The Gig Economy's Impact: A Canadian Worker's Perspective Essay

This essay delves into the Canadian gig economy, exploring whether a decentralized and isolated narrative or a connected and empowered one best reflects the reality of gig workers. It defines the gig economy, highlighting its reliance on freelancers and independent contractors, and contrasts it with the traditional employment model. The essay examines the growth of gig work in Canada, citing statistics on the increasing number of gig workers and their income levels. It discusses the challenges faced by gig workers, including feelings of loneliness, powerlessness, and mental health issues, supported by research findings. The concept of a decentralized workforce is explored, referencing examples of companies that have adopted such models. The essay also incorporates perspectives from scholarly articles and books, such as "Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age," to analyze the socio-economic foundations of the gig economy, including the impact of digital technology and the changing nature of work. The essay concludes that the decentralized narrative accurately reflects the reality of Canada's gig workers, acknowledging the uncertain future for both the gig economy and its workers.

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English Essay
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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“Which narrative — decentralized and isolated or connected and empowered — best reflects the
reality of Canada’s gig workers?”
The gig economy is the temporary and the flexible platforms for the commonplace
companies that tend towards the hiring of freelancers and independent contractors in place of the
full time employees. The gig economy usually undermines the whole traditional economy of the
full time workers changing the positions rarely and focusing on the lifetime career in the place.
The gig economy is also founded on the freelance jobs that involve often with the clients or the
customers through one such online platform(Bajwa et al., 2018). This type of economy can prove
advantageous for the workers, for the consumers, for the business through making the work quite
adaptable to the needs of moment along with the demands for a flexible type of lifestyle. The
gig economy at the same time can become disadvantageous too because of the erosion in the
traditional economic connections between the business, the workers and the clients(Jabagi et al.,
2019).The gig workers of Canada are definitely forming a populous industry but they are at the
same time suffering from the unhappiness, loneliness and powerlessness. The essay will discuss
about the isolated, the decentralized, the linked and empowered fitting into the reality of the gig
workers using the scholarly articles and the book materials.
According to the Database of Employer-Employee and the Population Census of the year
2016, a new study has found the share of the gig workers in Canada to be aged 15 and older too
having incased to 1.7 million workers from 1 million workers. The study was further motivated
by one expressed concern of globalization and technology changing rapidly in terms of the work
and unemployment. These are the changes which manifest themselves in the growth of the
individuals in the arrangements of the non-technical work. The gig works are actually
unincorporated and self-employed workers entering into different contracts with the companies

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or people in order to complete a particular task or work for a particular time. This consists of
the self-employed freelancers and the on-demand workers who are hired for the jobs through
online platforms as Fiverr, Uber, TaskRabbit, Upword and Freelancer.
Also the percentage of the gig workers has definitely increased among all as those who
have combined the gig workers with the salaries and people who have earned no such salaries or
wages. In the year 2016, more than half of the gig workers have combined the wages with the gig
workers from another such job. The estimate annual income of a gig worker is low usually and
the median gig income of the year 2016 has been $4, 303. In the year 2016, all of the female (9.1
%) workers along with the male (7.2 %) workers have been identified as the gig workers. In the
British Columbia, there was a prevalence of the gig workers higher than the rates of Canada.
Notably, the share of the gig workers has been highest among all of the workers who had their
main occupation in the entertainment, the arts and the recreation. The jobs these days are not
limited to Skip the Dishes and Uber. Also, the laundries, then grocery stores and the baking are
the new workforces which are to accept the jobs based on per task. For example, the startup
Calgary has made the homeowners hire the shovellers having used the smartphones. A
decentralized workforce is being envisioned by the sociologists as Paul Gravin, Alex Bierman
and Scott Schieman.
The problem with the gig workers as found by the sociology researchers are that the gig
workers are in a poor and difficulty condition than the non-gig workers. The researches have
conducted a survey with one representative piece of the Canadian employed people, the gig and
the non-gig workers. The preliminary findings of them show that it’s quite common to
participate in the gig economy and one worker out of each of the five workers is involved in the
gig workers community. However, they are more suffered as compared to the conventional

