Uberworked and Underpaid How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy

"Bringing together the rich and long tradition of cooperativism and worker self-management with the digital economy of the 21st century, Scholz' timely and groundbreaking new book provides both in-depth analysis and practical steps to make the Internet economy truly work for all who most rely on it."
Zeynep Tufekci, writer at The New York Times, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, professor The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
 
"Trebor Scholz has written a unsparing and bracing critique of platform capitalism. Moreover, he's developed a blueprint for transcending it: a tough-minded platform cooperativism that eschews the utopianism of 'sharing economy' bromides. Anyone concerned about the future of work should read this book."
Frank Pasquale, author of The Black Box Society
 
"Based on years of research and cooperation, Uberworked and Underpaid passionately and sharply tracks down the dark side of the "sharing economy," that is the reduction of labor to a cheap and disposable commodity, without protections or benefits. Against such hyper-precarization, Scholz believes in the possibility of autonomous self-organization of digital work. Posing platform cooperativism against crowd fleecing and the on-demand service economy, Scholz's book is an invaluable contribution to a much needed reinvention of a socialism for the 21st century."
Tiziana Terranova, author of Network Culture. Politics for the Information Age
 
"Scholz authoritatively and convincingly outlines how the 'sharing economy' is set up to disempower workers in every segment of the economy; in every corner of the world. But this hopeful book shows us that our current path is far from inevitable. Platform cooperativism is about envisioning an alternative, and Scholz offers us a powerful roadmap to get us there."
Mark Graham, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
 
"Uberworked is not only a mesmerizing reveal of the Dickensian state of digital labor, but offers a visionary and human alternative: the platform cooperative. Scholz, a scholar-activist at the forefront of a movement to transform technologies of domination into tools of social justice, has produced its essential manifesto."
Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American
 
"A valuable, accessible analysis."
Times Higher Education