This short book covers a big subject. It is dense but eminently readable, the authors being masters of their subject and able to distil the essence of their own and others’ research. Over the past decade, and more especially the last few years, there has been a global explosion of research and writing on gig or platform work amounting to literally hundreds if not thousands of journal articles and perhaps dozens of books emanating from a range of disciplines including sociology, industrial relations, HRM, psychology, and occupational health and safety (OHS). Detailed studies of attempts to regulate these work arrangements are still rare. Those presenting a systematic assessment of regulatory measures in different jurisdictions, and one that points to more effective models, are even scarcer. That is precisely what this book does, making it especially valuable.
By way of context, three other observations are worth making. First, the vast majority of the gig-work literature is ahistorical failing to acknowledge that it essentially amounts to digitally/app-enabled subcontracting and subcontracting is a centuries-old work arrangement. What is new is that algorithms enable subcontracted work to be allocated, monitored, and controlled, making its application attractive to old and new areas (like food delivery) where a business model based on self-employment (no matter how illusory this is in practice) effectively evades employee-based labour protection laws built up over a century. Second, gig work should be viewed as one variant of the broader array of precarious work arrangements (others include temporary work and agency labour/labour hire) that have grown substantially under neoliberalism since the mid-1970s. Third, algorithmic managed work is not confined to gig or platform work but is used and affects many other workers in healthcare, transport, mining, and a host of other industries who are employed in more conventional employment relationships. This area is beginning to attract wider attention (especially given the overlap with artificial intelligence) in academic and policy circles, exemplified by a global research project on the OHS effects of algorithmic managed work (but not gig work) being funded by the Swedish government and led by the Karolinska Medical University in Stockholm. Rawling and Munton explicitly recognise the first two observations and integrate it into their analysis.
The book has a logical and useful layout with the chapter table outlining the major subsections which will aid the reader. As already indicated, Chapter 1 provides context and history including the contentious nature of employment as a legal category, how algorithms enable platform providers to maintain control as well as the equally contentious issue of multi-apping. In this and succeeding chapters, one of the real strengths is the integration of legal analysis with evidence as to actual practices. Though legally focused, the book draws on a range of disciplines, rendering the analysis and policy appraisal both more powerful and appealing to a wider audience. Chapter 2 puts gig work and its regulation into a global context including ILO and OECD standards as well as regulatory initiatives in the European Union, individual European countries (including the UK), the USA (including initiatives in California), and New Zealand. With each of these, the examination is concise, critical, and measured – necessarily so as some developments are in their early stages or still subject to contestation by various interest groups. Chapter 3 examines workers’ needs and different measures that potentially apply to addressing them in Australia and relevant options in particular states. They include deeming provisions, regulatory regimes for contractors, codes of conduct, and unfair contract review mechanisms. Again, the analysis cuts through pointing to evidence on their relative strengths and weaknesses, such as significant limitations with voluntary codes and unfair contract provisions that place too much onus on disempowered individuals.
Chapter 4 focuses on the pay-safety connection. This is important for a number of reasons. Notwithstanding the rhetoric on safety coming first, there is a wealth of longstanding evidence that pay (and related issues like cost-cutting and production pressures) compromise OHS in a wide array of industries and that subcontractors are especially vulnerable in this regard. Drawing on road transport evidence, in particular, Rawling and Munton cogently argue that the regulatory solution to these tensions lies more in the realms of industrial relations mechanisms and laws than OHS laws, although workers’ compensation coverage (where non-employees are generally excluded from coverage) is a remaining challenge. Chapter 5 builds on this pointing to the greater strength of collectivist measures such as bargaining in developing effective standards and giving gig workers a real voice in determining their conditions. Chapter 6 examines the centrality of exclusion from regulatory coverage as a platform provider strategy and the experience of this in a range of countries. In the plethora of journal literature on gig work, I cannot recall a paper that so cogently traces platform strategies to deal with bans and other regulatory responses. Chapter 8 looks at other options such as worker cooperatives – a form of business and work organisation that originated in the 19th century, and is now undergoing something of a revival – and worker ownership trusts. The concluding chapter (Chapter 9) draws key themes together including the need to regulate work rather than employment relationships, if changes to labour market arrangements (not just gig work) are to be addressed. Regulating work in all spheres (industrial relations, OHS, and workers’ compensation) would effectively undermine evasion practices or at least make evasion very difficult rather than easy, as gig work has epitomised.
The book warrants being read by a wide audience and for some years, the real test of good research. While the final part of the ’closing loophole’ legislation which enabled the Fair Work Commission to determine conditions for gig workers (though not those in healthcare) was enacted by the Australian parliament in February 2024 or after this book was completed, the book anticipated this regulatory development, and underlying arguments and critique of other models remain cogent. It is perhaps an irony that in this digital age, books, even those on digitally managed work, tend to be overlooked by scholars wedded to the quick and easy reviews of research literature by scholarly search engines that are typically confined to peer-reviewed journal articles. The loss is magnified because while they may be seen as a bit old-fashioned, books permit overarching and detailed analysis of a subject that 8,000–10,000 word articles simply cannot do. Worse salami slicing of research into multiple articles is actually rewarded in terms of citations and other academic brownie points. Google Scholar is a notable exception. This bias constitutes another argument for the ongoing importance of book reviews in journals. It would be a tragedy if the book did not get the attention it deserved.
