Join us in congratulating Senior Principal Researcher and Social Media Collective member Mary Gray, for two achievements this week!

Yesterday, the Digital Future Society released a report this week called “The Future of Work in the Digital Era: The Rise of Labour Platforms.” Mary co-authored the report with the other members of the Equitable Growth working group (https://digitalfuturesociety.com/equitable-growth/): ten international experts in platform work, worker-led movements, and the future of work. The report examines both the opportunities and challenges faced by workers doing platform work, and proposes five policy initiatives to address these key challenges:

• Amplify the Atypical Worker’s Voice, to ensure legal status to third-party entities authorized to represent platform workers in collective agreements between platforms and governments
• DataWorks! to mandate regular publishing of data by platforms of average income earned and time spent on the platform, making the data available to workers, monitoring agencies, and data activists
• Platform Cooperative Accelerator, a government-run and -funded accelerator to cultivate and develop platform cooperatives, encouraging fair wages for workers and high quality services for customers
• Worker Status Questionnaire, to help workers determine whether they are an employee or self-employed—which can better inform workers and platforms of the worker’s employment status, rights, and obligations
• Easy Taxes for Platform Workers, to facilitate payments of income taxes and social security contributions for platform workers who are often considered independent workers

The entire report, which includes detailed descriptions of each initiative, can be found here.

And today, Mary is speaking at the California Future of Work Commission as a featured expert. The event is being livestreamed on YouTube. In August 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order establishing a commission to understand the current state of jobs for Californians, analyze the way technologies and other factors have shaped these conditions, and recommend how to improve jobs and work for Californians in the future. Mary is part of the Jan 16 convening, focused on “Employment and Labor Law in the New Economy.” More information about the commission is available on the California Governor’s website.