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Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy
This book is about the rise of digital labor. Companies like Uber and Amazon Mechanical Turk promise autonomy, choice, and flexibility. One of network culture's toughest critics, Trebor Scholz chronicles the work of workers in the "sharing economy," and the free labor on sites like Facebook, to take these myths apart.
In this rich, accessible, and provocative book, Scholz exposes the uncaring reality of contingent digital work, which is thriving at the expense of employment and worker rights.
The book is meant to inspire readers to join the growing number of worker-owned "platform cooperatives," rethink unions, and build a better future of work. A call to action, loud and clear, Uberworked and Underpaid shows that it is time to stop wage theft and "crowd fleecing," rethink wealth distribution, and address the urgent question of how digital labor should be regulated and how workers from Berlin, Barcelona, Seattle, and São Paulo can act in solidarity to defend their rights.
In this rich, accessible, and provocative book, Scholz exposes the uncaring reality of contingent digital work, which is thriving at the expense of employment and worker rights.
The book is meant to inspire readers to join the growing number of worker-owned "platform cooperatives," rethink unions, and build a better future of work. A call to action, loud and clear, Uberworked and Underpaid shows that it is time to stop wage theft and "crowd fleecing," rethink wealth distribution, and address the urgent question of how digital labor should be regulated and how workers from Berlin, Barcelona, Seattle, and São Paulo can act in solidarity to defend their rights.
242 pages, Hardcover
Published December 5, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 20, 2019
Collectivization of the farms in Ukraine has been such an excellent example of solving the problem of hunger. A few million peasants were dead, but the dead don't need food. Problem solved!
Scholz wants to bring the same easy solution to the Internet. What could he collectivize?
Scholz wants to bring the same easy solution to the Internet. What could he collectivize?
October 11, 2019
The long opening chapter is a fantastic survey of the overall landscape of platform capitalism. While I don’t necessarily see the value of all distinctions made there, it is a very useful overview.
August 24, 2017
Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy by Trebor Scholz published by Polity is a strong book about the digital labor and its reality and at the same time it's a stimulating book because you will learn everything about the most known web companies ruling the net-world-dimension, what it means copyright in the net, or labor, or just being there, supporting your favorite actor, or writing reviews of your favorite books and how companies are acting regarding it.
Sometimes the so-called digital labor is very underpaid or not paid at all.
Also the word labor is different from work. Work, as the author writes means a daily activity, working with hands and constantly. Labor is a medieval word meaning pain and toil. Classified under labors there are activities like writing a poem and growing up a baby adds Mr. Lewis Hyde.
But digital work shouldn't be considered after all as a different work from the common one "disconnected" by the net, but the story is still dramatically different in this society where it is also pretty difficult to define what it is leisure connected with work. Where start leisure and when work is implemented by it?
When we want to buy a book always more often we google the title on Amazon or other websites reading the synopsis and some reviews.
But what kind of world is this one of book reviewers?
A group of millions of passionate people and bookworms.
There is the shocking beauty story of ms.Harriet Klausner from Pennsylvania. This lady wrote more than 31000 reviews for Amazon while the author wrote this book and she is considered a sort of monument, taken in great consideration from newsmagazines like The New York Times, The Washington Post but she doesn't receive any buck for this work. The author wrote that if ms Klausner would have been paid 5 dollars per review, now she would have saved 155.000 dollars.
So there is to ask to ourselves: what motivate people to write? Why do they work for free?
Another interesting chapter is the fan labor, the one involving a saga, it could be Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, your favorite actor or the TV series you love the most. Again, in most cases it's a free work or very underpaid in the best lucky cases.
43 million of people writes the author, in the USA (a statistic of 2013) live in poverty and long-term jobs assuring a stability and a security for the future are disappearing.
Social networks? People, writes the author: "Are using Facebook for "free" while consuming a culture of their own consuming." Interesting also the sections dedicated to Instagram and other socials.
Students attending 4 year college in the USA work in stage for free most of the time at first. 77% of these people are women.
In Germany there are 400.000 underpaid or not paid at all academic students assistants working in university.
Why this?
Because they live in the hope of a better future and a better tomorrow. Not only but according to the author these young people starts to develop psychologically a "self-denigration" behavior.
That the net has changed the cards on the table of our daily life is evident. With the time appeared more than clear that the net created discrepancies talking about work as well.
