“Streamline your workflow, but keep the benefits for yourselves”. The real-life benefits of being a platform cooperative
Mensaka workers, a platform coop
The idea of a “platform cooperative” - an app or website delivering services and goods that’s owned by the gig workers in it, rather than them being scheduled and exploited by a giant multinational (Uber, Amazon, Deliveroo, etc) - has been explored a lot here in A/UK over the last few years.
We’ve been waiting to see whether successful platform coops would emerge from the seed forms and ambitious theorising - and this Vice article shows them coming though:
What would happen if low-wage workers came together to cut out the middleman and build their own platforms? This isn’t just a thought experiment. Worker-owned apps are already providing real alternatives to dismal working conditions in the global gig economy.
Up & Go is a home cleaning app owned by workers in New York City. “On other apps, the owners set your wages, but we set our own wages,” said worker-owner Esmeralda Flores.
Up & Go cleaners earn $25 per hour, more than double what workers typically earned independently, according to Project Manager Sylvia Morse. While apps generally take a cut of 20 percent or more, Up & Go only takes 5 percent, which it then reinvests in the platform.
The cleaners, primarily immigrant women from Latin America, cooperatively own the Up & Go code and brand, launched publicly in May 2017. They meet monthly to make decisions on topics like cancellation policies and pricing.
“If you look at other platforms, it’s clear they artificially lower prices by subsidizing first-time users and paying as little as possible to their workers. Our value proposition is that our prices are transparent, workers earn a fair wage, and clients receive professional-quality cleaning,” said Maru Bautista.
…The development of Up & Go was guided by three immigrant-led cleaning co-ops over a year-long process of co-design and testing, made possible in part by funding from the anti-poverty Robin Hood Foundation.
Up & Go is one example of the emerging “platform cooperativism” movement. These new projects, sometimes called “platform cooperatives,” are tech enterprises owned and democratically controlled by their workers.
Danny Spitzberg, a user experience researcher who helped develop Up & Go, told Motherboard that “to get a project like this off the ground, it helps to see platforms as digital equipment rather than things with a life of their own.” In the case of Up & Go, the platform built on an existing cooperative organizing model and many years of building relationships.
Spitzberg says that the movement is essentially about “workers figuring out how to streamline workflows and keep the benefits themselves.” Before Up & Go existed, the cleaners spent one to two days every week advertising their services to secure new clients. As more cleaning jobs shifted online, Up & Go provided cleaners with a platform to thrive in the online economy while also developing new skills as owners.
The article goes on to profile