Uberland

Silicon Valley technology is transforming the way we work, and Uber is leading the charge. An American startup that promised to deliver entrepreneurship for the masses through its technology, Uber instead built a new template for employment using algorithms and Internet platforms. Upending our understanding of work in the digital age, Uberland paints a future where any of us might be managed by a faceless boss. The neutral language of technology masks the powerful influence algorithms have across the New Economy. Uberland chronicles the stories of drivers in more than twenty-five cities in the United States and Canada over four years, shedding light on their working conditions and providing a window into how they feel behind the wheel. The book also explores Uber’s outsized influence around the world: the billion-dollar company is now influencing everything from debates about sexual harassment and transportation regulations to racial equality campaigns and labor rights initiatives. Based on award-winning technology ethnographer Alex Rosenblat’s firsthand experience of riding over 5,000 miles with Uber drivers, daily visits to online forums, and face-to-face discussions with senior Uber employees, Uberland goes beyond the headlines to reveal the complicated politics of popular technologies that are manipulating both workers and consumers.

Choose your hours, choose your work, be your own boss, control your own income. Welcome to the sharing economy, a nebulous collection of online platforms and apps that promise to transcend capitalism. Supporters argue that the gig economy will reverse economic inequality, enhance worker rights, and bring entrepreneurship to the masses. But does it? In Hustle and Gig, Alexandrea J. Ravenelle shares the personal stories of nearly eighty predominantly millennial workers from Airbnb, Uber, TaskRabbit, and Kitchensurfing. Their stories underline the volatility of working in the gig economy: the autonomy these young workers expected has been usurped by the need to maintain algorithm-approved acceptance and response rates. The sharing economy upends generations of workplace protections such as worker safety; workplace protections around discrimination and sexual harassment; the right to unionize; and the right to redress for injuries. Discerning three types of gig economy workers—Success Stories, who have used the gig economy to create the life they want; Strugglers, who can’t make ends meet; and Strivers, who have stable jobs and use the sharing economy for extra cash—Ravenelle examines the costs, benefits, and societal impact of this new economic movement. Poignant and evocative, Hustle and Gig exposes how the gig economy is the millennial’s version of minimum-wage precarious work.

Labour markets are becoming more dynamic in response to pressures from globalisation, new technologies and trade agreements, as well as cross-border migration, inter-generation differences, changing education imperatives and employer expectations. By focusing on several Asia Pacific countries, this book explores the differences in their workforces: ageing, or abundant in labour but lacking in skilled employees. One similarity these countries share is the difficulty in attracting and retaining employees with the required skillset and capabilities, and these constraints can stymie national economic growth and long term development. This book brings together national and international perspectives on employability challenges faced by selected countries in the Asia Pacific region. While the region is forecast to enjoy high growth in the coming decade, a recurring challenge is addressing skill shortages and ensuring effective transition from training colleges and universities into employment. Consequently, the book focuses on the roles of multiple stakeholders, primarily: governments, education providers and employers – in more effectively addressing these key socio-economic challenges.

Why the cabdriver is the real victim of the false promises of Uber and the gig economy. 2007 Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics, Princeton University Industrial Relations Section Hailed in its first edition as a classic study of New York City's history and people, Graham Russell Gao Hodges's Taxi! is a remarkable evocation of the forgotten history of the taxi driver. This deftly woven narrative captures the spirit of New York City cabdrivers and their hardscrabble struggle to capture a piece of the American dream. From labor unrest and racial strife to ruthless competition and political machinations, Hodges recounts this history through contemporary news accounts, Hollywood films, and the words of the cabbies themselves. A new preface recalls the author's five years of hacking in New York City in the early 1970s, and a new concluding chapter explores the rise of app-based ridesharing services with the arrival of companies like Uber and Lyft. Sharply criticizing the use of the independent contractor model that is the cornerstone of Uber and the gig economy, Hodges argues that the explosion of for-hire vehicles in Manhattan reversed decades of environmental anti-congestion efforts. He calls for a return to the careful regulations that governed taxicabs for decades and provided a modest yet secure living for cabbies. Whether or not you've ever hailed a cab on Broadway, Taxi! provides a fascinating perspective on New York's most colorful emissaries.

This brief anthology for introductory sociology is a collection of 24 short readings that illustrate key concepts in sociology, relate to the everyday lives of students, and spark good classroom discussions. The selections represent four theoretical traditions in sociology (functionalism, symbolic interaction, conflict theory, feminism) and show the range and diversity of sociology and the people who practice it. The book is designed for instructors who want to expose students to some original scholarship in their first sociology course, but who do not want to adopt a comprehensive reader along with the core text they are using.

Going beyond the how and why of burnout, a former tenured professor combines academic methods and first-person experience to propose new ways for resisting our cultural obsession with work and transforming our vision of human flourishing. Burnout has become our go-to term for talking about the pressure and dissatisfaction we experience at work. But in the absence of understanding what burnout means, the discourse often does little to help workers who suffer from exhaustion and despair. Jonathan Malesic was a burned out worker who escaped by quitting his job as a tenured professor. In The End of Burnout, he dives into the history and psychology of burnout, traces the origin of the high ideals we bring to our jobs, and profiles the individuals and communities who are already resisting our cultural commitment to constant work. In The End of Burnout, Malesic traces his own history as someone who burned out of a tenured job to frame this rigorous investigation of how and why so many of us feel worn out, alienated, and useless in our work. Through research on the science, culture, and philosophy of burnout, Malesic explores the gap between our vocation and our jobs, and between the ideals we have for work and the reality of what we have to do. He eschews the usual prevailing wisdom in confronting burnout ("Learn to say no!" "Practice mindfulness!") to examine how our jobs have been constructed as a symbol of our value and our total identity. Beyond looking at what drives burnout--unfairness, a lack of autonomy, a breakdown of community, mismatches of values--this book spotlights groups that are addressing these failures of ethics. We can look to communities of monks, employees of a Dallas nonprofit, intense hobbyists, and artists with disabilities to see the possibilities for resisting a "total work" environment and the paths to recognizing the dignity of workers and nonworkers alike. In this critical yet deeply humane book, Malesic offers the vocabulary we need to recognize burnout, overcome burnout culture, and acknowledge the dignity of workers and nonworkers alike.

Digital Feudalism explores this new moment in capitalism, and how reliant global economies have become on these processes of consumption, work, and debt.