Uber is about to launch a bold experiment in New York. No, ,this is not another flashy app or gazillion-dollar round of fundraising. Instead, the ride-hailing company service has told its 35,000 drivers in the city that they can form an Independent Drivers Guild to promote collective dialogue and limited worker protections.
Whisper it quietly in other words, but Uber’s executives seem finally to have recognised that its workersthe company’s workers need to feel a touch more secure — never mind the fact that the world “union” appears to be still self-evidently taboo.
It is a small shift in policy that is well overdue, not just at Uber but across the western world. For if you want to understand why so many voters seem angry today — and why political populism is on the rise — one place to start is by looking at what is happening in the grass roots of the “gig” economy, with or without the presence of “guilds” .