key: cord-0914444-2lzp9gj0 authors: Howson, Kelle; Spilda, Funda Ustek; Bertolini, Alessio; Heeks, Richard; Ferrari, Fabian; Katta, Srujana; Cole, Matthew; Reneses, Pablo Aguera; Salem, Nancy; Sutcliffe, David; Steward, Shelly; Graham, Mark title: Stripping back the mask: Working conditions on digital labour platforms during the COVID‐19 pandemic date: 2021-07-01 journal: Int Labour Rev DOI: 10.1111/ilr.12222 sha: 2ef3bb7d0ee556e124e41662664b40f8467c77af doc_id: 914444 cord_uid: 2lzp9gj0 Digital labour platforms have been widely promoted as a solution to the unemployment crisis sparked by the COVID‐19 pandemic. However, the pandemic has also highlighted the harms to gig workers—who are exposed either to income loss, or to infection while carrying out essential work, but excluded from labour protections. We examine the COVID‐19 policies of 191 platforms in 43 countries to understand how the crisis has shifted the conventions of the gig economy. Using a typology of “fair platform work” we report the introduction of some positive worker protections, but also significant shortfalls, including entrenchment of precarious work as platforms leverage the opportunities arising from the crisis. Millions of workers around the world are increasingly subsumed into and reliant on the platform (or 'gig') economy, performing piece-rate or one-off tasks for clients via apps, or digital labour platforms. Prior to the global spread of COVID-19, researchers were increasingly sounding the alarm about the unsafe and precarious conditions faced by platform workers globally, fearing a race-to-the-bottom of labour standards within a regulatory vacuum (Berg et al. 2018; Forde et al. 2017; Graham and Anwar 2019) . Many pointed to the rapid platformisation of diverse types of work, and the fact that this process was drawing more and more workers outside the purview of long-fought-for and slow-to-adapt labour protections (Stanford 2017) . Issues such as the classification of platform workers as independent contractors or self-employed (and their consequential exclusion from key rights and benefits) were already highly contentious amongst platform economy stakeholders, before the outbreak of COVID-19. However, few imagined that the full material consequences of these debates would manifest so suddenly and so devastatingly, as platform workers found themselves largely unable to fall back on social safety nets in the midst of national lockdowns and economic contraction. Prior to the pandemic, some fit and able workers could have overlooked the fact that platform work would not provide them with a safety net; but the events of 2020 have laid bare the extent to which the digital labour platform model has succeeded in transferring risks on to workers, and the real-life consequences of this shift. They have also made undeniably clear the fact that labour performed via digital platforms-such as shopping, delivery, transport, and care work-is essential to maintaining not only our economies, but the health of our communities, especially in times of public health crisis. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been an urgent need for data and insights concerning how many workers rely on digital labour platforms for their livelihoods, how these workers have been affected by COVID-19 in terms of their working conditions, their incomes and their wellbeing, and how platforms and policymakers have responded to protect platform workers from adverse outcomes. Moreover, it is crucial to trace the macro-level impacts of the pandemic on the platform economy. Has allowed platform companies to further insinuate themselves into the essential functioning of our social and economic infrastructure, has it boosted the demand for and supply of platform labour, has it further eroded key labour movement gains? Conversely, the question of whether the platform economy can present solutions to the manifold crises we face has taken on greater urgency as mass unemployment looms, as a result of the business impact of extended lockdowns. Can it help to address issues of unemployment, and dovetail advantageously with the flexible-working revolution that the pandemic has triggered? The rapid rise and spread of platforms, in line with the model of Uber, has relied crucially on their ability to deny responsibility and evade accountability for the conditions and risks experienced by their workers (Woodcock and Graham, 2019) . However, in the year leading up to the time of writing, they have come under increased public and political pressure to change their policies to protect workers from the immediate risks posed by the pandemic, and from the structural vulnerability that they have so far identified, exploited, and perpetuated. By taking steps to protect workers now-for example by providing personal protective equipment (PPE), sick pay, and compensation for loss of income-they risk undermining the tenuous legal and rhetorical ground on which they have based their business models. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Researchers at the Fairwork Project (www.fair.work) track the working conditions on location-based digital labour platforms 1 against benchmarks of fairness. These benchmarks have been developed in collaboration with workers and other stakeholders since 2018. We have been able to adapt this methodology in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as leverage our established research networks, in order to address some of the questions raised above. Since April 2020, we have developed and maintained a database of platforms' responses to the pandemic, focusing on the extent to which they have provided or enacted fair and safe working conditions in the context of the pandemic. This data has been collected by project researchers through both documentary analysis and direct engagement with platforms and platform workers. We reviewed published platform policies, news and analytical reports, responses from trade unions and other worker groups, and information provided by platforms on their websites and public outreach. We also contacted and invited all platforms included in our database to provide information on their policies and operations. Drawing on a review of the policies of over 191 platforms in 43 countries, we ask, to what extent have platform responses to COVID-19 created better conditions and reduced precariousness for their workers? With reference to the project's benchmarks for fair platform work, we created a typology of policy responses under the categories of fair pay, fair conditions, and fair management, in order to help us understand and reflect on the extent to which the virus has challenged or shifted the conventions that underpin the platform economy. 