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If you work regularly and you have never received a W-2, you are probably a gig worker. That category of kinda-employed-but-not-really has mushroomed in recent years.
And while it allows the likes of Uber and Lyft to run a business with lower overhead, it creates some real issues for the people who do the work. Sociologist Alexandrea Ravenelle talked to a lot of those people for her book
Uber hires prominent critic to focus on treatment of drivers
Brody Ford, Bloomberg News VIDEO SIGN OUT
Alex Rosenblat, an author and labor researcher, wrote for years about how Uber Technologies Inc. obscures pay structures, surveils drivers and creates systems that facilitate discrimination against those workers. Now she works for Uber.
The ride-hailing company hired Rosenblat last month as head of marketplace policy, fairness and research. Her appointment, which hasnât been previously reported, is part of an effort to reform Uberâs treatment of, and relationship with, its drivers.
Rosenblat is best known for her 2018 book, âUberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work,â for which she interviewed hundreds of drivers about their working conditions. The book highlights driver stories of pay disparities, pervasive surveillance and the lopsided power dynamics in algorithm-mediated work.
A room on the first floor of the building that houses Carolina’s sociology department has an especially meaningful decorative touch. This room’s crowded “wall of fame” features framed portraits of each sociology faculty member who has served as the president of the discipline’s most prestigious organizations, including the American Sociological Association, the Southern Sociological Society and the Population Association of America.
“It fills the length of one wall,” said Charles Kurzman, Philip Stadter Distinguished Professor of Sociology. “It’s very impressive.”
As often as national organizations tap sociology faculty members as leaders, the University turns to the department to head centers and institutes, serve as administrators and lead campus-wide initiatives, Kurzman added. “I don’t know of any department that has a broad array of University leadership roles as our department does.”