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workers and they lack companionship, they feel isolated from others. The Gig workers are twice
of the conventional workers experiencing and suffering from loneliness. They have scored higher
on the mental health measures having captured the experiences of depression and anxiety.
The decentralized workforce is nothing new as a concept by any way. The company
Johnson and Johnson is better known for the decentralized workforce they had and in the year
1999, Forbes had started writing the Illinois Tool Works using the autonomous units of
production for helping in isolating problems along with the successes. With the proliferation of
the startups, the non-traditional work arrangements, the accelerators, the decentralization is being
quite more common in then traditional work settings. In this type of workforce, instead of
passing all of the decisions through a rigid hierarchy system, the decentralized organizations
usually out more of their authorities and the autonomies in the employee hands
directly(Utoronto.ca, 2020). The decentralized team based management models usually allow
the departments, the units, specific teams and franchise for making the decisions founded on the
real-time factors without waiting for the approval from the leadership. It further leads to the agile
decision-making empowering the employees for implementing the ideas which can make
changes and benefit the whole company.
In this regard, the book of Christian Fuchs and Eran Fisher talk about value and labour in
the digital age in the book “Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age”. The book
actually attempts to have pointed out the contemporary transformation of Capitalism through
focusing on the fact of extracting value from the labour that has changed with the digitization of
capitalism (Schmiede, 2017).The capitalism has been historically the most adaptable and flexible
social system and the rapid growth of the social media and development of the digital technology
.There have been many such terms for describing the new practices of production and the new

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products which is enabled by the internet consisting of the co-creation, the participatory culture,
the social production, the mass customization. It is concurrent with the dominant approach and
there have been many such attempts for the critical analysis of the new types of online
production, the commodification on the social media and the digital labourthrough reflecting on
the labour theory of value. These are the theoretical approaches which attempt for applying one
such unified conceptual framework.For getting a better understanding of the socio-economic
foundations of the social relations and digital media, the class relations, the power relations
founded that they facilitate. Also, in the recent years, there have been labour theories of the value
which is in a field of the debates and interests specifically in the respect of the
appropriateness(Russell, 2020).
The gig economy staffs are quite demographically extremely different than the more
conventional employees. The outcomes have shown that the gig economy workers who are quite
younger and less likely than being married. The workers of the gig economy have tended to work
more hours than the traditional workers and less likely to have the higher education. Most of the
gig economy workers are likely to suffer from helplessness, having less control, powerlessness
than the other working people. Hence, the gig economy workers are less happy, lonelier and the
not in control of their own lives (Schmiede, 2017).The employees of the gig economy are quite
different demographically than most of the conventional workers.
It can be said that the gig economy has an uncertain future and the future of the workers
is also quite uncertain. Also a new law of California is to force many such employers in the
Golden State in re-classifying the “app-based” contract staffs as the employees can stunt the
growth of the gig worker. The Uber is also considered as the pioneer of the on-demand specific
labour model appearing quite intent on the extension of its own role as the intermediary which is

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for the gig labour through a new type of shift work finder app named asUber Works matching
the staffs to the services that are beyond the industry of ride sharing(Maozami, 2016).Therefor it
can be said that decentralized as a narrative best reflects the reality of the gig workers of Canada.

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Reference
Bajwa, U., Knorr, L., Di Ruggiero, E., Gastaldo, D., &Zendel, A. (2018).Towards an
understanding of workers’ experiences in the global gig economy. Global Migration &
Health Initiative, Toronto.
Jabagi, N., Croteau, A. M., Audebrand, L. K., &Marsan, J. (2019). Gig-workers’ motivation:
thinking beyond carrots and sticks. Journal of Managerial Psychology.
Maozami, Y. (2016). UBER in the US and Canada: Is the Gig-Economy Exploiting or Exploring
Labor and Employment Laws by Going beyond the Dichotomous Workers'
Classification. U. Miami Int'l & Comp. L. Rev., 24, 609.
Russell, L., (2020). The Siliconvalley Economy Is Here. And It’S A Nightmare.. [online] The
New Republic. Available at: <https://newrepublic.com/article/156202/silicon-valley-
economy-here-its-nightmare> [Accessed 16 March 2020].
Schmiede, R. (2017). Book review: Reconsidering value and labour in the digital age (dynamics
of virtual work series). New Technology, Work and Employment, 32(1), 59-61.
Utoronto.ca, 2020. Workers In The Gig Economy Feel Lonely And Powerless, Say Experts From
U Of T And Other Universities. [online] University of Toronto News. Available at:
<https://www.utoronto.ca/news/workers-gig-economy-feel-lonely-and-powerless-say-
experts-u-t-and-other-universities> [Accessed 16 March 2020].