Fairwork Podcast

In the final episode of this series of the Fairwork Podcast, we look back at the different stories we've heard, what lessons have we learnt? What can these stories tell us about the nature of work in…

Research conducted by our colleagues at the Online Labour Index at the Oxford Internet Institute found that in 2020, Serbia had around 70,000 people finding work on digital platforms. That’s around 2…

In this series of the Fairwork podcast, we’ve looked at work in the planetary labour market, we’ve looked at the experiences and stories of workers who work via digital platforms, from Colombia, to G…

The history of the internet and of pornography are deeply intertwined, they mix and overlap that to see one without the other is to only capture half the picture. And the human desire for sex is ofte…

In the summer of 2021, probably the world’s largest sex work platform, OnlyFans announced that it would be banning creators from posting sexual content. The platform which rose to prominence in the p…

If you’re making your living from YouTube, there’s no financial safety net, no contract, no sick pay, holiday pay. it’s a fierce popularity contest in which an individual’s earnings is largely determ…

In 2019 a poll found that 30% of children in the UK and the US would choose being a Youtuber as their preferred profession ahead of jobs like astronaught, musician, athlete, or teacher – making it th…

In this episode of the podcast, we hear the story of Lisa, a worker on Appen, based in the UK. We hear her story of struggling to make a living or Appen, or maybe more accurately, struggling to not m…

Many members of Fairwork staff at the University of Oxford took part recently in 3 days strike action against falling wages, casualisation, pension cuts and increasing workload. The action was part o…

Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence, one which underpins a huge amount of modern life. If you’re using a computer, smartphone and searching the internet, then you encounter machine …

Let's say you’re on Twitter, browsing through your news feed. The reason why the feed you get is devoid of content that might be violent, racist or potentially upsetting, is because people spread acr…

We exist in a world where Information Communication Technologies, have made a remarkable number of tasks independent of distance. In is no longer necessary for many workers to share the same geograph…

The internet is radically reconfiguring the geographies of work, making it possible for workers to connect with employers based anywhere on the planet. Around the world, millions of people are piecin…

It hardly needs stating, but the world faces some grave challenges in the 21st century. From the dismantlement of workplace security replaced by an increasingly precarious model of work, to the threa…

This week on the Fairwork Podcast we head to Ukraine, to hear the story of a rider for the food delivery platform Glovo. We explore what it's like working in the Gig Economy in Ukraine as well as exp…

Karnataka, located in the South West of India is home to around 64 millions people. It’s known as the tech hub of India, home to many of the countries largest technology companies. But it is a city m…

Last month Gorillas riders in Berlin went on strike, blockading warehouses around the city and stoking international media coverage. The company which, in under a year of operating, has managed to ac…

Last month, Fairwork released our first ever round of scoring for the UK. We gave 11 platforms a fairness score out of 10, based on their ability to provide fair and decent work. Scores ranged from 8…

Many of us take for granted the minimum wage. It’s just there, hovering in background, the floor that sits beneath us, ensuring the minimum we will take home at the end of a day’s work. But for worke…

Francis Scaife works as a courier in the North East of England, in their home town of Teesside, a town heavily effected by deindustrialisation. Working as a courier for the gig economy platform Stuar…