Is There Any Hope That It Will Go Anywhere?

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There's not as much organizing among workers, whether through unions or through their own kind of collective organizations. The reason they're not collectivizing in ways they are in other places around the world is because they're here on a short term basis. So that being said, there's not kind of formal organizing, but what we have seen are kind of individual and collective acts of resistance. They are kind of linking up to share tips, to help each other out, in terms of taxation if they have an accident. And we saw this in the case of some of those workers that died, is workers, amongst themselves, started to organize fund raising activities to pull money to get the bodies repatri

Paris Marx is joined by Tyler Riordan to discuss the state of the gig economy in Australia, the ongoing efforts to improve their conditions, and Tyler’s research on migrant food couriers in Brisbane.

Tyler Riordan is a PhD candidate in hospitality and anthropology at the University of Queensland. Follow Tyler on Twitter at @tyler_riordan.

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Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

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Also mentioned in this episode:

The deaths of gig economy workers have become a major focus on governments and the media over the past year
Australia’s federal government has an ongoing Senate committee on gig work
Uber settled a case in December 2020 to avoid a ruling on employment status, but another test case has been filed in Federal Court
Foodora pulled out of Australia in 2018
Menulog announced it was making some workers employees earlier this year

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