A cura di @Perodatrent.

Sarah Mason, studente con un lavoro part time presso Lyft (un analogo di Uber), elabora sul Guardian una spiegazione delle tecniche che queste ditte usano per convincere i loro associati a lavorare per una paga inferiore a quella minima prevista per legge.

Concordando con le parole del fondatore di Uber Travis Kalanick “On-demand companies are pointing the way to a more promising future… Put simply… the future of work is about independence and flexibility”, la Mason nota che:

Unlike employees in a spatially fixed worksite (the factory, the office, the distribution centre), rideshare drivers are technically free to choose when they work, where they work and for how long. They are liberated from the constraining rhythms of conventional employment or shift work. But that apparent freedom poses a unique challenge to the platforms’ need to provide reliable, “on demand” service to their riders – and so a driver’s freedom has to be aggressively, if subtly, managed. One of the main ways these companies have sought to do this is through the use of gamification.

Secondo Wikipedia La gamification (traducibile in italiano come “ludicizzazione”) è l’utilizzo di elementi mutuati dai giochi e delle tecniche di game design in contesti esterni ai giochi.

 Games deliver an instantaneous, visceral experience of success and reward, and they are increasingly used in the workplace to promote emotional engagement with the work process, to increase workers’ psychological investment in completing otherwise uninspiring tasks, and to influence, or “nudge”, workers’ behaviour..

La Mason ricorda che parecchi decenni fa un sociologo marxista statunitense andò a lavorare in una grande fabbrica, dove notò un fatto che lo fece riflettere: perché i lavoratori si impegnano così tanto?

In Marx’s time, the answer to this question was simple: coercion. Workers had no protections and could be fired at will for failing to fulfil their quotas. One’s ability to obtain a subsistence wage was directly tied to the amount of effort one applied to the work process. However, in the early 20th century, with the emergence of labour protections, the elimination of the piece-rate pay system, the rise of strong industrial unions and a more robust social safety net, the coercive power of employers waned.

Yet workers continued to work hard, Burawoy observed. They co-operated with speed-ups and exceeded production targets. They took on extra tasks and sought out productive ways to use their downtime. They worked overtime and off the clock. They kissed ass. After 10 months at Allied, Burawoy concluded that workers were willingly and even enthusiastically consenting to their own exploitation. What could explain this? One answer, Burawoy suggested, was “the game”.

For Burawoy, the game described the way in which workers manipulated the production process in order to reap various material and immaterial rewards. When workers were successful at this manipulation, they were said to be “making out”. Like the levels of a video game, operators needed to overcome a series of consecutive challenges in order to make out and beat the game.

Secondo la Mason, i datori di lavoro della gig economy usano lo stesso condizionamento dei loro associati:

Every Sunday morning, I receive an algorithmically generated “challenge” from Lyft that goes something like this: “Complete 34 rides between the hours of 5am on Monday and 5am on Sunday to receive a $63 bonus.”… “Click here to accept this challenge.” I tap the screen to accept. Now, whenever I log into driver mode, a stat meter will appear showing my progress: only 21 more rides before I hit my first bonus.

Immagine da Flickr.