“FairTube”: IG Metall and Youtubers Union launch joint initiative
Effort aims to improve fairness and transparency for video creators working on online platforms Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 22 July 2019 — IG Metall, the largest trade union in Europe, and the Youtubers Union, an association of online video creators, announced today a joint initiative to improve the working conditions of YouTubers who earn income, or aim to, from the videos they upload to the YouTube platform. Several thousand people in Germany alone rely… Read More
ILO report on microtask platforms reveals room for improvement in working conditions
On September 20, 2018, the International Labour Organization (ILO) released Digital Labour Platforms and the Future of Work: Towards Decent Work in the Online World, a report surveying the experiences and working conditions of 3,500 crowd workers from around the world working on five “microtask” crowd work platforms. The research found that across the five platforms studied, the average hourly wage was USD 4.43 per hour in 2018 — below minimum wage for workers… Read More
Ombuds Office for German crowdsourcing platforms established
Eight European crowdsourcing platforms, the German Crowdsourcing Association (Deutscher Crowdsourcing Verband), and the German Metalworkers’ Union (IG Metall) announced today the establishment of a joint Ombuds Office. The Ombuds Office will be tasked with resolving disputes between crowdworkers, clients, and crowdsourcing platforms and with overseeing enforcement of the “Crowdsourcing Code of Conduct” adopted by the platforms. The Code of Conduct is signed by the German crowdsourcing platforms Testbirds, clickworker, Streetspotr, Crowd Guru, AppJobber, content.de, and… Read More
European Parliament calls for guidelines for digital platforms
On July 16, 2017, the European Parliament adopted a text proposing to regulate the “collaborative economy,” including labor platforms. Read More
Austrian government proposes EU-wide crowd work guidelines
The Austrian government intends to initiate a process to develop EU-wide guidelines for crowd work during Austria's tenure in the presidency of the EU in the second half of 2018. Read More
Worker Profile: Rochelle
First in our series of crowdworker profiles is Rochelle. She lives in Los Angeles and on Twitter as @Rochelle. She works on Amazon Mechanical Turk as a worker and also co-owns and moderates a public forum for Mechanical Turk workers and requesters called MTurkCrowd.com. How did you find out about Mechanical Turk? I first heard about the platform in 2007 from a friend who went to a tech conference where… Read More
(Deutsch) Tagungsband: Wie verändert Crowdworking den Arbeitsmarkt?
Sorry, this entry is only available in German. Read More
Call for comments: paying minimum wages on online labor platforms
The German Metalworkers’ Union (IG Metall) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) invite comments on the topic of minimum wages on online labor platforms. Read More
Eight German labor platforms sign “Crowdsourcing Code of Conduct 2.0”
Eight Germany-based platforms have signed a document in which they agreed to include “local wage standards” as a factor in setting prices on their platforms. The document, the “Crowdsourcing Code of Conduct“, is a revised and expanded version of a document first published in 2015 under the same name, with three platforms as signatories. The Code was first initiated by Munich-based software testing platform Testbirds and is officially supported by the… Read More
content.de and IG Metall host joint workshop
On March 19, German writing platform content.de and IG Metall (the German Metalworkers’ Union) hosted a joint workshop in Dortmund. Workers, platform operators, and unionists discussed workers’ experiences and working conditions on the platform. Herford-based content.de acts as a marketplace for writing and is one of the signatories of the “2017 Crowdsourcing Code of Conduct“. The day-long workshop proceeded in roughly three phases. First, all participants introduced themselves. As most participants were… Read More