Labor Platform Gig Workers & Collective Action: An Empirical Analysis from Uber Drivers in the U.S.

The expansion of the service economy in the U.S. has coincided with the growth of business models that rely on independent contractor labor. More recently, this “gig work”—unprotected by traditional employment and labor laws—has proliferated via labor platforms that cyber-coordinate and match tasks with workers. While this platform-enabled growth may offer more flexibility for workers, it can also be seen as creating a precarious workforce, which lacks both economic security and the ability to collectively organize and mobilize. Despite the ubiquity of an academic debate over the tradeoffs posed by gig work, little is known about who gig workers are, how they view their work, and how—if at all—they mobilize to achieve change. Using original empirical data on Uber drivers (as paradigmatic gig workers on labor platforms), we address a series of related questions about this atomized and dispersed workforce. In Part I, we analyze an original survey of Uber drivers in San Francisco—which was Uber’s first market and one of its most lucrative—to understand who these gig workers are as well as their preferences, grievances, and efforts to address everyday work problems. We then supplement this survey data with a database we collected of national collective action attempts by Uber drivers to explore how these gig workers organize collectively, what issues spark grassroots mobilization, and how successful such attempts have been. Our data and analysis thus provide both micro and macro perspectives on labor platform-enabled “gig work,” shedding light on worker perspectives and collective efforts in this new world of gig work.