The emergence of digital platforms, which have changed the rules of the game in sectors such as mobility, tourism, training or finance, are also reconfiguring labor relations and the future of work. In Spain we are European leaders in platform work, 17% of people of working age carry out activities through these platforms at least once a week.
Raise your head and look around for a moment. 43% of working people in Spain have some type of employment relationship different from “the traditional one”, that is, the famous full-time indefinite contract. These people are already part of the growing eventual workforce.
Continuing to think only in the traditional terms of work ignores millions of people who combine different sources of income and shape their lives through a wide variety of unconventional labor relations. We need a new map of the labor market to get our bearings better
The study “The digital labor market under debate”
The previous data is one of the surprising data provided by the study “The digital labor market to debate Platforms, Workers, Rights and WorkerTech” prepared by Albert Cañigueral de Ouishare Spain.
The study helps to better unravel (and understand) the future of work and, in particular, the future of working people, their rights and needs. The document should therefore be interpreted as an incomplete map, as a guide under construction. For the preparation of the report, the different signals that are generating the transformation of the labor market as well as the changes that it implies in the economic and social relations around employment have been detected, analyzed and organized.
The study project was selected within the framework of the Open Innovation Program (PIA) of the Cotec Foundation and had the additional support of the Malt freelancers platform.
The study was made public on June 25 at the headquarters of the Cotec Foundation in Madrid.
At the same meeting, the recommended book “Digital Platforms and Labor Market” by its main authors Luz Rodríguez and Anabel Suso was also presented.
Whoever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want. “Workers on tap” or workers on demand
The emergence of digital platforms, which have changed the rules of the game in sectors such as mobility, tourism, training or finance, are also reconfiguring labor relations and the future of work. In Spain we are European leaders in platform work, 17% of people of working age carry out activities through these platforms at least once a week.
What kind of jobs do we talk about? All types. Today there are platforms to easily access all kinds of talent and needs.
From microtorkers (microworkers) on online microtarean platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, to workers on demand (gig workers) through platforms such as Glovo, Uber, MyPoppins or TechBuddy.. There are also platforms focused on blue collar workers such as CornerJob or JobToday that offer a digital alternative to temporary work companies.
The offer is completed with digital solutions for hiring freelancers and white collar workers (designers, translators, programmers, project managers, cybersecurity experts, etc.) such as UpWork, Freelancer o Malt. You can even find highly specialized profiles on platforms such as TopTal, Up Counsel o GLG designed specifically for this type of workers. It is a global and rapidly growing phenomenon.
The study includes an extensive online document with the details of hundreds of work platforms that exemplify this diversity.
Giving protection to independent workers
We see that there will be more and more independent workers, outside the protection and stability provided by an indefinite employment contract with a single employer. Thus, the study “The digital labor market under debate Platforms, Workers, Rights and WorkerTech” focuses on exploring how to guarantee labor rights and how to meet the needs of this type of independent workers.
In this exploration the word “WorkerTech” appears: the offer of digital services that harness the power and convenience of technology to offer independent workers and flexible personalized benefits while facilitating access to protection and defense systems of your rights
If you are familiar with FinTech, InsureTech, EdTech, AgroTech, etc. You can add WorkerTech to the list of practices to observe.
WorkerTech is thus this new and emerging network of services designed to facilitate collective representation (Organise, Coworker), offer temporary leave insurance (AXA, WeMind) or insurance on demand by activity (Zego, Dinghy), facilitate access to tools of work (LiquidSpace, LightShare, HyreCar), help the creation and maintenance of communities (DNX Hub, FlyLancer), facilitate the contracting of personalized financial services (Hurdlr, Portify), obtain social benefits when there are multiple employers (Alia), manage reputation and micro-credentials (Credly), etc. In this online document these and many other examples are listed.
From this offer each worker builds his personal portfolio of WorkerTech services. The following graphic shows the example of an Uber driver in New York City.
For a graphic designer who finds her clients through the Malt platform in Spain, the result is quite different.
In any case, the objective on the horizon is to be able to combine the flexibility and freedom of self-employment or self-employment with the protections and benefits traditionally associated with salaried or employed employment.
One detail to note is that WorkerTech is not just for platform workers. From a broader perspective – with or without digital platforms that mediate between workers and employers – WorkerTech solutions can provide value services to the group of workers as a whole. In countries with a high percentage of informal economy, these services can also promote the formalization of labor relations. Similarly, they can be useful even for salaried employees in areas such as training or conflict resolution.
The future is for independent and grouped workers
Observing the independent working people one realizes that the first thing they do is to look for their labor tribe, other people like them and them to share, mutualize learn and help each other.
In an environment of discontinuous labor relations with the employer, the independent worker seeks to restore continuity in the work environment by joining other workers.
So we arrive at the oxymoron? of “independent groups” as a key element for the future of the labor market and to define a new social contract of the 21st century.
Whether through trade union organizations such as Riders x Rights, whether in cooperative organizations such as Port Parallele, whether in specialized coworking spaces in a sector such as Alma, whether for the community and to learn together as in Doméstika, or to offer to the market as a group of independent consultants sharing the reputation and administrative services as the case of Ouishare or Enspiral … the future is for independent and grouped workers. Is this the form of the neo-guilds of the 21st century?
In short, work is no longer what it was … nor will it be again.
We keep talking long and hard
In social networks using the hashtags #FuturoDelTrabajo, #WorkerTech and #FuturoDeLosTrabajadores.
The Telegram channel http://t.me/WorkerTech where we will distribute news and studies related to the topics of the study.
The Medium publication about the “Future of Workers”
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This post was previously published on OuiShare and is republished here with a Creative Commons License.
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