RPT-Workers' rights under threat as online work surges five-fold - U.N.

Avi Asher-Schapiro, Thomson Reuters Foundation

(Repeats to widen distribution)

By Avi Asher-Schapiro

BERLIN, Feb 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Digitalplatforms have soared five-fold over the past decade, offeringopportunities to some but also eroding workers' rights, theInternational Labour Organization (ILO) said on Tuesday.

From ride-sharing apps like Uber and online marketplaceslike UpWork linking freelancers and clients, to software thatallows employers to oversee workers, digital platforms havetransformed the nature of work, the U.N.'s ILO said.

"At their best, all these platforms provide newopportunities," said Guy Ryder, head of the ILO, which surveyed12,000 workers in 100 countries, 70 businesses and 16 platformcompanies in its first in-depth report on the platform economy.

"There are opportunities for disabled workers, for those inremote locations. There's evidence that those who have beenunemployed or marginalised might find their way into the labourmarket," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up the shift to a digitaleconomy, changing the way work has been organised and regulatedfor decades. With job losses, millions have become gig workers,providing on-demand driving, delivery or childcare services.

But in many cases the work is poorly paid - with half ofonline workers earning less than $2 an hour - and lacks accessto traditional employment benefits, like collective bargaining,insurance and work-related injury protections, the ILO found.

Platforms generally classify workers as independentcontractors and their rights depend on the platforms' own termsof service, not employment law.

The ILO found significant inequities in the platformeconomy, with workers in developing countries earning 60% lessthan those in developed countries, even after controlling forbasic characteristics and types of tasks.

More than 70% of taxi drivers reported their average dailynumber of trips and earnings decreased after a platform tookover the market.

Ryder called for workers' rights already established in the"analogue" world - such as health benefits and bargaining rights- to be protected in the world of platform work.

"It's often a very one-sided work relationship," he said,adding that this imbalance could be addressed through greaterdialogue and regulatory cooperation between workers, platformsand government.

The control and ownership of workers' data is anotheremerging concern, the ILO said.

"The data from work ... is becoming a bankable commodity,"Ryder said. "Questions of the appropriation and ownership ofthat data is a big, big issue."

The emergence of a few giant players creates risks as theyhave access to vast amounts of information created by workers,such as how long it takes to complete a task or their locations,which digital platforms can use as they see fit, the ILO said.

Andrew Pakes, research director with the British trade unionProspect said data is the "new frontline of workers' rights".

"We need to get serious about these risks and take a standbefore we sleepwalk into a new age of digital management andsurveillance where employers hold all the cards," he said inemailed comments.

(Reporting by Avi Asher-Schapiro @AASchapiro, Editing by KatyMigiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, thecharitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives ofpeople around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly.Visit http://news.trust.org)

Recommended Stories

  • EXCERPT: 'Kill Shot' probes shadow industry, deadly disease

    EDITOR’S NOTE — This is an exclusive excerpt adapted from “Kill Shot: The Untold Story of the Worst Contaminated Drug Crisis in U.S. History,” by Associated Press investigative reporter Jason Dearen. The book chronicles the rare fungal meningitis outbreak in 2012 that killed more than 100 people, and infected some 750 others. While the other scientists worked quietly, Smith had a telephone headset tangled in her hair and was dialing numbers as fast as she could.

  • Indebted Turkish Group Looks to Cash In With Plan for Unit’s IPO

    (Bloomberg) -- Aydem Holding AS, which underwent Turkey’s second-largest debt restructuring, applied for an initial public offering of its renewable-electricity producer.Garanti Yatirim, Is Yatirim, Turkiye Kalkinma ve Yatirim Bankasi AS and Yapi Kredi Yatirim will lead the offering of shares in Aydem Yenilenebilir Enerji AS, according to an emailed statement on Tuesday. Halk Yatirim, Vakif Yatirim and Ziraat Yatirim will act as co-leaders. There is no certainty that the IPO will take place, the company said.Aydem Holding joins a flurry of small and medium-sized Turkish companies rushing to list on Borsa Istanbul and cash in on a flood of local retail investors. The re-branded company formerly known as Bereket Enerji restructured $5 billion of loans in 2019.If the IPO materializes, it could be the biggest share sale in Turkey since discount grocer Sok Marketler Ticaret AS raised $595 million in mid-2018. Aydem Holding was expecting to raise around $300 million in an offering that could value the unit at as much as $1.5 billion, people familiar with the plans said late last year.Aydem Holding’s statement didn’t specify when or where the listing will take place. It’s already signed up Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. as global lead bookrunners, people familiar with the plans said in late 2019.The company has 25 power plants with a total capacity of 1,020 megawatts, Idris Kupeli, chief executive of Aydem, said in the statement. “In 2021, we are increasing hybrid energy production plants in a bid to diversify our portfolio,” he said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • Oil Dips Below $62 in New York Though Banks Say Rally Can Extend

