Fairwork Podcast

In 2019 a poll found that 30% of children in the UK and the US would choose being a Youtuber as their preferred profession ahead of jobs like astronaught, musician, athlete, or teacher – making it the top rated profession amongst school age children. It’s a sought after job, apparently. But YouTube isn’t just a cultural phenomenon it’s also an economic and technological phenomenon as well, involving the use of a digital platform to manage a distributed workforce spread across the globe. And the practices and protocols that Google, the company that owns YouTube, employs have huge impacts on shaping the working conditions that YouTubers experience.

In this two part episode of the Fairwork podcast, we hear from Jörg Sprave, a German Youtuber who runs the slingshot channel, a channel where he makes homemade slingshots and launchers. We hear his story of getting into YouTube, what it is actually like making a living from YouTube, what happens when the platform on which you’ve built your livelihood starts to make seismic shifts, and how he formed the world’s first union, for Youtubers.

Here's Jörg's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVZlxkKqlvVqzRJXhAGq42Q

There's loads of good videos about the Adpocalypse on YouTube itself, but I found this one particularly informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7M7yyRDHGc&ab_channel=vlogbrothers

As always, you can contact me at [email protected]

Robyn Caplan has written a great academic article with Tarleton Gillespie on YouTube's demonetisation policies which you can find here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305120936636

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We exist in a world where Information Communication Technologies, have made a remarkable number of tasks independent of distance. In is no longer necessary for many workers to share the same geographic location as their colleagues, or employer. Clerical work, transcriptions, video editing, copywriting and a huge raft of other types of work can be done from nearly anywhere on the planet, communicating, sharing files and transacting payment, via their computers. Of course, the majority of physical skills – manual labour, driving, cleaning – require a person to be in a specific place, but for an increasing number of different types of work, this is no longer the case.

This series of the Fairwork podcast is about this change. It’s about what happens when work goes global and the emergence of platforms that manage the transactions between workers and employers scattered across the 4 corners of the globe. It’s about the creation of labour markets that exist at the planetary level, and the social, political and economic questions that this poses for workers.

You can contact me via email: [email protected]

You can find the full video of Arthur C. Clarke's interview on the BBC Archive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwELr8ir9qM&t=484s&ab_channel=BBCArchive

I got the idea to include the sound of the dial up internet after looking through the brilliant Archive of Endangered Sounds: http://savethesounds.info/

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If you’re making your living from YouTube, there’s no financial safety net, no contract, no sick pay, holiday pay. it’s a fierce popularity contest in which an individual’s earnings is largely determined by a set of black box systems; recommendation algorithms and demonetisation processes, which you, as a worker, don’t get any insight into. They are determined solely by YouTube, without consultation, even though they hugely influence the working experiences of content creators on the platform.

At the same time, the amount of content uploaded to YouTube is astronomical – equivalent to 400 hours of new content every minute. For every successful content creator, there is apparently a whole army waiting in the wings to take over should they miss a step, stumble or fall down. A seemingly endless pool of labour in a labour market without geographic barriers.

Understandably the pressure that this can take on YouTubers is huge.

In this episode we return to hear the conclusion of Jorge Sprave’s story. In part one of this two part story, we head his story of getting to YouTube with the Slingshot Channel, where he makes homemade weapons and launchers, how he left his well paying job to go full time on the platform and how his income collapsed following the implementation of a series of policies by YouTube – in a period that would be know as the Adpocalypse. We return to the story looking at what steps Jorge took to combat the changes.

Olga Kay's story for this podcast came from an interview for this book written by Chris Stokel Walker https://www.canburypress.com/products/youtubers-by-chris-stokel-walker

There's a lot of great stuff on YouTube itself about creator burnout that helped me with this episode. Here's a few things I wanted to share:

Great short documentary by the BBC with a focus on Latin American creators https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUrNbl1lNV4&t=3s

Elle Mills' Burnout at 19 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKKwgq9LRgA

The Mental Health Struggles Of Being A YouTuber: Trolls, Jealousy, Burnout by Dr Ali ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq4YhMUvhjQ&t=920s

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This week on the Fairwork Podcast we head to Ukraine, to hear the story of a rider for the food delivery platform Glovo. We explore what it's like working in the Gig Economy in Ukraine as well as exploring the historical and political context which shaped the emergence of the Gig Economy.

This episode was co-produced by Labour Initiatives, an NGO and legal clinic based in Kyiv and was written and produced by Robbie Warin and Svitlana Iukhymovych.

You can contact Robbie at [email protected]

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Karnataka, located in the South West of India is home to around 64 millions people. It’s known as the tech hub of India, home to many of the countries largest technology companies. But it is a city marked by huge inequality and beyond the high rise offices, lives a huge number of people using their smartphones and computers to make a living in the gig economy.

In this episode of the Fairwork podcast, we hear from Vinod, a gig worker based in Bengaluru. We hear his story of working for the gig economy platform Swiggy. What’s it like moving to the city to work as a courier? How do you navigate providing for your family and the costs associated with your work? And what happens when a global pandemic brings your work to a standstill?

In addition, we hear from the Principal Investigators for Fairwork India, Janaki Srinivasan and Balaji Parthasarathy, as they outline the history and context of the gig economy in India.

As always, you can contact Robbie, with any thoughts, suggestions, comments (or just to say hello) at [email protected]

This episode was written and produced by Pradyumna Taduri, Mounika Neerukonda and Robbie Warin.

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