“Frila” platforms must improve to guarantee decent work

While online freelance job platforms can make it easier to land opportunities, they still fall short when it comes to offering decent work. This is the conclusion of research conducted by the Fairwork Project, developed by teams from the British institution Oxford Internet Institute and the German institute WZB Berlin Social Science Center. The report, called Fairwork Cloudwork Ratings 2023, was released this Thursday (20). Freelancer is the professional who provides services in different companies, without an employment relationship. In addition to selecting which platforms would be included in the analysis and dialoguing with platform managers, in order to understand whether the practices are in line with the discourse that companies disseminate, the authors of the study interviewed 752 workers from 94 countries. The evaluation of the platforms took into account five aspects: whether they offer fair remuneration; what are the working conditions; the terms of contracts signed with the professional; the management and representation of workers, in order to facilitate, or not, their collective organization, with the aim of defending their rights. The set of principles was outlined in 2018 during a multi-stakeholder workshop at the International Labor Organization (ILO). The maximum score to be given was 10, and the highest was 5 points, scored by ComeUp, Prolific and erawork platforms. Four platforms – Amazon Mechanical Turk, Freelancer, Microworkers and Workana – scored zero. The Appen, SouFreelancer, Upwork, Clickworker, Elharefa, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour and Scale/Remotasks platforms achieved intermediate scores, but still low, as they ranged from 1 to 4. The tactic had effects, in some cases, such as that of the companies ComeUp and Terawork, which committed to adopting measures to guarantee workers a payment that respected the fixed minimum wage, depending on their location. Isolation, anonymity and dehumanization The authors of the report also point out that the type of relationship established on platforms can evolve into insensitivity towards workers and contribute to the precariousness of work and even its dehumanization. “The work process can often be depersonalized and hidden. When a worker is on the other side of the world and is represented only by a profile on the platform’s interface, his history and experiences become obscure”, ponder the researchers, who also highlight the isolation of professionals as a characteristic that marks the relationship with the mediating platform and employers. “Sometimes, no information about the worker is revealed to a customer. The relative ease with which work can be requested on the platforms can help to dissociate and disconnect the work from its origin, which is the worker, feeding the illusion that tasks are completed automatically. Threats from artificial intelligence Another aspect that intrigues the Fairwork researchers is the influence of artificial intelligence resources, summarized as technologies that seek to make computers carry out activities that the mind is capable of carrying out. What was found, in the context of the study, is that the incorporation of this type of tool, in use by companies, more than doubled, from 2017 to 2022.

Agência Brasil