    (Bloomberg) -- Oil retreated from an earlier rally with investment banks and traders predicting the market can go significantly higher in the months to come.Futures in New York pared much of an earlier increase to $63 a barrel as the dollar climbed and equities slipped. Bank of America said prices could reach $70 at some point this year, while Socar Trading SA sees global benchmark Brent hitting $80 a barrel before the end of the year as the glut of inventories built up during the Covid-19 pandemic is drained by the summer.The loss of oil output after the big freeze in the U.S. should help the market firm as much of the world emerges from lockdowns, according to Trafigura Group. Inventory data due later Tuesday from the American Petroleum Institute and more from the Energy Department on Wednesday will shed more light on how the Texas freeze disrupted U.S. oil supply last week.Oil has surged this year after Saudi Arabia pledged to unilaterally cut 1 million barrels a day in February and March, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicting the rally will accelerate as demand outpaces global supply. Russia and Riyadh, however, will next week once again head into an OPEC+ meeting with differing opinions about adding more crude to the market.“The freeze in the U.S. has proved supportive as production was cut,” said Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro. “We still expect that Russia will push for a significant rise in production,” which could soon weigh on prices, he said.Brent’s prompt timespread firmed in a bullish backwardation structure to the widest in more than a year. The gap rose above $1 a barrel on Tuesday before easing to 87 cents. That compares with 25 cents at the start of the month.Read more: Commodity Returns Hit Three-Year High With Oil Leading the WayJPMorgan Chase & Co. and oil trader Vitol Group shot down talk of a new oil supercycle, though they said a lack of supply response will keep prices for crude prices firm in the short term.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • Merrick Garland says he has 'great' concern about federal use of the death penalty, which surged under Trump

    The US government put 13 inmates to death between July and January. The Biden administration is likely to end federal executions.

  • Why Churchill Capital IV Stock Dropped After Finally Confirming Its Merger With Lucid Motors

    For several weeks, rumors swirled that Churchill Capital IV (NYSE: CCIV) was preparing to merge with Lucid Motors. Lucid, one of the hottest electric vehicle (EV) start-ups, is about to begin delivering its luxury sedan, the Lucid Air, within a few months. At long last, the companies confirmed the deal last night, announcing that Churchill Capital IV and Lucid Motors have entered into a definitive merger agreement.

  • Posted Up - Why the Timberwolves' fast firing & hiring is a bad look

    Yahoo Sports senior NBA insider Chris Haynes, senior NBA writer Vincent Goodwill and NBA writer Seerat Sohi connected on the Posted Up with Chris Haynes podcast to discuss Minnesota’s surprise Sunday night firing of Ryan Saunders and immediate hiring of Raptors assistant Chris Finch. Hear the full conversation on the Posted Up with Chris Haynes podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.

  • Slide in growth stocks pummel Nasdaq, Powell testimony underway

    The Nasdaq index fell more than 2% on Tuesday as investors sold off mega-cap growth stocks on valuation concerns, while keeping a close eye on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's testimony in Congress. Shares of Netflix Inc, Alphabet Inc, Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc slipped between 1.5% and 3.5% in early trading.

  • Stock market news live updates: Stocks fall, Nasdaq drops 2% as tech shares extend rout

    Stocks fell on Tuesday as tech stocks extended their declines.

  • Exclusive: Top banks asked to justify why they still clear euro swaps in London

    Europe's top banks must justify why they should not have to shift clearing of euro-denominated derivatives worth billions of euros from London to the European Union after Brexit, an EU document seen by Reuters on Tuesday showed. The banks are being asked to set out detailed views on shifting euro derivatives positions from London on Friday in the first meeting of a new European Commission working group on moving euro clearing. "The current level of exposure to UK central counterparties (CCPs) raises a number of issues for the EU that should be addressed by a reduction in the EU’s exposure to UK CCPs," the European Commission said in a questionnaire sent to banks.

