GCRF Decent Work: FAIRWORK in the Platform Economy in the Global South

在零工经济中，世界各地有数百万的平台工作者，从事外包或通过数字平台或应用程序组织的工作。这项工作可以包括各种各样的工作，比如使用Uber开出租车、在Upwork上做翻译，或者通过亚马逊的Mechanical Turk训练机器学习算法。尽管这些工作有可能为需要的人提供工作，但平台工人几乎没有能力与雇主就工资和工作条件进行谈判，而雇主往往在世界的另一端。我们之前的研究表明，平台通常以相对不受监管的方式运作，在工人捍卫现有工作、可居住的工资和有尊严的工作条件的能力方面，可能会鼓励一场“竞底”竞争。平台工作的潜力和风险在南非显露无遗。从某些方面来看，这个国家的收入差距是世界上最大的，失业率高达28%。与此同时，该国拥有相对发达的互联网基础设施，以及相对稳定的政治气候和国家/法律机构。这些因素使该国成为平台经济萌芽的地方，使我们能够与来自法律和社会科学的多学科团队共同开发解决方案，这将为影响数字工作的政策和实践提供切实的机会。随着其他中低收入国家迅速发展其互联网基础设施，数百万潜在的数字工作者涌向网上寻找机会，如果我们要避免当前数字工作世界正在形成的一些“逐底竞争”，本项目提出的干预措施将是至关重要的。我们的项目将以两个关键举措告终。首先，在法律研究工作包的基础上，将制定一份《业务守则》，作为一种解释性工具，概述现有法规适用于平台工作人员的方式。二是建设“公平基金会”。就像公平贸易基金会能够认证咖啡或巧克力等商品的生产链一样，公平贸易基金会将认证平台经济的生产网络，从而利用消费者的力量为数字工人的福利和工作质量做出重大贡献。这项工作计划的目的不仅是揭示公平和不公平的工作发生的地方，而且还试图将这些知识编纂成“公平认证计划”和年度平台排名。这两项举措最终将为高质量的数字化工作条件制定国际标准。这些目标将通过5个项目阶段来实现。首先，法律团队将分析南非劳动法、社会保障法以及与平台经济相关的其他法律和政策法规，并探讨如何调整这些法律，为数字平台工人提供体面的工作标准。与此同时，社会科学团队将使用定性和定量方法相结合的方法来绘制南非平台工人面临的关键问题：深入了解平台工作如何无法达到体面的工作标准。第三，我们为北半球以外的平台工作制定有意义的体面工作标准。第四，我们采用这些标准，并在行动研究过程中使用它们，我们寻求对数字工作平台进行认证：如果它们通过了，就给它们颁发Fairwork认证。最后，通过利益相关者参与和与工人、平台和政策制定者接触的扩展过程，我们制定了一项短期战略，向平台施压，要求其改变政策，改善工作条件，并制定了一项长期战略，影响目前高度不受监管的行业的监管方向。

There are millions of platform workers who live all over the world, doing work that is outsourced or organised via digital platforms or apps in the gig economy. This work can include jobs as varied as taxi driving using Uber, translation on Upwork, or the training of machine learning algorithms through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Despite the potential of such work to give jobs to those who need them, platform workers have little ability to negotiate wages and working conditions with their employers, who are often on the other side of the world. Our previous research has shown that platforms often operate in relatively unregulated ways, and can encourage a race to the bottom in terms of workers' ability to defend existing jobs, liveable wages, and dignified working conditions. The potentials and risks of platform work touch down starkly in South Africa. A country that, by some measures, has the world's highest income inequality, and 28% unemployment rates. At the same time, the country has relatively well-developed internet infrastructure, and a relatively stable political climate and state/legal institutions. These factors make the country a site in which the platform economy is nascent enough to allow us to co-develop solutions with a multi-disciplinary team from Law and the Social Sciences that will offer tangible opportunities to influence policy and practice surrounding digital work. As other middle- and low-income countries quickly develop their internet infrastructures and millions of more potential digital workers rush online in search of opportunities, the interventions that this project proposes will be of crucial need if we are to avoid some of the 'race to the bottom' that the current world of digital work is bringing into being. Our project will culminate in two key initiatives. First, building on a work package of legal research, a Code of Practice will be developed to serve as an interpretive tool to outline the ways that existing regulations can be made applicable to platform workers. Second, we will develop a 'Fairwork Foundation.' Much like the Fairtrade Foundation has been able to certify the production chains of commodities like coffee or chocolate, the Fairwork Foundation will certify the production networks of the platform economy, and therefore harness consumer power to significantly contribute to the welfare and job quality of digital workers. This programme of work aims to not just uncover where fair and unfair work takes place, but also seeks to codify that knowledge into both a 'Fairwork certification scheme' and an annual ranking of platforms. These two initiatives will ultimately allow for the development of an international standard for good-quality digital working conditions.These objectives will be achieved with 5 project stages. First, the Law team will analyse S. African labour laws, social security laws, and other legal and policy regulations relating to the platform economy, and ask how those laws might be adapted to provide decent work standards for digital platform workers. At the same time, the Social Science team will use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to map the key issues faced by S. African platform workers: developing a rich understanding of how platform work may be failing to live up to decent work standards. Third, we develop meaningful decent work standards for platform work that happens outside of the Global North. Fourth, we take those standards and use them in a process of action research in which we seek to certify the digital work platforms: assigning them a Fairwork certification if they pass. Finally, through an extended process of stakeholder engagement and outreach with workers, platforms, and policy makers, we plan a short-term strategy of pressuring platforms to change their policies to improve working conditions and a longer-term strategy of influencing the direction that regulation takes in a currently highly unregulated sector.