Cavernario Galindo

Gig workers in the US are being offered individualised wages depending on what algorithms decide about how desperate they are for work. Ride-hailing companies have long used algorithms to determine how much to pay drivers for a trip – and tech vendors in the US are now exporting that model to other sectors, according to a Washington Center for Equitable Growth report from last year. According to the report, platforms like Uber and Lyft track users’ personal data – like how often they find work through the app and for what wage – to find workers who will accept the bare minimum without the protections that come with fixed-term contracts.  One Lyft driver in the US found that over a two-month period, it took her longer and longer to earn $200. It seemed like the longer she spent on the app, the less she would be paid per trip.  “Uber was the baseline model, and we are seeing that model being exported into different industries,” Travis Hall, state director for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Bloomberg Law. 

More people should be talking about this.