  • Spirit Aero revenue halves, flies into loss as Boeing troubles weigh

    Spirit gets a big chunk of its revenue from Boeing Co, which was forced to cut back production due to the grounding of its 737 MAX jet and a slump in air travel due to the pandemic. The MAX was finally cleared late last year to fly after being grounded for nearly two years and Spirit hopes to benefit from a ramp-up in production at the planemaker. Boeing 737 MAX deliveries fell to 19 shipsets from 153 a year earlier.

  • Tesla shares in the red for 2021 as bitcoin selloff weighs

    Shares in Tesla were set to plunge into the red for the year on Tuesday, hit by a broad selloff of high-flying technology stocks and the fall of bitcoin, in which the electric carmaker recently invested $1.5 billion. At 1121 GMT, Tesla was down over 6% in U.S. premarket deals after a 8.5% drop during the previous session. The firm led by Elon Musk has had a stellar ride since 2020, which it began at about $85 per share, before reaching the $900 mark on Jan. 25.

  • Texans Will Pay for Decades as Crisis Tacks Billions Onto Bills

    (Bloomberg) -- Now that the lights are back on in Texas, the state has to figure out who’s going to pay for the energy crisis that plunged millions into darkness last week. It will likely be ordinary Texans.The price tag so far: $50.6 billion, the cost of electricity sold from early Monday, when the blackouts began, to Friday morning, according to BloombergNEF estimates. That compares with $4.2 billion for the prior week.Some of those costs have already fallen onto consumers as electricity customers exposed to wholesale prices wracked up power bills as high as $8,000 last week. Other customers won’t know what they’re in for until they receive their gas and power bills at the end of the month. Ultimately, the financial pain will probably be shared by ratepayers and taxpayers alike, said Michael Webber, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and chief science officer for French power company Engie SA.If prior U.S. power market failures are any guide, Texans could be on the hook for decades. Californians, for example, have spent about 20 years paying for the 2000-2001 Enron-era power crisis, via surcharges on utility bills.CPS Energy, which is owned and run by the city of San Antonio, said on Twitter it was looking into ways to spread costs for the last week over the next 10 years. That didn’t sit well with its customers, who railed against the company’s proposal during a board meeting on Monday.“Spreading the cost of this event over a decade is unacceptable,” said Aaron Arguello, an organizer with Move Texas. “Customers are already in debt with student loans, mortgages and other payments.”But companies that ran up huge losses as the cost of electricity skyrocketed last week will inevitably try to recoup those through their customers, taxpayers or bonds. How quickly Texans pay depends on who their provider is.Gas utilities usually pass the costs onto customers at the end of the monthly billing cycle, said Toby Shea, a senior credit officer at Moody’s Investors Service. Municipal utilities, co-ops and regulated power providers have the ability to spread out costs over a longer time-frame. “It’s very easy for a government to spread this out for many years and even a few months,” he said.CPS Chief Executive Officer Paula Gold-Williams said last week the company may also issue bonds to help pay for the natural gas it bought at inflated prices.Some utilities are looking to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in liquidity to spread out costs for 10 to 20 years, said Scott Sagen, an associate director in U.S. public finance at S&P Global Ratings. Rayburn Country Electric Cooperative Inc., for example, has fully drawn its $250 million syndicated line of credit and has recently entered into a $300 million bilateral line of credit with National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corp. for one year, according to an S&P report published Monday.A number of utilities are in talks with their banks to get liquidity to pay off their current debts so they can then take out a bridge loan that they’ll convert to long-term bonds. “They’re trying to smooth out these costs as much as possible and provide cover for their customers,” Sagen said.But small retailers who tend to be more thinly capitalized and less robustly hedged have limited options. One such company, Griddy, said last week it would challenge the prices set by the grid operator during the crisis, in an apparent bid to recoup losses for itself and its customers. Another company, Octopus Energy, said Monday it would forgive any energy bill in excess of the average price of electricity for the week, and eat the resulting losses which could be millions of dollars.The state’s utility regulator on Sunday blocked power sellers from disconnecting customers for non-payment, saying the governor and lawmakers need time to come up with a plan to address sky-high bills, first. Texas lawmakers will likely take up the discussion of consumer relief as part of their committee hearings on the crisis which will begin this week, a spokesman for the Public Utility Commission of Texas said.In theory, the legislature could pass an emergency bill that could cover the excessive costs charged by generators during the crisis, said Julie Cohn, an energy historian with affiliations at Rice University’s Center for Energy Studies and the University of Houston’s Center for Public History. “Another piece would be to say you can have a competitive power market that we have, but prohibit the provider from linking the price directly to the wholesale price, as Griddy does.”That would be easier to do in a state that takes a more heavy-handed regulatory approach to its electricity market, according to Webber. But Texas decided to take a more hands off approach with its deregulated system, he said.“The question is where is the money going to come from?” Shea said. “Will Texas go and bail out certain customers? That’s not their attitude toward how they manage their market or manage their economy.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • U.S. Treasury No. 2 nominee Adeyemo faces questions on China in hearing

