Gigged

April 9, 2018
Reporter Kessler delivers a stark, skimpy look at the future of work. She begins by describing how, when she graduated from college, in the middle of the 2008 recession, there were few full-time jobs to be had, and increasingly more part-time, “contingent” jobs. She goes on to examine both sides of the gig economy: the one creating opportunity, and the one increasing insecurity and risk. Business leaders quoted here, including Stan Chia of Grubhub and Carole Woodhead of Hermès UK, identify flexibility as a primary benefit of this kind of work, whether it’s driving a car for Uber or prowling for short-term tasks on Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s crowdsourced task marketplace. Contrary to Silicon Valley’s optimism, the gig economy is not a net positive, argues Kessler, particularly for low-wage workers like the house cleaner she describes commuting two hours to earn $10 an hour. Restructuring the way people work is a good idea, the author writes, but it’s also necessary to fix the support structures underlying the economy. Kessler concludes that the U.S. needs another labor movement, another New Deal, or similar revolutionary idea to accompany such a radical change, while warning it took decades for legislators to address the comparable disruptions brought by the Industrial Revolution. This is a brief study stretched to book length; good points are made, but on the whole it feels light. Agent: Alia Hanna Habib, McCormick Literary

April 15, 2018
An examination of how job environment models and opportunities have evolved, mainly through the success of Uber and other gig-economy stalwarts.Kessler, a reporter for Quartz who previously worked for Fast Company and Mashable, describes Uber's rise to prominence in 2013 after a series of failed fledgling attempts to garner venture capitalist funding and how the unique business model changed the way people taxi. But Uber is just one example within an ever expanding network of job marketplaces eschewing the classic template of an office day job with steady hours and benefits. Though both Snapchat and Instagram emerged from this revolutionary period, Kessler focuses on on-demand business models like Uber's, which became widely scrutinized when it classified its drivers (mostly men) as independent contractors, which "relieved the company from government-mandated employer responsibilities in most countries." The author taps the experiences of a number of Uber drivers and satisfied members of this alternative workforce and provides a comprehensive cross section of workers and developers who have abandoned their unrealistic daily working structure to benefit from the gig economy's flexible business models. She also charts the unique strategies of like-minded on-demand workforce marketplaces such as Mechanical Turk, Managed by Q, and Gigster, demonstrating how their successes were earned and are consistently maintained. By contrast, Kessler spotlights the negative aspects of the gig economy: pay discrepancies (e.g., Uber's fluctuating pricing model which affected drivers' take-home potential), personal injury risk and exposure, and lack of benefits. The author then probes how the gig economy became a hot-button discussion among politicians and world economists and policymakers. In conclusion, the author suggests that the advent of "Uberisation" has encountered a wide-ranging groundswell and its share of potholes and obstacles, and though it remains a potentially lucrative employment alternative for workers and labor innovators alike, there are still great opportunities for much-needed refinement.A fair-minded analysis of the ever morphing worldwide labor force--an early entry in burgeoning popular literature on the gig economy.

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May 15, 2018

Reporter Kessler's insightful exploration argues that the increase of people working as freelancers rather than employees of organizations is largely owing to technology that allows workers to deliver services coordinated by apps. Much of the book is devoted to the experiences of four very different people making their way in the new gig economy. This gives texture to the portrayal of the gig economy but does not prevent Kessler from offering more general reflections. She acknowledges the economy's advantages (e.g., efficiency, flexibility), especially for workers with high-level, in-demand skills, but emphasizes the darker aspects: "Without the need to manage people face-to-face, the relationship between a brand and its workers ceased to be a human relationship at all." Gig workers are typically considered "independent contractors" and lack the benefits that often accrue to employees, such as health insurance. Kessler thinks that the problematic aspects of the gig economy should be met with new initiatives, not simply returning to the practices of the past but offers no solutions of her own. VERDICT An appealing choice, chiefly for those interested in the effects of the gig economy on workers.--Shmuel Ben-Gad, Gelman Lib., George Washington Univ., Washington, DC

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