Dimensions
152 x 227 x 19mm
This book is about the rise of digital labor. Companies like Uber, 99Designs, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and CrowdFlower promise autonomy, choice, and flexibility. One of network culture's toughest critics, Trebor Scholz chronicles the work of the two million workers in the crowdsourcing industry, and the free labor on sites like Facebook, to take these myths apart.
In this rich, accessible, and provocative book, Scholz exposes the uncaring reality of contingent digital work, which is thriving at the expense of employment and worker rights.
The book is meant to inspire readers to slow down, join the growing number of worker cooperatives or associations, contribute to non-monetized peer-to-peer projects, to rethink unions, and to make every effort to move toward Guaranteed Basic Income.
A call to action, loud and clear, Uberworked and Underpaid shows that it is time to stop wage theft and exploitation, rethink wealth distribution, and address the urgent question of how digital labor should be regulated and how workers from Cleveland to Mumbai and Brisbane, can act in solidarity to defend their rights.