    U.S. senators are expected to grill Wally Adeyemo, President Joe Biden's nominee for the No. 2 job at the U.S. Treasury, about his views on U.S. policy toward China at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday. In testimony prepared for the hearing, Adeyemo struck a hardline tone on Beijing, vowing to fight what he called "unfair economic practices" in China and elsewhere, while working to rectify economic inequality at home.

  • Vaccine Delays Threaten Economies Hardest Hit by Pandemic

    (Bloomberg) -- Latin America and the Caribbean, the region where the coronavirus caused the worst economic destruction and more than a quarter of the world’s deaths, is now falling victim to a slow inoculation campaign.Political fights and production bottlenecks are stymieing Brazil’s vaccination efforts. Mexico is struggling to source doses as its death toll surpasses India’s. Colombia only began administering shots last week.Such sluggishness alongside a recent spike in infections risks hampering an already slow going economic recovery.“If vaccination and public health policy don’t succeed at reversing the trend that we’ve seen in recent months, clearly this recovery is at risk,” Alejandro Werner, the International Monetary Fund’s western hemisphere director, said earlier this month.Latin America’s economic rebound was already wobbling after a new round of lockdown measures in response to the surge in cases that began around the Christmas holidays. Since January, JPMorgan Chase & Co. trimmed its first quarter growth forecasts for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, citing concerns of rising case load and new restrictions.The region contracted by more than 7% last year, according to the IMF, the most in the world. The Fund doesn’t see output returning to pre-pandemic levels until 2023, and this year is off to rocky start.In December, Brazilian retail sales suffered their biggest drop for the month on record, pointing to a sharp slowdown in Latin America’s largest economy. Meanwhile, Mexico saw its recovery lose steam, as growth slowed to 3.1% from 12.1% over the last two quarters of 2020.Chile OutperformsActivity is expected to pick up later this year, but a strong rebound depends on vaccines becoming more widely available in the coming months. Underscoring the importance of an efficient vaccine rollout, investors are already rewarding Latin America’s only success story so far: Chile, which is on pace to inoculate 75% of its population in just six months, according to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker.This month, Moody’s Investors Service and Spain’s Banco Santander both revised upward their growth forecasts for Chile, setting it apart from its neighbors. Its economy will recover pre-pandemic levels three to six months earlier than most other countries in the region, according to Nikhil Sanghani, an economist at Capital Economics in London.The Chilean peso has led gains among regional peers, rallying more than 3% so far this month.Read More: Chile Peso Joins Pound, Dollar on Vaccination Winners ListOther countries in the region are nowhere close. At the current rate, Brazil would take two-and-a-half years to reach the 75% level of inoculation, which is the threshold experts say is needed for a return to normality. Mexico 3.6 years and Argentina would take over a decade. The U.S., in contrast, is projected to reach herd immunity by the end of the year.This outlook may improve over the next few weeks as some of the “teething problems” with the vaccine rollout start to ease, Sanghani said.Delays in deliveries have sent countries that relied heavily on particular vaccines, such as Mexico and Colombia, running to ink last-minute contracts with competitors. Argentina is trying to produce more locally.After dragging its feet for months in making orders, the administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is running out of doses to sustain its vaccination campaign, leading nine state capitals including Rio de Janeiro to suspend immunizations.Self-InflictedThe hold ups in the vaccination drive aren’t all self-inflicted.From the start, poorer countries have been pushed to the back of the line by wealthier ones that quickly sealed deals with drug makers, or are now commandeering vaccinations produced in their territory for their own citizens.Much of the Caribbean and Central America are still weeks away from kicking off their campaigns. Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness last month accused rich countries of “hoarding” vaccines.Economists watching mobility trends are bracing for another hit to activity caused by people once again sheltering at home and businesses closing shop. Chile aside, they remain skeptical about restrictions relief for the rest of the region given their slow start and distance from major vaccine distributors.“Richer countries already started to buy out everything they could, only leaving bread crumbs for the rest,” said Joan Domene, a Mexico City-based economist for Oxford Economics Ltd.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • Should You Follow Buffett Into Energy Stocks?

