Sarah Kessler (2018),
Gigged: The Gig Economy, the End of the Job and the Future of Work, Random
House, pp. 288
What does it mean to be
a young person looking for her first job after school today? The traditional path
to dignity, stability and independence that work offers is fast receding in the
age of the fourth industrial revolution with the advent of automation,
artificial intelligence and on-demand platform economy. Just like the industrial
revolutions before, this process is redefining work and the role of workers.
Unlike the industrial revolutions before, this process is evolving so rapidly
that the shelf life of a new business idea, the technology that drives it and the
organizational structure that supports it is morphing in a matter of days. Great
wealth is made in a few years and great losses too.
Such upheaval piles an
unprecedented amount of risk and insecurity on the shoulders of workers who are
taking the mantle of independent contractors, freelancers, consultants,
temporary, contractual and part-time workers. When a large number of jobs informalize,
the scope of worker rights diminishes. Financial and income security are traded
for the much advertised ‘flexibility’ and ‘autonomy’ that the changing nature
of work poses. Naturally, venture capital interest is substantially geared
towards those ideas like that of Uber that has minimum infrastructure and
maximum revenue potential.
This is the world of
gig. Sarah Kessler does a fantastic job of taking us on a tour de force of the
new world order. She does this through the voice of employers, workers, and tech
entrepreneurs who make up this space. She traces the idea of work and wealth historically
and places it against the rapidly collapsing first decade of the twenty first
century world of work. She brings out the contradictions of the arguments that justify
gigging the economy, and the concerns that embed it. She talks freely and
frankly to people dreaming of opportunities and those struggling to make the
ends meet. She observes, comments and fills the gap of their narrative with
details and view points that presents a compelling perspective.
This is a fine
introduction to anyone who wants to understand the nature and scope of the gig
economy. Kessler is a tech blogger, tenacious researcher and compelling
storyteller. Equally accessible to a specialist and novice, this book lays bare
the essentials of a complex economic system through lucid prose. Befittingly,
the biggest endorsement of the book comes on its front cover from none other than
the master economist narrator and Cambridge professor Ha-Joon Chang! If you
loved ’23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism’ by Chang, you could read
this book as ‘a few important things they don’t tell you about the gig economy’.
Exciting read!
