Lost in a Crowd: How Crowdworkers are Denied Their Rights at Work
Document Type
Report
Publication Title
International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network - Issue Brief
Publication Date
5-2025
Abstract
(Excerpt)
If asked about digital platform work, most people would immediately think about rideshare and delivery drivers. Transportation-related platforms have become so ubiquitous and enmeshed in everyday routines that “Uber” is now used as a verb, and “uberization” means the adoption of a digital platform business model. Rideshare and delivery, however, are only one part of the overall landscape of digital platform labour. In the last decade, many businesses have been shifting toward computer-intermediated methods of working. On-demand platforms have expanded to provide many kinds of location-based in person services, including tasks as diverse as home repair, beauty and cosmetic styling, and domestic cleaning services. Beyond in-person services, studies estimate that there are over one hundred and fifty million workers across the world who work on digital platforms, performing various data-related tasks completed wholly on the computer.
Computer crowdwork has in fact become a transnational business endeavour, creating a scalable on-demand workforce that provides the back-office services that power many internet sites and new technologies. Across the world, computer crowdworkers are performing microtasks in transcription and data annotation, as well as performing longer-term freelance contracts to perform many tasks, including software programming and accounting. To the end user of many websites or artificial intelligence technologies, however, such work is obscured or invisible, with human work often disguised or attributed to computers. While many of the tasks posted are done so by requesters in the EU and the United States, the work has often been offshored and carried out by workers in the Global South. More recently, crowdworkers in Kenya, Uganda, and India have been involved in piecework training of artificial intelligence (AI) large language models like ChatGPT. While work has traditionally been conceived of as a localized activity, and largely regulated on a local level, many forms of crowdwork are truly multinational enterprises.
The next section of the report sets out the connections between the previous Taken for a Ride reports with the current document, noting the differences and similarities in the analysis. The third section provides certain definitional terms as well as information about the workers within these sectors, including what we know about their location, education, gender, and disability status. Section 4 focuses on the ways in which the problems of crowdworkers are coextensive with many of the workers’ invisibility. Some of these concerns include the low rate of remuneration as well as difficult working conditions on digital platforms. Then, Section 5 turns to legislation and decisional law. While most of the court cases focus on rideshare and delivery, (at least until recently), this section describes such litigation, as well as the extent of recent legislation. Finally, the last section contains some responses to the ILO proposed standards as well as additional thoughts on where this might be heading – on unpaved roads. Given the growing importance of crowdwork, as well as the ILO’s proposed standards on decent work in the platform economy, it is important to include the millions of other non-rideshare digital platform workers in that discussion. The ILO standard’s provisions on collective rights could be strengthened through a rebuttable presumption of employment and through tailoring the protections to the needs of all platform workers. Because of the multinational nature of many of these digital labour platforms, a cooperative and coordinated approach to regulation and enforcement is imperative to the delivery of worker rights.
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Part of the Taken for a Ride Series.