    Buffett has lately been doubling down on his energy investments while trimming his tech and banking holdings, and he's not the only billionaire making big moves in energy in 2021

  • Exclusive: Chilean miner Codelco says copper price spike will bolster war chest, raise costs

    Chile's state-owned Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, views recent spike in the price of the red metal as a "good opportunity" to generate cash for investments and hold down debt, but warned it could also drive up the miner's costs, a senior executive told Reuters on Monday. Codelco vice president of sales Carlos Alvarado said the growing expectations would likely also spur goods and service providers to hike prices, leading to higher overall costs for the state-run miner. The executive said it was still "too early" to know if the spike in the global copper price represented a new "super-cycle," similar to that seen in the early 2000s following a tectonic demand boost from industrialization and urbanization in emerging nations.

  • Fed’s Barkin Says ‘Profound’ Disinflation to Check Price Gains

    (Bloomberg) -- A “disinflationary” mindset has taken hold among U.S. businesses and consumers that will be hard to dislodge despite stronger economic growth this year, said Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Thomas Barkin.“There are disinflationary pressures that are quite profound and seem to be continuing,” Barkin told an online event Monday hosted by the Maryland Bankers Association. “As long as you’ve got those disinflationary headwinds, it’s just going to be hard for businesses to believe that you’re going to have the market power to increase prices.”Cold weather and continuing high levels of Covid-19 infections are likely to make the first quarter’s economic performance “bumpy,” Barkin said, with an improvement by the second quarter. In the second half, he saw companies likely to be calling service and restaurant workers back who have been furloughed.Even so, firms may still struggle to meet pent-up demand from Americans who’ve delayed spending during the pandemic, Barkin said. But he argued they will hesitate to raise prices aggressively because of competitive pressures and consumer psychology.Some investors are betting on higher inflation as the economy recovers at a quicker-than-expected pace. Policy makers have said inflation could temporarily rise above their 2% target, but minutes of their meeting last month showed they anticipate distinguishing between such one-time moves and shifts in the underlying inflation trend.Chair Jerome Powell may say more about the outlook for price pressures when he speaks before Congress this week.Economists have upgraded their forecasts for U.S. growth this year after January data on retail sales, industrial production and producer prices published last week all came in above forecasters’ estimates.Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said in separate remarks on Monday that economic growth for 2021 is likely to be 5% and could be even more.“If we’re wrong, the risks are to the upside -- that we may grow faster,” Kaplan said. “We think some of that growth will be back-end loaded to the end of the year as mobility and engagement improves, we think the unemployment rate will continue to meaningfully decline and we’ll see some firming in inflation.”Powell appears before the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday and the House Financial Services panel a day later. He is likely to repeat that the Fed is fully committed to supporting the economy, with the labor market far from its full employment goal and inflation below its 2% target.Fed leaders have highlighted that nearly 10 million jobs have been lost since the start of the pandemic. That shortfall will weigh on prices as well.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • Explainer: U.S. Treasury's cash drawdown - and why markets care

    The U.S. Treasury is due to run down a $1.6 trillion bank account at the Federal Reserve as government spending ramps up in the months ahead - a move some analysts warn may crush short-term money rates further and flood financial markets with cash. The Treasury said recently it would halve its extraordinarily large balance at the so-called Treasury General Account (TGA) by April and cut it to $500 billion by the end of June. The U.S. government runs most of its day-to-day business through the TGA - managed by the New York Fed and into which flow tax receipts and proceeds from the sale of Treasury debt.

  • Jay-Z sells stake in champagne brand to luxury giant LVMH

    LVMH said it was interested in the brand for its appeal to a 'global and diverse' customer.

  • Why Suze Orman Thinks You’re Doing Something Wrong If You Get a Tax Refund

    Last year, the average tax refund was over $2,500, the IRS reported. And while you may be looking forward to getting another couple thousand dollars as a refund this year, financial expert Suze Orman...