2 Encouragingly, our findings suggest that some positive steps have been taken towards protecting platform workers during this period. However, we also identify some significant shortfalls, and the possibility of entrenchment of precarious platform work as a result of the pandemic with apparent examples of crisis opportunism taking place. Finally, we have examined political developments deriving in various ways from the pandemic, including instances of consolidated labour resistance, but also platforms successfully lobbying for legislative change in their favour. Going forward, the unexpected shock of the pandemic represents a tipping point for labour conditions in the platform economy, and the outcome of this crisis could be one of two extremes. In one scenario platform companies can utilise the moment of uncertainty to further entrench an exploitative model and expand it into new sectors. We are certainly already seeing evidence of this in many places. However, in this article we argue that, in order for COVID-19 to serve as a catalyst for a fairer future of platform work, regulators must respond to the calls of platform workers, and seize the moment to permanently close the loopholes that platforms have used to disenfranchise workers from decent working conditions. As governments are moving with increased public license to both protect current livelihoods, and enable the creation of new ones, this is a crucial moment to regulate digital labour platforms for a fairer future of work. As of January 2021, more than 90 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and over 2 million have died. The toll of the pandemic has been so high, that the UK for instance has seen the highest excess death rates since World War II. Without a doubt, a crisis at this scale has had a huge impact on the global economy and society. In their April World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected global growth in 2020 to fall to -3 percent, with growth in advanced economies projected to be at -6.1 percent (IMF 2020a). The cumulative loss to global GDP over 2020 and 2021 was predicted to be around nine trillion dollars (Gopinath 2020) , representing the worst economic downturn since the Great This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Depression and the first time since the 1930s that high, middle and low income countries have simultaneously been in recession. Based on an analysis of the declines in output (50-100 percent) from the sectors most immediately impacted by widespread shutdowns, the OECD predicted an initial hit to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the G7 economies of between 20-25 percent (OECD 2020). The impact on annual GDP growth will obviously depend on how long lockdown measures remain in place, but the prospects for recovery remain bleak. Indeed, the effects of the crisis on financial markets, economic activity, and social life could prove to be stronger and more persistent than is suggested by current models (IMF 2020a). In terms of the labour market, a global survey by the ILO and partners (2020) reported that 94 percent of the world's workers live in countries that imposed some form of workplace closure, in an attempt to control the spread of the virus. As of the end of May 2020, the ILO (2020) reported that 20 percent of the world's workers lived in countries that required closures for all but 'essential workers' (though the definition of 'essential' varies from country to country), and nearly 70 percent of workers lived in countries that required workplace closures for certain sectors or categories of workers. The ILO also estimated a decline in working hours of more than 10 percent in the second quarter of 2020 relative to the last quarter of 2019, equivalent to 305 million full-time jobs worldwide (assuming a 48-hour working week). According to these figures, the Americas, and Europe and Central Asia sustained the largest losses in hours worked globally (13.1 and 12.9 percent respectively) (ILO 2020). What is more, the crisis did not affect all workers equally or in the same way. While for some groups of workers, homeworking became a reality which enabled them to save on costs such as transportation or eating out during work, others faced severe consequences in the form of redundancy, unpaid leave or ever more precarious work arrangements. Some sectors came to near complete shutdown, such as in hospitality, tourism, retail, and entertainment, generating widespread loss of livelihood. Young workers This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. experienced some of the worst effects. The ILO found that over 15 percent of young people have stopped working since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, with those who have remained in employment experiencing, on average, a reduction in working hours of 23 percent (ILO 2020). Globally, as of April 2020, 16.1 percent of young women and 18.1 percent of young men (aged 18-29) had stopped working.. Young men (46 percent) noted a reduction in income more frequently than young women (38 percent) (ILO 2020). In the meantime, social distancing and periodic lockdown measures have required society to adapt to a new normal in which direct human contact is minimised or completely eliminated, leading to an acceleration in the digitalisation of the economy (Baig et al. 2020 ). This has included a rapid increase in the use of digital collaboration platforms, e-commerce, worker surveillance tools, cloudwork and gig work (Sneader and Singhal 2020)-disrupting conventional management and organisational practices that have traditionally relied on physical proximity and observation (Malev 2020) . Platform workers have maintained essential public services during the pandemic, including delivering food and household