Encapsulating Workers in Digital Technology

There is now ample reading material and evidence that inform us about the pros and cons of digital technology that form an integral part of the platform economy. It is needless to mention that the platform economy, of which the gig workers are the most crucial part, has been considered as one of the fastest-growing economic sectors both in terms of expansion and total financial turnover. The gig economy, arguably, acts as a buffer or a facilitator to the corporations by providing services that are considered necessary for the progress of the corporate businesses. Thus, one may argue that certain platforms that are service providers act as an auxiliary component, although the platform economy, in the process, does benefit as well. And its progress has been, at least for quite some time, quite spectacular.

Observers have also reflected on the precarity that such an economy has brought to the workers who are encapsulated in the destructive logic of digital technology that is considered as responsible for making gig workers vulnerable to unstable unemployment. One may need to immediately suggest that digital technology in itself does not possess the power to create precarious conditions for the workers, either in gig economy or outside it. But precarity is the consequence of the competitive survival as well as the growth of businesses which involves multinational or global players at the moment. It is not just the precarity that happens at the global, and even at the local level; digital technology has also produced an adversarial impact on the rest of the workers.