You probably see them every day and you might make use of their labor quite often too. Gig workers, wearing brightly colored uniforms, have quickly become part of the streetscape in cities around the world. The services they provide, such as delivery of food and other goods, private transport, and various household tasks, are cheap, convenient, and easily accessible through digital platforms. Yet for many customers, the sight of gig workers appears to evoke a sense of unease. Indeed, one of the reasons why delivery platforms offer “contactless delivery” is likely that customers wish to receive their orders without interacting with those who bring them. And not only customers are troubled. The gig economy has been receiving increasing scrutiny from trade unions, advocacy groups, and policymakers. For example, in June this year, the European Council proposed a directive aimed at improving working conditions in this area, which is now being debated in the Parliament.
The reactions appear to be partly motivated by moral concern for the situation of gig workers (in addition to worries about, for instance, environmental sustainability and urban planning). But what, if anything, is morally amiss here? Now, it is true that gig workers tend to be private contractors and therefore lack the job security and social protections that employees enjoy. Also, many of them report high levels of stress, poor work-life balance, lack of autonomy at work, lower than hoped-for net income, and incidents of discrimination or harassment. But, as supporters of the gig economy are keen to point out (see Schor 2021), it is not just that gig work increases efficiency and creates economic value unrealizable in other ways; it benefits a segment of the population in unique ways. Gig work may in fact be the best or only way to earn an income for people who are not qualified for other jobs or need a more flexible working schedule than these jobs admit. In particular, gig work is frequently the only viable job opportunity for migrants with a precarious legal and economic status or limited language skills. So, it appears that disadvantages notwithstanding gig work makes these workers better off compared to available alternatives. Moreover, there is little reason to think that gig workers would generally be mistaken or deceived about what the job involves or that they would be coerced by others. It is therefore not naïve to claim that they do the job voluntarily, at least on the undemanding standard of voluntariness we apply to other jobs (after all, in capitalist economies without universal basic income, most people must perform some paid work or other to subsist).
[...] gig work is frequently the only viable job opportunity for migrants with a precarious legal and economic status or limited language skills. So, it appears that disadvantages notwithstanding gig work makes these workers better off compared to available alternatives. [...] the problem [...] does not appear to be that gig workers fail to benefit from or fail to voluntarily consent to the work they do.
So, the problem, if there is one, does not appear to be that gig workers fail to benefit from or fail to voluntarily consent to the work they do. Gig work is clearly unlike slavery in these respects. The problem is more likely to be that, in many cases, it involves exploitation. Broadly speaking, people are exploited when they are in a vulnerable condition and others use their vulnerability to extract excessive or inappropriate gain (Valdman 2009). Arguably, this description captures the situation of many gig workers. These workers are vulnerable insofar as they must earn money for necessary expenses and lack other ways of doing so. This enables others, such as platform companies, investors, or customers, to leverage this vulnerability to have workers agree to payment levels and working conditions that, though better than nothing, are nonetheless inadequate compared to the benefits that these other parties receive. (The extent to which people are vulnerable to exploitation partly depends on how social institutions and structures are set up. Our focus here is not on these structural circumstances, which may themselves be profoundly unjust, but on transactions that occur within them.)
The concept of exploitation is useful here because it picks out a moral wrong that can occur even in mutually advantageous and consensual relationships. It allows us to recognize that there may be something objectionable about the gig economy even if it makes workers better off and even if they work voluntarily. Surely, one might say, the workers benefit, but they do not benefit enough, especially considering the substantial gains that others derive from their labor.
[...] in the gig economy, power is much more widely dispersed. Workers are often vulnerable—but it is not obvious to whom.
Interestingly, while the concept of exploitation is a useful starting point for ethically appraising the gig economy, the gig work case also puts pressure on us philosophers to develop our understanding of this concept. It does so in two related ways. First, philosophers are accustomed to thinking of exploitative practices as two-party exchanges. (Alan Wertheimer’s [1996] work has been especially influential here.) Standard cases involve, for instance, pimps exploiting sex workers, organ brokers exploiting organ vendors, and sweatshop managers exploiting factory workers. In these cases, one party is vulnerable to the other, which gives the latter power to skew the terms of the exchange strongly to their own advantage. However, in the gig economy, power is much more widely dispersed. Workers are often vulnerable—but it is not obvious to whom. They are usually not employed by platform companies, and these companies generally present themselves as mere intermediaries who enable customers and workers to interact. Moreover, workers often do not directly interact with company bosses; rather, the instructions they receive are generated by an algorithm and transmitted via a smartphone app.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that given the peer-to-peer structure of the gig economy customers often interact more directly with workers than in standard cases of exploitation. The ordinary customer of, say, a sweatshop-produced T-shirt or pair of sneakers never meets the worker who produced the good and often only vaguely grasps the complexity of the production chain. By contrast, the ride-hail service passenger encounters the driver in person. This feature seems to implicate the customers of gig work more directly in the morally problematic aspects of the gig economy. At the same time, it is also true that customers do not generally have as much leverage to direct the actions of gig workers as exploiters in the classic two-party cases mentioned earlier.
In short, it may be clear who is being exploited in the gig economy. However, because power is widely dispersed due to algorithmic control and the economy’s peer-to-peer structure it is much less clear who is exploiting them.
While assessing exploitative practices with a view to determining what exploiters do wrong, philosophers have tended to overlook the exploitee’s side of the matter. They have asked why it is wrong to exploit somebody, but rarely why it is bad or harmful to be exploited. [...] there is a need to better understand the nature of the harm that their victims suffer.
