*By Bonnita Nyamwire
Uganda’s informal employment sector continues to grow with the platform economy entering markets and offering more diverse choices and more opportunities for individuals. This comes in as a product of global technological innovation to connect the demand and supply of particular services and products. Since 2010, there has been a five-fold rise globally in the number of digital labor platforms that facilitate online work or directly engage workers to provide taxi and delivery services.Work on digital labor platforms is growing in importance as it provides workers the opportunity to work from any place, at any time and take up whatever jobs suits them.
However, there are also risks from engaging in such work with regard to worker contracts, payment of a minimum wage, social protection and other benefits as well as collective bargaining. The opportunities and risks that the workers face raise questions about the conditions under which these workers undertake this form of work. To explore these conditions, Fairwork Uganda country team conducted a research that found no evidence of fair working conditions as presented under the five fair work principles: Fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management and lastly fair representation for eleven digital platforms. Only one platform scored on 2 principles; fair contracts and fair management.
The evaluations of digital platforms conducted by Fairwork centered around these five core principles, which encapsulated the essential benchmarks for equitable working conditions on digital platforms. The evaluation aimed not only to present the existing state of the platform economy but also to underscore its potential for enhancement as well as provide an impartial viewpoint on labor conditions, catering to policymakers, platform companies, workers, and consumers.
The project actively engaged with various platform workers and conducted evaluations on twelve platforms in Uganda serving as a valuable tool to gauge the alignment of Ugandan platforms with the principles of fair work. The primary objective was to assess the working conditions of platform workers in Kampala, the major city of Uganda.
Evidently, findings from this research show that the platform economy in Uganda has not reached the critical mass required for a country to benefit from the network effects associated with economic growth and other positive development multipliers. Furthermore, the majority of people in Uganda working on these platforms are largely restricted to tasks that can be performed on smartphones such as e-hailing and online delivery from which the earnings are low and income is volatile.
Contextually, platform workers often face low pay, coupled with commissions deducted by platforms. The payment structure is often based on the number of hours worked, creating a direct correlation between effort and income. Workers are typically compensated on a per-service, per-trip, or per-passenger basis. Thus to make a decent living platform workers have to work long hours which has a negative impact on their work-life balance but also on their mental health.
Other notable issues included lack of evidence on social protection for workers, clear communication channels, collective bargaining as well as fair contract terms. For example, worker contracts are lengthy, complex and yet difficult to read for the everyday prospective worker.In this sense, it is not always possible for workers to even know the full extent of the terms to which they are agreeing through their signature.
More confusingly, the various terms documents across a platform website are not presented in the local language. This situation discourages users from reading terms in advance and they usually have to check one more box in the sign-up form saying that they agree to the platform’s terms. At this mid-sign-up moment, few platform workers stop to consider in detail the provisions of the document to which they are agreeing
Platform work is also not gender neutral, as often claimed. Even after surpassing the hurdles of being connected, women still face challenges in the digital labor market. As indicated, there are gender disparities in income received from platform work, with women receiving significantly less than men. Gender stereotypes are often reinforced online.
Women are less likely to be hired on e-hailing platforms, while more likely to be hired on online housekeeping services platforms. This phenomenon could be attributed to traditional inequalities and cultural beliefs that women are not capable of performing certain work. This has disadvantaged women and compounds gender inequality.
The findings also suggest that the current digital inequalities build on and exacerbate historical disparities that should not be attributed to differences in education and age, but to the gender effect. Thus, the results show that platform work indeed tends to mirror and even amplifies historical inequalities that exist between men and women.
This suggests the vulnerability that women face in the digital labor economy. The findings of the research confirm the structural and intersectional nature of gender inequality.
The need to redress this inequality is fundamental and will require a systemic shift that can be addressed through rapid interventions. While governments may be able to enforce the compliance of local platforms with legislation, most online workers are working cross-jurisdictionally on global platforms, which are very often not even accountable to the countries in which they have their headquarters.
Bringing platforms in line with progressive Ugandan employment laws and practices which make gender discrimination illegal, would go some way to reducing the gender disparities revealed in the findings of this research.
The other action point for the government is to engage far more actively in processes of global governance that seek to make platforms more accountable and demand the protection of the rights of citizens under international normative frameworks.
Given that platforms also operate across multiple jurisdictions, international policy dialogue and coordination is essential. Social dialogue between platforms, governments, platforms workers and their representatives is likewise vital to ensure that the digital economy becomes a powerful driver for fair working conditions for all.
*Bonnita Nyamwire is the Co-Director of Research at Pollicy