essentials to those self-isolating or practicing social distancing, and providing care services to those in need. So much so that ordering food or groceries via platforms, cashless payments, contactless delivery, and using a ride-hailing platform for travel rather than public transport have all become normalised, even in countries where this was not previously the case. A pre-pandemic OECD report estimated the global proportion of platform workers to be between 0.3 percent in developing countries and 0.5 percent elsewhere; reaching up to 3 percent of the working age population in some countries ). This rate is likely to have increased further as a result of the pandemic, with recurring lockdowns and the financial downturn undoubtedly causing many around the world to lose secure employment, and seek alternatives in platform work. It is not clear that any increased supply of platform workers as a result of the pandemic has been matched by an increase in demand for their labour, and this will certainly vary by sector. Indeed, we see a marked polarisation in the platform economy between essential workers who may have seen their workload increase, such as last-mile and food delivery couriers, and personal grooming and domestic services, for example, which have seen a dramatic and sometimes legislated drop-off in business. Within the former group, earnings may have been maintained but in tandem with health vulnerability. In the UK, for example, 28 percent of platform workers surveyed reported having more work than usual in August 2020. Within that number 78 percent felt their health to be at greater risk while working, but continued to work due to substantial concerns about losing their income (Blundell et al. 2020 ). In those sectors of the platform economy that have seen a substantial decline in demand, we see an equally dramatic decline in earnings: one global survey undertaken during the strictest lockdowns in March 2020 found that 70 percent ofplatform workers had no income and 90 percent were seeking new sources of income (Moulds 2020). One of the sources of economic support such platform workers have turned to is government. This has not been unexpected as governments have launched an unprecedented response to COVID-19: by May 2020, 190 countries had announced a total of nearly 1,000 social protection programmes for their citizens including many income top-up, support or replacement schemes for workers (Gentilini et al. 2020) . However, at least in the early stages of the pandemic, platform workers came up against a longstanding problem when attempting to access these programmes. Based on ILO (2006) tests of employee status or legislation derived from those tests, platform workers in many contexts can be regarded as employees of platforms (see Bogg 2019 . For example, many platform workers are wholly dependent This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. on platforms and have little control over how their work is performed, or the price they can command for it-both indicators of employee status. However, the contractual status of many platform workers has not been that of a platform "employee", but rather of "independent contractor". 3 This intermediate, neither fish nor fowl contractual status has caused workers in a number of countries to fall through the cracks of government welfare provisions introduced to help workers during the crisis (see Mawii, Rathi and Tandon 2020) . In the UK, the government's Self-employed Income Support Scheme did not include workers who were employed after April 2019 and could not present the necessary tax records or who earned less than half their income from self-employment (Belger 2020). As Lord et al. (2020) , note, many platform workers were ineligible for this scheme given the majority of platform workers were unlikely to have worked for more than two years. In France, platform workers are not officially considered employees and would thus have only been eligible for a one-time payment of €1500 specifically designated for 'micro-entrepreneurs' (Apouey et al. 2020) . South Africa provides another example of the importance of the classification of platform workers when accessing support in the context of the pandemic. Were platform workers truly independent contractors, then they would be formally registered as a business-and could then have applied for soft loans from the government's Debt Relief Fund or for underwriting of existing loans. Were platform workers recognised as employees, with their platforms paying into the country's Unemployment Insurance Fund, then the platform could have made use of the Temporary Employee / Employer Relief Scheme that provided replacement income for workers laid off as a result of the pandemic. Since neither condition applied, platform workers had no access to government assistance. As a result of these difficulties in accessing government financial support, 3 Whether gig workers are in an employment relationship, and therefore whether they have been contractually misclassified by platforms is a source of substantial juridical contention and legislative debate across the world. The answer to this question is no doubt complex, and is contingent on the specificities of sectors, jurisdictions, subcontracting arrangements and other contextual factors. We do not intend here to settle this question, but rather to draw attention to the tenuous and contradictory logic that platforms are currently advancing, and the attendant opportunities for pro-worker activists and regulators to intervene. surveys across multiple countries continuously showed lack of income to be platform workers' major priority during the first half of 2020 (Aggarwal et al. 2020 , Fairwork 2020d . As the pandemic raged through 2020, some governments did extend social protection provisions to cover platform workers and announced loan/debt repayment moratoriums (IMF 2020b). However, despite new provisions becoming available, significant barriers remained to accessing government support. Platform workers said the moratoriums were valuable in reducing outgoings e.g. repayments on loans for cars or motorcycles used for ride-hailing or delivery work , though there were reports of creditors reducing payments rather than stopping them