“Is your gig any good?” Analysing job quality in the Australian platform-based food-delivery sector

By Caleb Goods, A. Veen, T. Barratt. Journal of Industrial Relations, 2019

302 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This qualitative industry case study evaluates job quality in the Australian platform-based food-delivery sector, one part of the growing gig economy where workers, as independent contractors, engage in digitally-enabled and controlled work that is remunerated on a piece rate basis. Using a multi-dimensional framework, we draw on worker accounts of economic security, autonomy and enjoyment to assess job quality. This study posits that to achieve a more refined picture of job quality, both objective and workers’ subjective understandings of work need to be understood in the context of their respective ‘fit’ in terms of individual circumstances, labour market alternatives and the broader socio-political context. This multi-level analysis problematises individual accounts that risk overemphasising the positive elements of platform-based work. Moreover, rather than sitting neatly in a Post- or Neo-Fordist extension of job quality, the findings reveal that the gig economy is a new juncture in capitalist production, the consequences of which need to be taken seriously by regulators, scholars, workers and other relevant stakeholders.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Marketing, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d4a6f704f002cab8e62d7a8e15c8cbb48acb2f0c

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In General Health Professions

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Citations in the corpus

Platform-Capital’s ‘App-etite’ for Control: A Labour Process Analysis of Food-Delivery Work in Australia (2019, background): “Some interviewees used platform-work to evade restrictions on their visas (Goods et al., 2019).”
‘I’m my own boss…’: Active intermediation and ‘entrepreneurial’ worker agency in the Australian gig-economy (2020, background): “The gig-economy has expanded across high- (Goods et al., 2019) and lowwage economies (Ford and Honan, 2019), reshaping industries as diverse as photography and transportation.”
Working on my own: Measuring the challenges of gig work (2021, methodology): “Theory on the psychological element of job quality (Goods et al., 2019) and ERG theory’s emphasis on workers’ psychological relatedness needs (Alderfer, 1972) point to the importance of stable and deep relationships to individuals as they go about their work.”
The organisation and experience of work in the gig economy (2019, background): “Goods et al. (2019) further our understanding of the difficulties to regulate, notably due to the specificities of gig work.”