
Rather pale…
From lack of sleep.
Feed him gruel dinners.
Stop him getting stout.
Read more: Oliver – Boy For Sale Lyrics | MetroLyrics