Online task crowd workers, web-based digital labour platforms and buyers: A labour process study of the challenges and tensions

Abstract

Despite growing interest in crowd work among academics and policy-makers, with various types of digital labour platforms, services or tasks (Howcroft and Bergvall-KÃ¥reborn, 2019), the work and employment challenges and tensions are under-researched (Pongratz, 2018), especially through the underutilised resource and lens of the labour process theory (Gandini, 2018). This thesis will focus specifically on the work and employment challenges and tensions for online task crowd workers of web-based digital labour platforms and buyers. The focus of this research will address an important gap given that the numbers for digital labour platforms, posted tasks, jobs or projects, and people seeking work are steadily increasing, with labour increasingly globalised. Furthermore, a number of risks stem from the way this market is emerging, the way it is regulated and the factors for engagement. This study uses publicly available digital labour platform content, comprising of 4 terms of services and 36 related policies, as well as 34 semi-structured interviews with online task crowd workers and buyers, from 4 prominent web-based platforms. The researcher carried out qualitative content analysis (Schreier, 2012) and a template style of analysis (King and Brooks, 2017), and followed a sequence of steps to analyse the data, including the tentative use of a priori themes based on the extant labour process and crowd work literature. The findings from the analyses show that digital labour platforms differ only marginally in their approach to labour process issues while labour process theory gives a high degree of insight into understanding the subject of inquiry: for example, through explaining issues of skills, autonomy and bogus self-employment, and consent and/ or resistance at work. The findings also indicate how platforms impact the collective identity of sellers as to online task crowd work being a(n impersonal) social endeavour, and signal how control coexists but also has limitations, and how it can be situation specific, unique to the nature of platforms. This work contributes towards addressing gaps identified in the existing literature (Gandini, 2018; Pongratz, 2018; Wood and Lehdonvirta, 2019; 2021; Wood, 2019), while also demonstrating the durability of labour process theory as a robust theoretical lens. Moreover, this study also shows how the findings can be applied in the real world by suggesting policy implications around issues of skills and their mismatch, and limited autonomy and (bogus self-)employment status, by highlighting the need for regulation, and implications for trade unions around issues of collective identity and voice in terms of the challenges they may face in addressing the unique demands of labour, indicating a need for different agendas.

Date of Award	14 May 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Stephen Mustchin (Co Supervisor) & Tony Dundon (Main Supervisor)