altogether as intended by the moratorium, and of creditors simply ignoring the new rules (Adjie 2020 , Mawii 2020 , Ustek-Spilda, Heeks and Graham 2020 . Workers also reported difficulties accessing social assistance payment schemes because of slow government implementation, because they lacked the required documentation, or because schemes only extended to national citizens and formally-registered migrants (Fairwork 2020d , Pacis 2020 . Workers included in the US Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, for example, experienced significant delays in receiving assistance (Romo 2020) . Some workers in India were able to receive food or financial aid via the government but many experienced barriers to access . Because platform work (by design) tends to take place within regulatory blind-spots, even where policymakers tried their best to include these workers in social protections, it has sometimes proven extremely difficult to set the parameters of who qualifies for assistance, and to reach those workers with the appropriate provisions. The result has been piecemeal assistance, which has fallen far short of the comprehensive protections available to workers in other sectors who are classified as employees. These challenges have sometimes left workers struggling with basic needs, as reflected from interviews undertaken by the authors with platform workers in South Africa: This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. "We don't have any food. My children they don't have food. We are still waiting on food parcels from government, not sure if we gonna get it." (Platform worker in Cape Town, April 2020) "The government must help us with food as well, but I am a foreigner here in South Africa so I don't think government can help us with food." (Platform worker in Cape Town, April 2020) Thus, the pandemic has created two categories of platform workers-those who have seen their incomes dry up overnight with little to no access to protection, and those who have little choice but to keep risking their health by going to work, because they have little or no access to protection. Platforms have actively created the conditions for this to occur, by building their business models on a precarious class of workers-that is, workers who are nominally independent, but who in reality have limited agency. The experience of platform workers in the pandemic has demonstrated the true extent to which platforms exert employer-like control over workers' conditions, safety, and wellbeing. Regardless of employment status though, which is nebulous, contentious, and contingent on jurisdiction; because platforms' value creation and extraction is predicated on the labour and the risk undertaken by their workers, and because they institute a relationship of dependence with those workers, we argue that platforms have a fundamental civic responsibility to observe workers' basic rights to occupational health and safety, and protect workers from the risks associated with their work-risks which have been significantly elevated by COVID-19. This responsibility becomes all the more urgent where platform workers are unable to realise the rights and protections afforded to employees by state regulations. pandemic Given the increased insecurity and precariousness of platform work, in this article we explore what platforms have done in order to mitigate the risks brought about by the current pandemic, and to improve working conditions. A typology of policy responses was created in order to capture all types of policies which might have been introduced in the face of COVID-19, and to allow us to examine the extent to which the virus has shifted the conventions that underpin the platform economy. We structure our analysis in line with the Fairwork principles of fair pay, fair conditions, and fair management ) (see Appendix 1 for details). 4 The results show that some platforms have introduced important policy changes to mitigate the risks associated with the pandemic, but that this has been limited to a minority of platforms (for an overview of policies enacted, see Appendix 2). In some cases, especially in the category of fair conditionsconcerned with health and safety-these changes appear to have been driven by mandatory government regulations, rather than being initiated by the platforms themselves. Overall, we find significant shortfalls in platforms' responses to the pandemic, and suggest that much more needs to be done to ensure fair working conditions in the platform economy-in the pandemic context as well as beyond. Loss of pay has been a major risk for platform workers during the pandemic, and is unsurprisingly the issue of most immediate concern for the majority of workers we talked to for this study. Nevertheless, efforts from platforms to provide financial support have not been generally forthcoming. Out of the 191 platforms we analysed, only 21 could be evidenced to have provided some form of direct compensation for income loss to workers due to fewer work opportunities. More than half of those platforms are large 4 Alongside these three categories, Fairwork has two other important principles for fair work in the gig economy, which we assess platforms against in the usual course of our research. These are fair contracts and fair representation. However they have been excluded as categories from this analysis because (1) they are less relevant to immediate risk mitigation measures, and (2) they have not been represented in the typology of platform responses we have evidence for. multinational companies (e.g. Uber, Uber Eats, Glovo, Amazon, Grab), which have the financial capacity to directly compensate workers for income loss. However, a number of smaller local platforms have also provided forms of income support to workers. Though the financial resource at the disposal of the multinational platforms is orders of magnitude larger, thus affording greater ability to institute income protections, the South African domestic cleaning platform SweepSouth, for example, established a fund that clients and other donors could contribute to, in order to provide payments to workers over lockdown (SweepSouth 2020) . Even more limited has been the roll out of loans to workers facing financial difficulties specifically due to the pandemic, though this has been offered by Uber in Jordan, Grab in Singapore, and Didi Chuxing in China. Finally, only 21 platforms appear to have implemented policies to maintain a level of business activity that could help support workers' earnings. These have included, for instance, waiving or deferring client fees to encourage more clients to sign up to a platform, or expansion into new businesses, such as ride-hailing platforms offering delivery services, or food delivery platforms providing groceries deliveries. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Health and safety risks associated with COVID-19 have spurred a wide array of platform policy responses, ranging from protecting workers and clients from infection, to supporting workers who are ill. For this purpose, we classified the type of responses into two sub-categories: preventive measures and illness-related measures. Compared to provisions under the other two categories (fair pay and fair management), health and safety provisions have experienced the most drastic evolution during the course of the pandemic, and have been observed in the largest number of platforms. While at the beginning of the pandemic, most platforms refrained from providing any form of health and safety protection to their workers (i.e. in order not to undermine independent contractor classifications), in the months following the outbreak, platforms have needed to demonstrate stringent safety procedures to customers and authorities to maintain their social license to operate. A shift to socially distanced service was among the most common responses of platforms, with over 60 percent of them introducing a form of contact-free service. These policies have also included making cash-free payment mandatory in order to reduce handling of paper money. In the ride-hailing sector, where social distancing is more difficult, several platforms have gradually provided for the installation of protective panels between drivers and customers. Over time, a large share of platforms have also provided workers with free PPE, with 63 percent distributing or refunding the purchase of disinfectants, and 48 percent providing or refunding the purchase of masks. Since April 2020, over 50 countries have made compulsory the use of masks in public spaces (Al Jazeera 2020), obliging many platforms to ensure that this is observed in the course of service provision. Additionally, 27 percent of platforms have implemented sanitation measures to protect workers and clients, including the disinfection of vehicles and warehouses, or the closing of hubs. Other relatively common measures included the dissemination This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. of guidelines to avoid infection, with nearly 50 percent of platforms providing some form of guidance to their workers, although in most cases these have not gone beyond the general health advice issued by governments. Despite the enactment of a number of policies, evidence shows that implementation of protective measures has not always been effective, with several platforms providing PPE only as a one-off measure rather than continuously, and others-including some large ride-hailing and delivery platforms, such as Uber, Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Rappi, and Ola-failing to provide PPE to all workers or experiencing difficulties and delays in refunding workers for PPE purchases (Anderson 2020; Hadi 2020). Moreover, not all preventive policies introduced have been aimed at protecting workers. While contact-free services have been introduced by the majority of delivery platforms, these have generally only included contact with the final customer, but not, for example, contact in restaurants or warehouses. Other policies have only aimed at protecting customers, such as making temperature scans compulsory for workers, or suspending the accounts of workers diagnosed with COVID-19. Just over 50 percent of platforms have provided some form of financial support in case workers fall ill with COVID-19. As only a tiny minority of platforms classify their workers as employees or dependent contractors, only a few platforms have been able to rely on government-sponsored sick pay schemes, whilst the others have implemented private financial support funds. Although the amounts provided vary substantially between platforms and countries, they have generally been relatively low compared to platform workers' average earnings and have generally been provided as a flat-rate, with only eight platforms stepping in to guarantee previous levels of pay. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Despite the establishment of a number of illness-related financial support schemes, accessibility has often proved problematic.There have been several cases of workers being unable to access such schemes when ill, including Deliveroo workers in the UK and Amazon workers in the US (Manthorpe 2020; Slisco 2020) . In other cases, the proof required to access the scheme, such a medical sick note, has been impossible to obtain for those self-isolating. Only a minority of platforms seem to have implemented positive changes to management policies during the pandemic. In the architecture of many platforms, the number of tasks assigned to a worker or bonus incentives strongly depend on the worker's previous acceptance rate, rating, or other metrics based on tasks already completed. The fact that workers may find it impossible to maintain the same level of activity during pandemic conditions, could hamper future work and pay prospects. 