Speaker: Dr. Andreas Pekarek, University of Melbourne
Title: Platforms in the pandemic: What has COVID-19 done to the Australian gig economy?
Date: Thu, 25th May 2023
Time: 12:00pm-2:00pm
Venue: RSM Seminar Room 1106, Level 1, Copland Building 24
Dr. Anna Hartman is the host of this visit
ABSTRACT
Before the pandemic, digital platforms faced extensive critical scrutiny for their prevailing labour practices, with many scholars concluding that a veneer of choice and flexibility concealed a darker reality of worker disempowerment and disadvantage in the gig economy. Since COVID-19 arrived, however, these platforms have found opportunities to rehabilitate their public image and standing, without altering their fundamentally problematic business practices. Workers retrenched or stood down from their main jobs could, potentially, use platforms to earn an income. And with many food and retail outlets closed to normal trading, demand for home-delivery services soared.
In this talk, I draw on my ongoing research with Dr Josh Healy (University of Newcastle) to examine how far – and in which directions – the platform economy evolved through the pandemic. Using data from a new and unique survey module, fielded in early 2022, we examine changes in Australians’ awareness and use of platforms, and their assessments about the ‘gig work’ these platforms provide. Our findings offer new evidence of how Australians engage with digital platforms, showing in richer detail how they have infiltrated and influenced Australians’ lives. We make further observations about what the future of the gig economy looks like, and what issues platforms and governments must address to realise a future of work with dignity in this sector, even as pandemic uncertainty lingers.
BIO
Andreas (Andi) Pekarek is a senior lecturer in the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne, where he teaches courses on labour relations, HRM, stakeholder engagement, and the future of work. Andi is fascinated by how people work, and his research has focused on how collective action by workers and their allies can steer the world of work in a more sustainable direction, towards fairness and social justice. His recent projects have centred on work in the platform economy, unions and industrial relations institutions, the HRM occupation, and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of work. Andi has published in such journals as Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Human Resource Management Journal, British Journal of Industrial Relations, and New Technology, Work and Employment. He is an Associate Editor of Research in the Sociology of Work (Emerald) and on the editorial board of the Journal of Industrial Relations (Sage).