The Fairwork Foundation: Ensuring fairness in the gig economy

This session is facilitated by Srujana Katta, Fairwork at the Oxford Internet Institute team

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About this session

Join us in imagining a fairer future of work! Based at the Oxford Internet Institute, the Fairwork Foundation has co-developed five Principles of Fairness to assess working conditions at online labour platforms like Uber and Deliveroo, in conversation with workers, platforms, trade unions, regulators and academics from around the world. In their pilot year, the Foundation used these principles to give ‘fairness ratings’ to major companies in India and South Africa, and now, they are expanding to several other countries - including the UK, Germany and more. This session will explore how the five Fairwork principles would look in new and different contexts, taking the UK as an example.

Who are we?
Find out more about the Fairwork foundation and the fantastic team behind it on our website.

The Five Fairwork Principles
Read more about the 5 principles here.
Read more about the ten sub-principles that the five principles break down into here.
See how we translated these principles into locally appropriate thresholds in South Africa and India here.

Past ratings
Check out the Fairwork ratings given to India and South Africa platform companies here.

How can you get involved?
There’s several ways to get involved with our mission:

  • Level 1: Simplest thing - Follow/Like us on Twitter and FB to stay up to date, and moreover, doing that translates into a digital vote of confidence in the Fairwork rating system, and helps amp up the public pressure on platforms to provide fair and decent gig work - the more people hear of us and sign on, the greater the incentive for platforms to change their practices in response to our ratings. You could also email us at info@fair.work if you have any questions, feedback, or want to be added to our newsletter.

  • Level 2: Spread the word! Share our work among your networks and on social media. You could read and share our 2019 report that explains our approach and what we have done so far.

  • Level 3: Partner with us - or pass on the word to others who may be interested in partnering with us - to pilot the Fairwork approach in new contexts! We are already working with organisations to expand the Fairwork approach to Austria, Chile, Ecuador, and Indonesia. With your help, we can come to your community next! Email us at info@fair.work to get in touch!

Thanks for your participation, feedback and enthusiasm - we greatly appreciate it :grinning:

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