In this book Uberworked and Underpaid the reader will enter in a paradoxical world where few privileged people with a great intuition earn wagons of money and the rest of them nothing or they are very underpaid.
What the book wants to do is to try to connect, after the big euphoria for the arrival of the net more than 20 years ago and the various societies connected with it and the high expectations of all the people for this new "life-platform" and this incredible way of communicating, all the workers around the world for trying to define a best future for all of them active thanks to the net and the so-called digital labor.
You must read this book. It's of great relevance, sometimes sad but dramatically true and very well done.
I thank NetGalley and Polity for this eBook.
Sometimes the so-called digital labor is very underpaid or not paid at all.
Also the word labor is different from work. Work, as the author writes means a daily activity, working with hands and constantly. Labor is a medieval word meaning pain and toil. Classified under labors there are activities like writing a poem and growing up a baby adds Mr. Lewis Hyde.
But digital work shouldn't be considered after all as a different work from the common one "disconnected" by the net, but the story is still dramatically different in this society where it is also pretty difficult to define what it is leisure connected with work. Where start leisure and when work is implemented by it?
When we want to buy a book always more often we google the title on Amazon or other websites reading the synopsis and some reviews.
But what kind of world is this one of book reviewers?
A group of millions of passionate people and bookworms.
There is the shocking beauty story of ms.Harriet Klausner from Pennsylvania. This lady wrote more than 31000 reviews for Amazon while the author wrote this book and she is considered a sort of monument, taken in great consideration from newsmagazines like The New York Times, The Washington Post but she doesn't receive any buck for this work. The author wrote that if ms Klausner would have been paid 5 dollars per review, now she would have saved 155.000 dollars.
So there is to ask to ourselves: what motivate people to write? Why do they work for free?
Another interesting chapter is the fan labor, the one involving a saga, it could be Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, your favorite actor or the TV series you love the most. Again, in most cases it's a free work or very underpaid in the best lucky cases.
43 million of people writes the author, in the USA (a statistic of 2013) live in poverty and long-term jobs assuring a stability and a security for the future are disappearing.
Social networks? People, writes the author: "Are using Facebook for "free" while consuming a culture of their own consuming." Interesting also the sections dedicated to Instagram and other socials.
Students attending 4 year college in the USA work in stage for free most of the time at first. 77% of these people are women.
In Germany there are 400.000 underpaid or not paid at all academic students assistants working in university.
Why this?
Because they live in the hope of a better future and a better tomorrow. Not only but according to the author these young people starts to develop psychologically a "self-denigration" behavior.
That the net has changed the cards on the table of our daily life is evident. With the time appeared more than clear that the net created discrepancies talking about work as well.
In this book Uberworked and Underpaid the reader will enter in a paradoxical world where few privileged people with a great intuition earn wagons of money and the rest of them nothing or they are very underpaid.
What the book wants to do is to try to connect, after the big euphoria for the arrival of the net more than 20 years ago and the various societies connected with it and the high expectations of all the people for this new "life-platform" and this incredible way of communicating, all the workers around the world for trying to define a best future for all of them active thanks to the net and the so-called digital labor.
You must read this book. It's of great relevance, sometimes sad but dramatically true and very well done.
I thank NetGalley and Polity for this eBook.
January 2, 2018
Uberworked and Underpaid is an indepth look at the state of digital work place and practices, how it has enriched the few and impoverished many despite its promise of freedom and entrepreneurship for all.
WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
Anyone with a stake or potential stake (work-wise) in today's gig economy. University or college students concerned about getting a job after school would also benefit from having a read.
People who get depressed easily should stay clear, there is plenty of sorrow and pessimism to drive a human insane here. There is also a lot of hope and proferred solutions, but the author is quite realistic about the state of jobs in the world at this time.
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT
The author was thorough in researching various methods that "internet-age" companies like Uber, 99Deisgns, Upwork, Amazon, etc use in avoiding the payment of minimum wage to staff. More importantly, this book encourages the formation of staff-owned platforms, citing the examples of Loconomics and Stocksy, as one of the ways to circumvent the tyranny of low-pay or non-paying work in the name of "exposure" or freedom from traditional jobs.
