Protest in the gig economy has taken many forms and targets (platforms, customers, and state officials). However, researchers are yet to adequately account for this diversity. We use a European survey of Upwork and PeoplePerHour platform workers in the remote gig economy to investigate worker orientation towards different forms of protest. Results reveal that worker anger, dependence, and digital communication shape contention in the remote gig 2 economy. Support for collective organisation is associated not only with anger at platforms but also workers' dependence on the platform and communication with other workers. Whereas individual action against clients is associated only with anger and communicationbut not communication and support for state regulation is associated only with anger but not dependence or communication. We conclude that despite the novelty of these emergent social relations, the relational approach entailed by Mobilisation Theory can aid explanation of contention in the gig economy by shedding light on the dynamic process by which solidarity and dependence alter the perceived costs and benefits of particular remedies to injustice.
Protest in the gig economy has taken many forms and targets (platforms, customers, and state officials). However, researchers are yet to adequately account for this diversity. We use a European survey of Upwork and PeoplePerHour platform workers in the remote gig economy to investigate worker orientation towards different forms of protest. Results reveal that worker anger, dependence, and digital communication shape contention in the remote gig economy. Support for collective organisation is associated not only with anger at platforms but also workers’ dependence on the platform and communication with other workers. Whereas individual action against clients is associated only with anger and communication but not communication and support for state regulation is associated only with anger but not dependence or communication. We conclude that despite the novelty of these emergent social relations, the relational approach entailed by Mobilisation Theory can aid explanation of contention in the gig economy by shedding light on the dynamic process by which solidarity and dependence alter the perceived costs and benefits of particular remedies to injustice
RAPID COMMUNICATION'Some messages have just been sobbing': phone line helps headteachers with burden of Covid (Melissa Benn, The Guardian, April 17, 2021) DfE looks to spend another £800k on headteacher wellbeing and mental health support. (Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week, May 31, 2021) England has been living with Covid-19, through peaks and troughs, since March 2020. Hospitals, care staff and workers in utilities and the food chain have had to keep working, often in very risky conditions. School staff have also continued to work. During periods of hard lockdown, they provided face-to-face education for children of 'key workers' while also offering online learning to children and young people at home. When lock-downs eased, schools offered face-to-face teaching to all pupils.Policymakers see schools as integral to economic and social maintenance and recovery and have thus placed a high priority on education as a stable provision operating throughout a very long period of considerable uncertainty and instability. Because of rapidly changing levels of infection and scientific understandings of transmission and prevention measures, the government has adjusted, often at the last minute, the legal requirements around the opening and closing of schools in line with the various levels of lockdown. English school leaders have been in continued crisis management mode (Fotheringham et al. 2021).School leaders have been faced with challenges unimaginable prior to the pandemic. Because schools are a major site for virus transmission, leaders have had to pay particular attention to the management of staff, pupils and buildings (Beauchamp et al. 2021). At the same time as the curriculum had to be digitised and teaching moved largely online, they have had to adapt old and invent new, management procedures. Providing deep cleaning is an easier task than adequate ventilation in England's schools -many are run down and designed to keep the air and warmth in. The management of people, time and space are considerably harder. Pupils are now routinely placed into year-level 'bubbles' so that it is possible for only some of the schools to be quarantined if there is an outbreak. Schools must try to regulate movement in corridors, and avoid crowded playgrounds to avoid aerosol transmission. Masks were mandatory in secondary schools for most of the 2020-2021 school year. In early 2021, schools were integrated into local test-and-trace systems with routine lateral flow testing administered to both staff and students. The 2021-22 school year sees CO2 monitors promised but not delivered.The locus of some key decisions has shifted from the local level to the national. This is significant in a school system that has rhetorically placed local autonomy as the key to education reform. Schools
Children tend to inherit their parents' social class through the types of jobs they get. However, digital technologies are now transforming the way labour markets work. Candidates are increasingly screened using algorithmic decision making. Skills are validated with online tests and customer feedback ratings. Workplace communications take place over digital media. Could these transformations be undermining the advantages that have accrued to workers with posh accents, family connections, and expensively acquired educational qualifications? We examine this question with survey data from the online (remote) platform economy, a labour market segment in which these digital transformations have progressed furthest (N = 983). The results reveal that online platform workers come largely from privileged class backgrounds. Class also influences (via education) what types of online occupations workers do, from professional services to data entry. However, class background has surprisingly little influence on job quality, which is instead shaped by individual digital metrics such as feedback ratings. These findings cannot be fully reconciled with theories of a shift towards meritocracy nor with theories of a persisting influence of class origins. Instead, labour market digitalization may be decoupling inherited occupation from job quality.
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