This brings us to the second way in which reflecting on the gig economy challenges us to develop philosophical exploitation theory. When philosophers discuss exploitation, they are mainly interested in determining the nature of the wrong involved. Their central disagreement concerns why exactly it is wrong to take advantage of the vulnerable. Is the fundamental problem that the fruits of the exchange are unfairly divided, that is, that one party receives too much and the other too little as liberal writers argue? (Wertheimer 1996; Valdman 2009) Or is it rather that exploiters treat their victims as mere instruments for advancing their own ends as on broadly Kantian approaches? (Wood 1995; Sample 2003) Or is exploitation wrong because it involves domination, that is, the abuse of power as some contemporary Marxists claim? (Vrousalis 2022) This concern with wrongdoing invites a focus on the wrongdoer. It suggests that morally assessing some potentially exploitative practice is a matter of identifying the potential exploiter and asking whether they violate the relevant normative standard. Do they treat the other unfairly? Do they instrumentalize or dominate them? However, this approach runs into difficulties in cases such as that of the gig economy where, as we have argued, it is hard to say who the potential exploiter is.
More fundamentally, reflecting on the gig economy exposes a blind spot in philosophical exploitation theory, which we would like to highlight. While assessing exploitative practices with a view to determining what exploiters do wrong, philosophers have tended to overlook the exploitee’s side of the matter. They have asked why it is wrong to exploit somebody, but rarely why it is bad or harmful to be exploited. We think that a shift in focus is called for. In addition to understanding the nature of the wrong that exploiters do, there is a need to better understand the nature of the harm that their victims suffer.
When people have their vulnerabilities used by others as levers for profit maximization, they are treated as less than equals. [...] When people voluntarily agree to such a deal, they have to reveal this vulnerability: their choice is a public display of inability and dependency. It is reasonable to think that making such a choice is humiliating and degrading; that it damages people’s standing in their own and other people’s eyes.
Our contention is that exploitation inflicts a form of relational harm (Malmqvist & Szigeti 2021). When people have their vulnerabilities used by others as levers for profit maximization, they are treated as less than equals. In short, their standing in relation to other people is damaged. This is true also in cases where people voluntarily agree to and benefit in material or other respects from being exploited. Indeed, it is arguably especially true in such cases. It only makes sense to agree to a beneficial but exploitative deal if you are in a vulnerable condition, that is, if you are unable to meet important needs or interests in other ways and therefore dependent on the exploiter for satisfying them. When people voluntarily agree to such a deal, they have to reveal this vulnerability: their choice is a public display of inability and dependency. It is reasonable to think that making such a choice is humiliating and degrading; that it damages people’s standing in their own and other people’s eyes. The case of the brightly clad delivery person riding their bike or scooter down the street is arguably a particularly vivid illustration of this: the choice is manifest in their highly visible uniforms.
Examining exploitative arrangements starting from the exploitee’s perspective is philosophically and practically useful, we think. Doing so complements the preoccupation with the exploiter’s conduct that characterizes philosophical discussions of exploitation, helping us gain a more nuanced understanding of this complex phenomenon. Foregrounding the exploitee is also useful given the dispersion of power in the gig economy. As pointed out above, philosophers might have little to say about this case if their main interest is to find an exploiter and determine what they do wrong, because the exploiter is hard to identify. However, given that the gig economy represents a major shift in many people’s working and living conditions, philosophers have an important role in ethically appraising it. Starting from the exploitee’s rather than the exploiter’s end of things makes this task easier. After all, it is not difficult to see who is at risk of being exploited in the gig economy. It is the ride-hail driver, the food delivery rider, or the cleaner conveniently accessed through your smartphone.
Before closing, it is important to note that gig work comes in many different forms. Working conditions vary greatly between sectors and countries, and the workers are a heterogenous group (Schor 2021). Not all of them suffer the lack of options for meeting important needs or interests that makes people vulnerable to exploitation. Empirical research as well as careful philosophical analysis are therefore needed to determine precisely which gig jobs are genuinely exploitative and thus raise the concern about relational harm that we have highlighted. Another question calling for further inquiry is how to reduce or redress such harm. A challenge here is that even when gig work is exploitative, it often benefits the workers by providing their only or best chance of earning needed income. This means that blanket prohibitions may do more harm than good and that more cautious regulatory approaches are preferable. Moreover, since exploitative arrangements lead to relational harm, material remedies alone are not sufficient. In addition to ensuring that gig workers are paid adequately, interventions that empower them to claim standing as equals are needed (Malmqvist & Szigeti 2021). These include efforts to increase their influence over working conditions (for instance through unionization) and efforts to reduce the vulnerabilities that make exploitative gig work their best option (for instance through strengthening their access to other jobs or to social protections).
References
Malmqvist, E., & Szigeti, A. (2021). Exploitation and remedial duties. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 38(1), 55-72.
Sample, R. (2003). Exploitation: What It Is and Why It’s Wrong. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Schor, J. (2021). After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win it Back. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Valdman, M. (2009). A theory of wrongful exploitation. Philosophers’ Imprint, 9, 1-14.
Vrousalis, N. (2022). Exploitation as Domination: What Makes Capitalism Unjust. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wertheimer, A. (1996). Exploitation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wood, A. (1995). Exploitation. Social Philosophy and Policy, 12(2), 136-158.
Erik Malmqvist is Senior Lecturer in Practical Philosophy at the University of Gothenburg. He has published extensively on philosophical exploitation theory and on the moral limits of markets. His other research interests include ethical and policy questions related to healthcare, public health, and health research.
András Szigeti is Associate Professor in Practical Philosophy at Linköping University and Associate Director and Research Fellow of the Lund Gothenburg Responsibility Project (LGRP) at Lund University. He serves as associate editor of Philosophical Explorations. He specializes in action theory, emotion theory and the ethics and metaphysics of individual and collective responsibility. His latest publication is the co-edited (with M. Talbert) collection Morality and Agency: Themes from Bernard Williams (Oxford University Press, 2022).