Transforming Work with Trebor Sholz

During the AFoI2016, you may have attended sessions featuring international guest Michel Bauwens addressing issues concerning the sharing economy. These issues continue to raise serious questions in the public discourse concerning the future of labour markets and potential for both good and bad of a digital future.

Green Industries SA are taking the conversation further and would like to invite AFoI friends and subscribers to the following event:

Transforming Work: How co-operatively owned digital platforms create jobs
Guest Speaker: Trebor Scholz, author of Uber-worked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy.

Digital technologies are opening up new possibilities to help people find or build a livelihood in a world where the nature of work is changing fast.
But many of the digital platforms which have become synonymous with the ‘sharing economy’ or the ‘on demand’ economy are ‘platform monopolies’. These platforms are worth billions, yet the ones who profit most are the platforms’ owners and investors, even though their financial value is generated by everyone who uses them.
These platforms cast off the costs of conventional businesses by treating labour as independent contractors rather than employees – meaning gig economy workers do not enjoy benefits like stable work, superannuation, and leave entitlements.
What if the technological heart of these online platforms was cloned into a cooperative model, democratically operated by everyone who has a stake in them?
Trebor Scholz, Platform Co-operative researcher and Associate Professor of Culture and Media from The New School in New York, analyses the challenges posed by digital labour and introduces the concept of platform cooperativism as a way to put workers, owners, communities, and cities in charge of the platforms they use to live, work and play. Scholz will present case studies of platform co-ops from around the world, and how governments are responding.

Date:      Mon. 22 May 2017
Time:     6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Venue:    Braggs Lecture Theatre, University of Adelaide, North Terrace, Adelaide

To book your seat and find more information on this and other events featuring Trebor Scholz, visit Eventbrite