Challenges and injustice faced by gig workers. Variation in pay, lack of certainty in work volume, how treated in the city, by restaurants and customers, and by platforms & software. Lack of transparency, also with controlling algorithms and platforms.

1. Learning from gig workers
Challenges of gig logistics, 29.4.2022

2. Gig work
š This form of working has expanded
greatly
š Increased 100% over the last three
years (TUC, 2019)
š Estimated 50 million gig platform
workers worldwide (Fairwork, 2020)
š An estimated 4.7 million in the UK (9.6%
of working-age adults)
š COVID has led to a digital
transformation with a 30% increase in
online shopping

3. What is gig work?
1. Workers in the gig economy commonly take on work that is mediated through digital
platforms
2. Platforms match workers and clients in the performance of short-term or individual tasks,
colloquially known as ‘gigs’ (Woodcock and Graham, 2019)
3. Pay is linked to the number of ’gigs’ completed
4. Workers own their own infrastructure (e.g. transport, maintenance costs, insur ance)
5. Pay no benefits such as holiday, sick pay, maternity/paternity leave, pension

4. Framing
š By developing an understanding of how platforms impact the workday and lived
experiences of couriers, we looked to establish interventions focusing on how
platforms and software stakeholders can increase the fairness of the work.

5. 3 principal study
groups &
methods
Two in-person cycle courier
workshops with ‘Switch-Gig’ in
York and Manchester
‘Critical incident’ methodology
focusing on ‘unfairness’ (survey,
snowball sampling)
‘Edinburgh protocol’ remote
method for logging & discussing
gig work lived experience

6. Understanding how gig economy
couriers move around Edinburgh, their
patterns of work and what forms of
paid and unpaid labour they conduct
in a working week.
Each working day we need:
Ø GPS file (from Strava or similar)
Ø Screenshots of delivery apps
Ø Audio recorded debriefs
Ø Photo or video (care GDPR, privacy)
Ø Follow up 1:1 online interviews
Edinburgh Protocol:

7. Screenshots: For each job
Arrived at customer Delivered
Received order (from restaurant)
Accepted order Arrived at restaurant
x (The number of orders you do during a shift)

8. •At the end of each logged day, audio record yourself answering the following
questions, with as much detail as possible:
• State the date your recording relates to
• What have you been paid today? Please provide as much detail as possible
around the number of trips you have made, and any tips received today.
• Please explain
• any unpaid work
• waiting time while logged in
• expenses incurred
• any noteworthy events or obstructions (e.g., aggressive customers, slow
restaurants, traffic obstructions, diversions etc.) with the platform, restaurants,
customers, other couriers and/or city users?
Structured Audio Debriefs

9. • Optional but appreciated: upload at least one
photo or video that contextualises your working
week.
Can be anything you feel is representative:
What waiting looks like for you.
What your break looks like.
A video taken during waiting at a restaurant
• We will anonymise any faces (including yours)
from photos or videos we receive.
DO NOT PUT YOURSELF AT RISK OF INJURY OR
CONFLICT BY TAKING PHOTOS.
Photographs or Videos

10. Collecting Data in Ethical Ways
š GDPR and personal details – Couriers are technically data processors as the platform
shows them personal details
š Platforms' Terms and Conditions prohibit the storing of customer details
š Renumeration for time and effort - We paid £10.75 (UK Living Wage) x hours of
participating (max 40 hours)
š Data routinely gathered on workers is 'fact' and hard to contest; but is
manipulated by e.g. customers and restaurants too

11. Findings – motivation and pay

12. Why do these
people gig?
š Love of cycling (50 miles a day
is common)
š Can do better than basic living
wage (some earn £15ph vs.
£8.21)
š Mixture of money, adrenaline
and endorphins
š Flexibility to time work around
other constraints, e.g. family
Image: https://www.facebook.com/yorkcollective/

13. Work as a game?
š Unlike “real” independent
contractors, earnings
depend on the availability
of sufficient work
š Pay and reward is linked to
the balance between
urgency, available work,
available workers
š Peak and super peak times
š Refusing a job, can
‘encourage’ the reward to
increase – but also using
experience to link jobs
together

15. Findings – availability of work

16. Location, location
š Couriers congregate in central
areas (GPS figure)
š Savvy cycle couriers try and
stay central so they can chain
jobs together
š Parking and stopping locations
for loading (particularly when
there's a delay in food) is very
limited
š The couriers see a lot of the city
so are a good source of
information for planners/policy
makers