59 platforms, including Uber and Careem in several countries, Hermes in the UK and Amazon in the US, have introduced policies to guarantee no loss of bonuses or incentives in the case of workers being unable to work for a certain period. Another risk platform workers from minority groups have faced since the onset of the pandemic is heightened discrimination, as explanations or blame for the spread of the virus have targeted certain social groups in various contexts. We reviewed actions taken by platforms since March 2020 to protect workers from harassment or discrimination, finding that 28 platforms-including Uber, Uber Eats, and Lyft-have issued public statements declaring that discrimination against any worker (for example on the basis of race or nationality) would not be tolerated. The observed changes to management policies have not necessarily been positive for workers, and several commonly encountered measures carry privacy implications. As mentioned above, a number of This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. platforms have introduced temperature scans for workers; others have obliged workers to take pictures showing themselves wearing masks and/or gloves, or have implemented contact tracing tools (Moghe and Rathee 2020; Clarance 2020) . This data has often been shared directly with customers, with little regard for data protection. Although these policies have been aimed at ensuring general health and safety and reassuring customers, they have also de facto increased the already high level of platform surveillance of workers, with little or no communication, or checks and balances, on how their data is managed and used. The relatively immediate, or stop-gap, actions outlined above are essential to protect workers while the crisis remains acute. However, it is clear from this review that the majority of the world's platform workers have not benefited from either government assistance or platform support to cushion the economic blow of lockdowns, or to address specific risks such as infection. The question we turn to now is how the provision or absence of support for platform workers during the pandemic might be shifting norms and conventions of labour relations in the platform economy. In the next section we explore workers' responses and the increasing incidence of worker resistance, and then we discuss some implications of the pandemic for the digital labour platform business model. As the pandemic has continued to expose the profound power asymmetry that characterises platform economy labour relations, the past year has seen an increase in collective action on the part of workers in the platform economy. Indeed, the heightened levels of physical and economic insecurity during the pandemic, coupled with a lack of adequate protections from platforms, have sparked strikes, protests and legal action by platform workers around the world. In South Africa, for instance, drivers for the ridehailing app Bolt organized several shutdowns in September and October 2020 in protest against This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. decreasing pay rates and inadequate security measures (Mlama 2020; Malinga 2020) . However, despite a number of similar actions taking place all across the world, platforms have, for the most part, ignored workers' demands. Some platforms have even attempted to suppress expression of collective worker voice. This has been the case in India, where the delivery platform Zomato blocked the IDs of riders who participated in strikes (Fairwork 2020b) . While the conditions and demands expressed in these workerled actions have been specific to each context, collectively they speak to the influence of pandemic conditions on the growing organising power and visibility of platform workers. The delivery strikes witnessed in Latin America in the latter half of 2020 offer a particularly illuminating example of the innovative strategies workers have been deploying to mobilise against unfair practices in the platform economy. On July 1, 2020, delivery riders for several prominent platforms in major cities of Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, and Mexico organised a series of coordinated mass strikes that attracted international attention. Decreasing pay and lack of PPE equipment, especially in the early months of the pandemic, were among the main concerns of the thousands of workers who engaged in the numerous protests across the region. These protests were, at least partially, enabled by the same digitalisation processes that they were in effect resisting. Social media, in particular, was a key tool used by workers to mobilise, as well as to elicit public support by raising awareness among consumers of their precarious situation (Pskowski and Vilela 2020) . The events in Latin America are particularly historic, in so far as they represent "the first real example of an international, sector-wide, strike movement in the gig economy" (Howson et al. 2020, 20) . An example of successful worker organisation for improved protection was seen in the UK in late 2020. In November 2020, the UK's High Court decided in favour of the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB), a platform workers' union which had sought an urgent judicial review into whether platform companies were fulfilling their legal obligations to provide PPE to workers (Croft 2020) . The IWGB This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. represents about 5000 drivers and couriers, and contended that the government had not properly implemented EU directives which would see platform economy workers entitled to the same health and safety rights as employees. The workers argued that this issue had become all the more pressing in light of the pandemic. The favourable decision would see government legislating to ensure platforms provided workers with PPE. Amidst the growing insecurity and chaos of COVID-19, workers have also mobilised around ongoing legal battles about their employee status. This was the case in the 'No On Prop 22' campaign in California. Proposition 22 was a Californian ballot measure introduced in November 2020 by a coalition of powerful platforms-namely Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Instacart, and DoorDash-in response to Assembly Bill 5 (AB5). AB5 is a labour law passed by the state assembly in 2019, which requires that all platform workers in the state be reclassified as employees-and therefore that platform companies should provide them with the full suite of employee benefits, including overtime pay, paid sick leave and employer-provided healthcare. Proposition 22 sought to exempt app-based transportation and delivery companies from AB5, and instead introduce a 'middle ground' that would see platform workers receive some protections and benefits, but substantially fewer than their entitlements under AB5 (Steward et al. 2020 ). The worker-led campaign against