Meet Jack. He’s a 30-year-old graphic designer with a four-year-old Audi and a driver rating of 4.8 on Uber.
He lives in Sydney on a fairly average income and wants to save money, without having to move back in with his parents. So, he joins the sharing economy as a part-time service provider. And he hustles.
Jack started driving two hours a night, four days a week to earn extra cash. He may make $30 or $40 a night. His primary employer doesn’t pay overtime or penalty rates and after deducting rent in his Darlinghurst share house he’s existing, but not saving.
Cue a second job. He’s a bit hazy on the tax situation and hasn’t filled out one of those forms you get from the ATO where you declare another source of income and pay tax at a much higher rate.
Uber takes its 20%, plus there are expenses like vehicle upkeep and petrol. What’s left is mostly nickels and dimes. My trip with him to Bondi Junction costs me just $8 – the sort of short trips where in a regular taxi, the driver oozes a palpable hatred of the passenger.
But Uber drivers are always charming about the small jobs, and bat away apologies. They too have been too lazy to walk to the gym. The line between passenger and driver seems smaller with Uber. It’s like a friend doing you a favour – and you chuck in a bit of petrol money. Most of Jack’s work is small jobs around the eastern suburbs, dropping people at work in the city, or to a friend’s house or out to dinner. Bits and pieces, bibs and bobs – but it all adds up.
Somewhere along the line we’ve become a nation of hustlers.
Melbourne and Sydney are full of middle class, middle income workers joining their unemployed and lower income compatriots in renting out their spare rooms on Airbnb or driving Uber or delivering food via Deliveroo or cleaning other people’s houses through Airtasker for twenties and tens.
Slash kids – that much maligned early 2000s tribe of model/actor/t-shirt designer/poet has now morphed in these downwardly mobile times into Uber driver/personal trainer/freelance copywriter. Which is great, because who doesn’t want to earn more money? But yet, why are so many of us hustling, particularly in industries which we never trained for or aspired to? Taxi driving, running a hotel from your flat, couriering food around after work, painting a nursery for the lowest bidder?
Of the dozens of Uber drivers I have spoken to over the last year, the majority have another, primary job and log onto the app for a few hours in the evening or on weekends. Money earned from Uber is used to pay for all the stuff wages in Sydney doesn’t quite stretch to after rent and bills – so saving for a holiday, alimony, credit card debt, saving towards an apartment deposit, or just having an extra night out – dinner and drinks – without having to worry about it.
The old fashioned way of getting the money for extras was through doing an extra shift at work, penalty rates or bonuses.
Penalty rates – including those who work in the retail and hospitality industries – have been a feature of the industrial relations landscape for decades. According to my colleague Paul Karp, who covers all matters IR, WorkChoices made it easier to remove or decrease penalty rates in collective and individual agreements. But since WorkChoices was abolished, most workers got their penalty rates back.
It’s still possible for enterprise agreements to decrease penalty rates below the level in the award, but employers have to compensate workers with higher base rates of pay.
But casual workers in retail and hospitality industries cannot guarantee they will be given the shifts that pay the penalty rates. The café you work in may close on public holidays to avoid paying higher wages, or your boss might work a Sunday to save on wages.
So you join the “sharing economy” – where you pick up extra money driving Uber. Although there are barriers to entry for the sharing economy that prevent the true underclass from accessing it – for example with Uber you need a car, and with Airbnb – a spare room.
In the new uber-capitalist economy the trend for zero hours contracts where workers can be summoned at will (usually on the same day) – when the pizzeria gets busy, or the bar suddenly has a large booking – has been much maligned by workers and unions.
Who would want to live so contingently? Be subject to what feels like a whim?
Yet in the sharing economy we have taken and subverted the principle of the zero hours contract and turned it on ourselves.
We’ll be watching a boring box set at a mate’s house when we decide to turn the app on and drive Uber for a couple of hours, or we’ll accept a booking that day for someone to stay in our spare room and then have to message some dude on Airtasker to come over right away and clean the flat, before the guest arrives.
We’re just-in-time workers – inflicting on ourselves the very thing that unions have fought so hard against.
As a service provider in the sharing economy – it is assumed that you will have more than one job.
Deliveroo country manager Levi Aron spoke to Smart Company this week, defending his companies wages and conditions: “The majority of riders are usually working as couriers, they’re working as salespeople, and we have journalists that are riding for us at night. It’s really the flexibility that these people are looking for.”
Aron calls the workers in this economy “Flexible freelancers ... who work a few different roles and ride for Deliveroo a few hours a week at night.”
This phrase “flexible freelancer” is not only a tautology but a kind of unspeak for working in industries that do not protect or further the long term interests of their workforce. The bonds are loose. There is no boss in the real sense – a relief for some – but bosses take responsibility for their workforce. When you work in the sharing economy, your boss is the App or, fleetingly, the customer who rates you.
Sociologist Richard Sennett in his book Corrosion of Character examined what happens to character when your employer morphs from fixed to flexible.
He characterises this shift as a sort of drift – where nothing is stable, everything is contingent and the bonds are loose.
We move from job to job, task to task, hustling for work, yet ultimately building or creating nothing. Pride in our work suffers, as we lack long term witnesses, mentors, managers and colleagues who track our progress and achievements.
In this world there is no loyalty beyond your rating. Last week, I used Airtasker for the first time – booking someone to clean my flat for $60. I presume he provided the cleaning materials, who knows … I never asked. But he had a good rating, so I went ahead.
When Daniel D (rated 4.7) cancelled at the last minute, and didn’t give a reason – I was angry, but I understood. He has no loyalty to me. And he probably got a better offer, to do something else for more money. That’s the way it is when you’re hustling.