17. Sunday

18. Payment Screens (EDIN10)
Tuesday missing

20. Findings – fairness, restaurants
and customers

21. Understanding unfairness

22. Gaps, atomised work, multiplatform potential
Green = on a job,
grey = waiting for
work

23. Restaurant Behaviours
š Waiting time at restaurants/shops is highly variable
š Partially due to the nature of food delivery and waves of demand
š Attitudes towards couriers from restaurant varies, meaning that
workers are more likely to reject certain restaurant’s orders
š Couriers experiences at a restaurants used to predict waiting time
cost benefit analysis of accepting a job
š Packaging that restaurants provides isn't always robust enough,
particularly in hilly cities (might also be a bag design issue – at York
the couriers loved a particular Deliveroo bag)

24. Transparency and accountability
š “Restaurant’s are disrespectful and can have huge waiting times
they have waiting times because the prioritise their own customers
over third party apps. Restaurant’s are disrespectful due to the odd
rotten egg in our chain and because support lines don’t help them
out. Customers can be aggressive when food is late this isn’t our
fault it’s the staff at the restaurants fault, I’ve had pizza, pasta
thrown in my face.” P9

25. It’s cooperative work
š Work 'emerges' and is dependent upon businesses, platforms,
algorithms and customers
š Platforms and mobile apps do not expose much of this, but workers
'take the blame' when things go wrong
š Quite different experiences in different cities/ geographies, which
does affect pay and conditions (stamina, structural inequality)
š Platform can change 'under' the workers when software or
algorithms are updated without warning
š Interplay between demand, available work and number of
available workers

26. Your future
as a beta test
“I have worked with deliveroo for 3
years and within my first year they
terminated my contract due to
rejecting jobs which were too far and
as I was on an hourly rate of £6 plus £1
per delivery and considered traveling
these 1.5 miles plus distances not
worthwhile the time and risk.”
“now conscious not to get fired again
so I have to only reject jobs under dire
circumstances regardless if I'm getting
paid less than £5 for doing a 4 mile trip
for instance or if the route is unsafe for
bikes” P26

27. Customers
play too
š “I had a customer enter an incorrect
address which didn't exist. When I
called the customer to find out
where I should take the food he
asked me to deliver to an address
outside my zone of work on a high-
rise housing estate I don't know well
and did not feel comfortable
entering. I told him I was cancelling
the order. I was really frustrated by
the loss of time as I was not paid for
this, and Deliveroo made me return
the food to the restaurant.” P4

28. Findings – cities and
infrastructure

29. Tensions in Cities
š Adversarial first contact - The single point of contact between a city
and courier tends to be law enforcement
š Gig couriers not treated the same as other couriers
šRoyal Mail workers in York are allowed to be on bikes/vans in
the pedestrianised zones when gig couriers aren't
š Feel under pressure and can 'take risks' to speed things up
š Couriers feel friction with other road users (e.g., lorries), yet are
respected by others (e.g., buses)
š Risk of theft and personal violence with little protection in most cities

30. No break rooms, bulletin boards or secure
spaces

31. Burden of proof
šLittle visibility or
accountability when
unfairness occurs
šAlgorithmic justice is swift
šTermination of an account
results in a loss of access to
data helpful to support a
case
š “The order was then removed from my
app. I was told by Rider Support I would
still be paid for the order but needed to
send an email to request this. I then sent
an email to Deliveroo requesting to be
paid for this. They refused to pay
because I did not swipe "delivered". I was
unable to swipe "delivered" due to the
order being removed from my app at the
time. Deliveroo kept claiming that their
"order tracker" did not place my location
anywhere near the customer and this is
why they were refusing to pay. Luckily I
record every shift with Strava and I also
took a photo of the order, with location
services on.” P1

32. Designing a fair and
sustainable future

33. The Future and the system we are
designing
š Fair Work Zone – city commitment to rights and facilities? A minimum
supply of work, or maximum number of workers?
š Some want full time work, some want flexibility - how can we support this?
š What systems are we getting locked into?
šMeta platform? Care we don’t just offer more and more atomised
work
šThere are ways to use infrastructure and assets better (c.f.
consolidation), but pay people more fairly? How covers infrastructure
cost?
šOpportunity: bringing life into areas in a designed way, rather than
leaving it to ‘just emerge’; design to accelerate sustainability?

34. Thanks to
š Switch-Gig funded by the
EPSRC Network+ Not-Equal
(EP/R044929/1) – Ben
Kirman (York)
š Oliver Bates and
Carolynne Lord
š Our participants for taking
the time to work with us
http://flipgig.org