MEMORABLE PASSAGE
"We are told that millennials want to take their clock back; they prefer to work at night, following their inner clock. Workers, stationed in a cafe, their living room, or a co-working space, can freely follow their interests and they even get to travel. There are, of course, significant advantages to not working in an office as nobody controls what you’re doing as long as the project gets done on time. In reality, however, this contingent work setup often leads to loneliness, fake flexibility, a lack of consistent opportunities to work, and longer work hours. What is marketed as flexibility and autonomy, at least for the most vulnerable workers, is in fact much closer to what Mike Davis calls 'forced entrepreneurialism.' On a Mechanical Turk coffee mug it reads: 'Why work if you can turk?' suggesting that crowdwork for Amazon does not even feel like work. And who would do it if it’d feel like exploitation? Net critic and consultant Clay Shirky suggested that much and the CEO of Amazon Mechanical Turk posed that workers can vote with their feet if they don’t approve of their pay; they have a choice.
"But for some workers toiling in the platform economy is about 'Zugzwang.' 'Zugzwang' in chess, means that no matter what the players ’ next move will be – and a move she has to make – there are not any good options."
.......
Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy by Trebor Scholz is available to buy on all major online book stores.
Many thanks to Polity for review copy.
WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
Anyone with a stake or potential stake (work-wise) in today's gig economy. University or college students concerned about getting a job after school would also benefit from having a read.
People who get depressed easily should stay clear, there is plenty of sorrow and pessimism to drive a human insane here. There is also a lot of hope and proferred solutions, but the author is quite realistic about the state of jobs in the world at this time.
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT
The author was thorough in researching various methods that "internet-age" companies like Uber, 99Deisgns, Upwork, Amazon, etc use in avoiding the payment of minimum wage to staff. More importantly, this book encourages the formation of staff-owned platforms, citing the examples of Loconomics and Stocksy, as one of the ways to circumvent the tyranny of low-pay or non-paying work in the name of "exposure" or freedom from traditional jobs.
MEMORABLE PASSAGE
"We are told that millennials want to take their clock back; they prefer to work at night, following their inner clock. Workers, stationed in a cafe, their living room, or a co-working space, can freely follow their interests and they even get to travel. There are, of course, significant advantages to not working in an office as nobody controls what you’re doing as long as the project gets done on time. In reality, however, this contingent work setup often leads to loneliness, fake flexibility, a lack of consistent opportunities to work, and longer work hours. What is marketed as flexibility and autonomy, at least for the most vulnerable workers, is in fact much closer to what Mike Davis calls 'forced entrepreneurialism.' On a Mechanical Turk coffee mug it reads: 'Why work if you can turk?' suggesting that crowdwork for Amazon does not even feel like work. And who would do it if it’d feel like exploitation? Net critic and consultant Clay Shirky suggested that much and the CEO of Amazon Mechanical Turk posed that workers can vote with their feet if they don’t approve of their pay; they have a choice.
"But for some workers toiling in the platform economy is about 'Zugzwang.' 'Zugzwang' in chess, means that no matter what the players ’ next move will be – and a move she has to make – there are not any good options."
.......
Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy by Trebor Scholz is available to buy on all major online book stores.
Many thanks to Polity for review copy.
March 21, 2021
The topic of this book is vitally important: What can be done about the encroachments, abuses, and exploitation perpetrated by Big Tech and the so-called “sharing economy”? And there’s a lot to be learned about this field along the way - Scholz clearly is knowledgable and insightful. Worth reading.
Unfortunately, the text suffers from some classic weaknesses: Too much space is taken up with lists and taxonomies, and MUCH too little time is spent elaborating on Scholz’ solution - platform cooperativism. Almost laughably so.
In particular, the author fails to explain how a pathway to a better future might take shape.
Unfortunately, the text suffers from some classic weaknesses: Too much space is taken up with lists and taxonomies, and MUCH too little time is spent elaborating on Scholz’ solution - platform cooperativism. Almost laughably so.
In particular, the author fails to explain how a pathway to a better future might take shape.
December 11, 2017
An interesting and unsettling book about digital labor and the impact on today work. It was really interesting and helped me to understand a lot about the digital work and the digital labor and it was really interesting to read the proposed solutions
Many thanks to Netgalley and Polity
Many thanks to Netgalley and Polity
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December 22, 2017331.761 S3689 2017
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews