IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp12245.html

Working Conditions on Digital Labour Platforms: Evidence from a Leading Labour Supply Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Aleksynska, Mariya

    (OECD)

  • Bastrakova, Anastasia

    (Kiev International Institute of Sociology)

  • Kharchenko, Natalia Nikolaevna

    (Kiev International Institute of Sociology)

Abstract

Online labour platforms matching labour supply and demand are profoundly modifying the world of work. Businesses use them to outsource tasks to a world-wide pool of workers; while workers can access work opportunities transcending national boundaries. Increasingly, workers are located in developing and transition economies. This paper is based on survey of online workers of Ukraine, which in 2013-2017 occupied the first place in Europe, and the fourth place in the world in terms of the amount of financial flows and the number of tasks executed by workers through online labour platforms. Focusing on working conditions of digital workers, the paper shows that while the majority of these workers are satisfied with their online work, a sizeable proportion faces risk of being in disguised or dependent employment relationship, works informally, and has a poor social protection. The earnings through the platforms are generally comparable to the earnings in the local labour market, but they do undercut payments for equivalent work that could have been performed in other countries. There is an important gender pay gap in online work. The paper also shows how these working conditions are shaped by both local and international business practices of posting tasks on such platforms. Based on these findings, it presents a set of policy reflections, both for Ukraine and for the future global governance in the world of digital work.

Suggested Citation

  • Aleksynska, Mariya & Bastrakova, Anastasia & Kharchenko, Natalia Nikolaevna, 2019. "Working Conditions on Digital Labour Platforms: Evidence from a Leading Labour Supply Economy," IZA Discussion Papers 12245, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12245
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp12245.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Berg, Janine., 2016. "Income security in the on-demand economy : findings and policy lessons from a survey of crowdworkers," ILO Working Papers 994906483402676, International Labour Organization.
    2. Greene, Laura & Mamic, Ivanka., 2015. "The future of work : increasing reach through mobile technology," ILO Working Papers 994867513402676, International Labour Organization.
    3. Olga Kupets & Ximena Del Carpio & Anna Olefir & Noël Muller, 2017. "Skills for a Modern Ukraine," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 25741, April.
    4. Sundararajan, Arun, 2016. "The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262034573, December.
    5. Linda McDowell, 2015. "Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography—The Lives of Others: Body Work, the Production of Difference, and Labor Geographies," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 91(1), pages 1-23, January.
    6. repec:ilo:ilowps:486751 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Kässi, Otto & Lehdonvirta, Vili, 2018. "Online labour index: Measuring the online gig economy for policy and research," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 241-248.
    8. Linda McDowell, 2015. "Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography—The Lives of Others: Body Work, the Production of Difference, and Labor Geographies," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 91(1), pages 1-23, January.
    9. De Stefano, Valerio., 2016. "The rise of the "just-in-time workforce" : on-demand work, crowdwork and labour protection in the "gig-economy"," ILO Working Papers 994899823402676, International Labour Organization.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Davide Arcidiacono & Giorgio Piccitto, 2023. "Assessing Inclusivity Through Job Quality in Digital Plat‐Firms," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(4), pages 239-250.
    2. Maria Cesira Urzi Brancati & Annarosa Pesole & Enrique Férnandéz-Macías, 2020. "New evidence on platform workers in Europe: Results from the second COLLEEM survey," JRC Research Reports JRC118570, Joint Research Centre.
    3. Lars Hornuf & Daniel Vrankar, 2022. "Hourly Wages in Crowdworking: A Meta-Analysis," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 64(5), pages 553-573, October.
    4. Maciej Berk{e}sewicz & Dagmara Nikulin & Marcin Szymkowiak & Kamil Wilak, 2021. "The gig economy in Poland: evidence based on mobile big data," Papers 2106.12827, arXiv.org.
    5. Duygu Özlük, 2023. "Next Stage of Global Capitalism: Digital Platforms and Rentier Capitalism," Journal of Research in Economics, Politics & Finance, Ersan ERSOY, vol. 8(4), pages 681-695.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Davide Arcidiacono & Giorgio Piccitto, 2023. "Assessing Inclusivity Through Job Quality in Digital Plat‐Firms," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(4), pages 239-250.
    2. Heiland, Heiner, 2020. "Workers' Voice in platform labour: An Overview," WSI Studies 21, The Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), Hans Böckler Foundation.
    3. Rani Uma & Furrer Marianne, 2019. "On-Demand Digital Economy: Can Experience Ensure Work and Income Security for Microtask Workers?," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 239(3), pages 565-597, June.
    4. Angela Garcia Calvo & Martin Kenney & John Zysman, 2023. "Understanding work in the online platform economy: the narrow, the broad, and the systemic perspectives," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 32(4), pages 795-814.
    5. Valerio De Stefano & Antonio Aloisi, 2018. "European legal framework for "digital labour platforms"," JRC Research Reports JRC112243, Joint Research Centre.
    6. Christine Mayrhuber & Julia Bock-Schappelwein, 2018. "Dimensionen plattformbasierter Arbeit in Österreich und Europa. Implikationen für die soziale Sicherheit," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 61667, October.
    7. Waqas Shair, 2020. "Is Optimizing Or Non-Optimizing Objective Of A Firm In The Gig Economy? A Chronological Approach," Bulletin of Business and Economics (BBE), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 9(2), pages 101-105, June.
    8. K. Gruszka & M. Scholz-Wäckerle & E. Aigner, 2020. "Correction to: Planetary carambolage: The evolutionary political economy of technology, nature and work," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 295-295, November.
    9. Ni Huang & Gordon Burtch & Yili Hong & Paul A. Pavlou, 2020. "Unemployment and Worker Participation in the Gig Economy: Evidence from an Online Labor Market," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 431-448, June.
    10. Lars Hornuf & Daniel Vrankar, 2022. "Hourly Wages in Crowdworking: A Meta-Analysis," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 64(5), pages 553-573, October.
    11. Lopez, Patricia J. & Neely, Abigail H., 2021. "Fundamentally uncaring: The differential multi-scalar impacts of COVID-19 in the U.S," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    12. Lars Hornuf & Daniel Vrankar, 2022. "Hourly Wages in Crowdworking: A Meta-Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 9540, CESifo.
    13. Brian Fabo & Jovana Karanovic & Katerina Dukova, 2017. "In search of an adequate European policy response to the platform economy," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 23(2), pages 163-175, May.
    14. Serpil ÇİĞDEM, 2019. "Endüstri 4.0 ve Dijital Emek Platformlarının İnsana Yakışır İş Bağlamında Değerlendirilmesi," Journal of Social Policy Conferences, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 0(77), pages 157-199, December.
    15. Tan, Zhi Ming & Aggarwal, Nikita & Cowls, Josh & Morley, Jessica & Taddeo, Mariarosaria & Floridi, Luciano, 2021. "The ethical debate about the gig economy: A review and critical analysis," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    16. Mark Graham & Isis Hjorth & Vili Lehdonvirta, 2017. "Digital labour and development: impacts of global digital labour platforms and the gig economy on worker livelihoods," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 23(2), pages 135-162, May.
    17. Janine Berg & Miriam A. Cherry & Uma Rani, 2019. "Digital labour platforms: a need for international regulation?," Revista de Economía Laboral - Spanish Journal of Labour Economics, Asociación Española de Economía Laboral - AEET, vol. 16, pages 104-128.
    18. Davide Arcidiacono & Giorgio Piccitto, 2023. "Assessing Inclusivity Through Job Quality in Digital Plat‐Firms," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(4), pages 239-250.
    19. Jonathan Woodside & Tara Vinodrai & Markus Moos, 2021. "Bottom-up strategies, platform worker power and local action: Learning from ridehailing drivers," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 36(4), pages 325-343, June.
    20. Mueller-Langer, Frank & Gómez-Herrera, Estrella, 2022. "Mobility restrictions and the substitution between on-site and remote work: Empirical evidence from a European online labour market," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J4 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets
    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12245. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.