Lecture explores communicative control on freelance work

THE PANDEMIC HAS SIGNIFICANTLY CONTRIBUTED TO THE EXPONENTIAL RISE OF FILIPINOS entering the global and local gig work platforms catering to local demand for food, transportation, and general service delivery such as Grab, FoodPanda, and Angkas.

These workers, who often face difficulties attributed to precarious working conditions and their debatable status not as employees but as partners, service contractors, freelancers, and entrepreneurs, are the focus of a recent professorial chair lecture by Dr. Cheryll Ruth Soriano, DLSU Communications Department faculty member. She is concurrent holder of the Angel and Celerina Reyes and Br. Marcian James Professorial Chair in the Humanities and principal investigator of Fairwork Foundation.

Delivered last September 14, her lecture titled, “’Free(lancing) but everywhere in chains’: Technologies of control in ‘on-demand’ gig work,” focused on the unregulated labor arrangement that workers face in the era of global and local gig work.

She shared insights on the discursive construction of ‘free and flexible’ labor categories and the cultural normalization of such labor management techniques as mechanisms of biopower in the digital economy.

Soriano’s work with Fairwork Foundation advocates for fair working conditions. Moreover, the lecture sheds light on the current condition of Filipino workers and what can be done to protect gig workers from the risks and dangers of this growing industry.

The Philippine research team of the Fairwork Foundation is working on the Philippine report, which highlights the best practices of the country’s platform economy.

This report will give the local platforms a ‘fairness score’ which is based on the five core gig work principles of Fairwork Foundation: fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management, and fair representation.

Fairwork Philippines, part of the global Fairwork network funded by the University of Oxford, seeks to advance fair conditions for labor in the gig economy. Soriano’s research can be accessed here.