Proposition 22 received unprecedented levels of support from labour movements both within the US, and internationally. While the numerous expressions of solidarity from workers all across the world speak to the potential of global alliances of organised labour in the platform economy, ultimately, the platforms managed to get the ballot measure passed during the 2020 US presidential election, after a well-funded advertising campaign (Hussain, Bhuiyan and Menezes 2020) . While the events surrounding the passing of Proposition 22 are a sobering reminder of the immense lobbying power of multinational labour platforms, they have also prompted a call to action for worker This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. associations and political groups to prevent platforms from replicating the model elsewhere, and suggesting fairer alternatives, such as the recent 'EU directive on Digital Platform Workers' (Chaibi 2020) . Indeed, in February 2021, the UK Supreme Court upheld the claim to worker status (and attendant rights and protections including minimum wage) of a group of Uber drivers represented by the App Drivers and Couriers Union. While this was a significant victory for platform worker power in the UK and internationally, at the time of writing Uber has still failed to fully comply with the ruling, which stipulated that the drivers were entitled to the rights afforded by worker status during all the hours they were logged in and available to work. The platform has only agreed to ensuring minimum wage and other benefits during the time workers are actively on a job. It is clear that the pandemic has increased pressure on platform workers, and pushed precariousness and unsafe working conditions to an untenable extreme in many cases. This has in turn provided an impetus for collective resistance at a scale not seen before in the platform economy (Howson et al. 2020) . It has also given rise to new platform strategies to preserve their exploitative business models. Whether worker movements can consolidate and sustain themselves sufficiently to realise lasting gains remains as yet unknown. At the time of writing in early 2021, however, Californian drivers have just mounted a constitutional challenge to Proposition 22 in the state's Supreme Court, indicating that the legal battle over their classification has yet to reach a conclusion (Kerr 2021 ). From their inception, labour platforms have deliberately positioned themselves-both rhetorically and legally-as 'technology companies' or 'digital marketplaces' that are in the business of matchmaking those who want to sell various services with those who want to buy them (Woodcock and Graham 2019) . This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. In so doing, platforms have created an artificial distance between themselves and the workers who tender their labour via their digital interfaces. In the majority of jurisdictions, notwithstanding the substantial control they exert over platform workers' earnings and working conditions, platforms have steadfastly maintained that they are not employers, and that platform workers are therefore not their employees. By contractually classifying workers as independent contractors (or self-employed, or similar), platforms have largely been able to circumvent costly employer obligations like social security payments. Moreover, platform workers-unlike most other formal workers-are not legally entitled to hard-won employment protections like a minimum wage, sick pay, etc. However, this business model has come under increasing critical scrutiny in recent years, as scholarship and media attention has focused public awareness of the dangers of platform work (Schor 2020) . The modus operandi of gig economy platforms has also become more difficult to justify and maintain in light of the mounting-and in many cases, entirely preventable-human tragedy resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. While platform work has always been characterised by poor working conditions (see, for example, Cant 2019), the health crisis has added a new and urgent dimension to this problem. Beyond the risks to workers' own health-given the people-facing nature of much platform work, including delivery and ride-hailing-the question of safeguarding workers' health during this pandemic bears a direct link to that of safeguarding the health of the body politic. While we have discussed above some of the positive measures introduced by platforms in response to the pandemic crisis, we have also seen resistance to implementing certain basic measures, and note that many workers remain without protections. This must partially be attributed to the fact that these measures fly in the face of the logic that has fueled the tremendous success of the platform economy from the very start. Even though most worker protections have been basically piecemeal, inadequate, and difficult to access-by enacting them, platforms are implicitly admitting their responsibility for workers' financial This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. and health risks. As some of us have recently argued with respect to Uber, "For a company that has repeatedly insisted that it does not 'employ' its drivers, these provisions represent an about-turn. They implicitly acknowledge that Uber has significant control over the conditions, health, and even survival of its drivers, making it far more than the proprietor of a digital marketplace" (Katta et al. 2020, 205) . In essence, the pandemic has pushed digital labour platforms into a difficult corner, where they are simultaneously claiming not to be employers, while in practice introducing measures akin to employment protections. The contradictory limbo currently occupied by platform economy companies is providing fuel for pro-worker litigation on questions of employment classification, as well as an opportunity for regulators to ensure that platforms take responsibility by providing workers with durable and institutionalised protections even beyond the pandemic. While there is some cause for optimism about the opportunities afforded to litigators and regulators by platform companies' COVID-19 policies, there is also cause for concern due to an opposing trend: while platforms have