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Antiwork

Working for an exploitative gig economy company, what would you do?

Would you accept a job offer as an engineer for a company that exploits temporary workers (think Uber, Deliveroo, one of those)? The company does nothing unethical per se (e.g. enslaving people's attention span, producing weapons, etc) but it takes advantage of existing labour laws to make a profit. Obviously you would be an employee of a company that also employs temporary workers who don't benefit from the same wage, labour rights and benefits as you. You could claim that capitalist society works like this as well, but since we all live in bubbles it's normally more difficult to be faced with such a sheer difference in worker treatment. Personally, I think that the idea of boycotting companies as a worker is more or less like boycotting companies as a consumer (doesn't work as much as people claim it does) and that the way for riders to vindicate their rights…


Would you accept a job offer as an engineer for a company that exploits temporary workers (think Uber, Deliveroo, one of those)? The company does nothing unethical per se (e.g. enslaving people's attention span, producing weapons, etc) but it takes advantage of existing labour laws to make a profit.

Obviously you would be an employee of a company that also employs temporary workers who don't benefit from the same wage, labour rights and benefits as you. You could claim that capitalist society works like this as well, but since we all live in bubbles it's normally more difficult to be faced with such a sheer difference in worker treatment.

Personally, I think that the idea of boycotting companies as a worker is more or less like boycotting companies as a consumer (doesn't work as much as people claim it does) and that the way for riders to vindicate their rights to get better working conditions should be through trade unions and hopefully politicians should legislate more strict labour laws. At the same time, I wonder if gig economy companies would be able to survive if governments forced them to treat all workers fairly.

What do you think? Do you think it is unethical to work for a company that exploits workers? Would you do it? (Is there even any company that doesn't exploit workers?)

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