Digital work marketplaces impose a new balance of power

Collective bargaining is changing to to the rise of digital work marketplaces. Platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer and Fiverr mediate the auctioning of work. Clients post tasks and workers bid on them. Interviews with 120 digital workers in Africa and Asia who do jobs as varied as progrmming, content creation, transcripts and clickwork, asked them how comfortable they felt asking for a raise, or better working conditions and whether they had considered joining a union. What we heard back from many of them is that they felt extremely replaceable.