made some concessions to workers in the form of sick pay and limited income compensation, they have also had substantial success in influencing lawmakers to develop regulation that entrenches and enables their business strategy, at the expense of workers' rights and protections. Political and legal disputes that took place during the pandemic highlight platforms' increasing dominance in shaping public opinion, and how this is translated into regulation. In the United States, the lobbying power of platforms was revealed in the success of the 'Yes on Prop 22' campaign, which in turn gave platforms a financial boost with venture capital and customers (Ustek-Spilda et al. 2020a). Uber, Lyft and their allies spent a staggering amount of money to make the case for Proposition 22. The $200 million invested in the campaign represented the largest sum spent on a ballot in United States history. By contrast worker advocates raised approximately one tenth of that. Uber in particular made liberal use of its platform interface to distribute political messaging and campaign propaganda to drivers This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. and riders. Uber and Lyft's shares rose by 18 and 22 percent respectively on the passing of the ballot measure, representing a gain many times greater than the $200 million invested. As such, the contemporary historical moment does not indicate a looming consensus regarding the role and responsibility of platforms; it rather amplifies pre-existing domains of contestation between regulators, platform companies, and workers. The substantial leverage platforms were able to exert may also be derived from the fact that the services they broker, such as delivery, have been demonstrated as essential to the public health response to the pandemic. Our research demonstrates that some platforms have stepped in where workers faced pandemic-related risks that were not addressed by social or government protections. Fundamentally this shows that platforms have defining power over workers' safety and labour conditions (Ustek-Spilda et al. 2020b). However, our evidence also demonstrates that most platforms have not adequately lived up to the responsibility which is commensurate with that power, meaning that in the absence of labour protections and government interventions, many platform workers have fallen through the cracks. In this article we have suggested some underlying structural reasons for platforms' reluctance to institute protective measures and ensure platform workers' rights during the pandemic. Our wider research has also shown that platform power is exercised in different ways in different contexts. In some cases, platforms have adopted alternative strategies to the entrenchment of independent worker classification as seen in California.. In Germany, for example, Uber has been forced to adapt its strategy by local labour and public transportation laws, to instead commission private intermediaries, which employ its drivers (Fairwork 2020a) . However, these subcontracted employment arrangements can also leave workers in a precarious and vulnerable situation. Several drivers in Germany told us that despite being employed by This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. an intermediary, they earned below minimum wage. Drivers were also uncertain as to whether they were covered by accident insurance. (Fairwork 2020a) . These findings are reinforced by our research in South Africa (Fairwork 2020c) and India (Fairwork 2020b) . Across these contexts, we observe that platforms interact with social political and economic environments in bespoke ways, towards the common goal of evading or circumventing unfavorable regulatory frameworks and undermining workers' collective resistance. However, there are several points of leverage that indicate possible ways to tame the power of platforms (Woodcock and Graham 2019; Ustek-Spilda et al. 2020a) . Alongside the importance of workers' associational power, the efficacy of which has been demonstrated during the pandemic in the example of unions' successful litigation in the UK, we see other complementary prospects for positive change. For example, Evgeny Morozov (2019) argues that digital platform technology has become so important in mediating economic processes and directing their distributional outcomes, that these digital infrastructures should be treated as a public good. One avenue for shared ownership and governance of platform infrastructures can be seen in the nascent platform cooperative movement (Scholz 2016) , However, while promising, platform cooperatives have so far struggled to gain any kind of competitive foothold against established platform companies whose focus has remained on gaining near-monopolistic market share, even where it means subsidising services at a continual financial loss. . Given this market imbalance, another way to tame platforms' asymmetric power could be through antitrust mechanisms, as Sanjukta Paul argues (Angwin 2020) . Such a strategy could help to reallocate governance 'toward the smaller players and away from the dominant ones', so that 'a municipality could run the app and publicly coordinate the market, taking into account public interest'. However, such interventions remain theoretical without government investment. Even as the pandemic entrenches platform-mediated inequalities and corporate power, we are seeing platforms begin to serve This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. an increasingly infrastructural function-yet this is not matched by public accountability, leading to a lack of democratic governance in the platform economy. As we have shown, during the pandemic platforms have been rewarded by financial markets for successfully evading legal and social responsibilities. But it is more important now than ever to reimagine what platforms are and what they do in a post-pandemic world. In this article we have pointed to one possible point of entry-that the protections introduced during the pandemic can be used both to set a new minimum benchmark for platform worker protections, as well as to challenge platforms' arguments regarding their level of legal responsibility to their workers. 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