Start-ups all the way down
Flexibility is an object's capability of being exposed to external forces while retaining its original shape. A tree branch that bends before the wind but does not break, human behavior is also flexible, be it motivated by survival or the wish to improve life quality amidst adverse circumstances.
Currently, flexible features are being intensely sought-after, often portrayed not simply as survival but a way to triumph over a controlled and restricted conventional work routine. With that spirit in mind, more flexible institutions flourish. Institutions... like Start-ups. Sold as the market’s response to the search for freedom from routine traps, driven mainly by profit, and, at least a little bit, the dogmas of innovation, speed, instantaneity and other (cringe) terms entrepreneurs like so much - is the recipe that has led to the blooming of the startup business model.
Understanding exactly how this replicable and scalable business model works is often optional, (most people skip knowing how the sausage they eat is made). What start-up fans usually hold on to is the central idea of convenience: connecting a particular service to a particular client. Healthcare, education, transportation, housing, delivery… the sky is the limit.
How many startups services do we use in a day? That private car ride you took to get to your dentist appointment, that meal you ordered because you didn’t have enough time to prepare your lunch, the music app you pay monthly for or, maybe, the nice hut you’ve been searching to spend the weekend in… All of these are examples of startup services and, probably, some companies’ names popped into your mind even though I didn’t mention any.
But why is it important to talk about startups? Why is it important to bring the uncomfortableness of thinking of that friend who works from home, has a flexible schedule and makes more money than you? The startup business model has completely changed labor dynamics, consequently, the social structures of hundreds of thousands of workers around the world. Workers, for-instance, are though of no longer as workers, being now named “collaborators”, service providers... Why not workers? What was so wrong about that word?
The legal employment relationship between the worker and the employer changes in start-ups, giving rise to a dynamic based on rendering services — briefly, the company provides a service to its clients and the “collaborator” provides services for the company. Hiring, firing, increasing or decreasing salaries, granting or denying rights and benefits… All of these moves are easier and quicker for the employer.
Mantras as “be your own boss”, “self-manage your working schedule” and so many others like it are all part of a start-up labor dynamic and the life model built into it that, while offering “freedom” — a theme we can discuss in another text — contains costs to the employee, personal, financial and social costs. Take Uber as an example: a private transportation service that connects passengers to drivers, the driver is their own boss and their own employee, they are responsible for managing their working hours, security, car’s maintenance, salary, vacations and every other labor aspect, which certainly overloads the worker and relieves the company of responsibility. Now, take this single example and extend it to all types of industries I have mentioned before… that phenomenon is described by Brazilian sociologist Ludmilla Costhek Abílio as the “uberization of work”.
With the pandemic, a few privileged have had the opportunity and conditions to get (or keep) a home office position. This condition by itself holds an envied privilege while blurs the distinction between work and home, not only the physical space but the whole environment and dynamic. The house is now an office, a gym, a movie theater, a restaurant and also… a home - being everything and often feeling like nothing on this list all at the same time.
What I intend is to bring more light to the fact that remote work was a relevant differential for most start-ups before the pandemic and now it has almost become a rule. The mix-up between working and resting time only increases since you work and rest in the same place. In this home office dynamic, you are 24/7 accessible to work demands, deadlines and corporate pressures, often resulting in a greater workload for workers.
It becomes necessary to constantly reflect upon, on a personal and social level, the maintenance of the on-demand working structure, analyzing how such a trivial phenomenon of modern everyday life (such as connecting customers to services) manifests and how it impacts society as well as individuals that belong to this working system.
In this sense, the work called uberized (the uberization of work in accordance with Abílio) is regulated in accordance with legal parameters that simultaneously tend to decrease labor rights. Although it is easy to sympathize with the hurdles for a start-up’s “profitable innovation”, the tough competition against already established businesses... The risk we take as a society if we naturalize these dynamics is that they may hurt principles and rights conquered by the working class over the past two centuries, ideas as crazy as thinking of worker’s health, integrity and quality of life as a right - and not the privilege of a few “collaborators”, whatever that means.
PS. To check out Abilio’s work access: https://blogdaboitempo.com.br/2017/02/22/uberizacao-do-trabalho-subsuncao-real-da-viracao/