All worked up - What Happens Next? podcast on the gig economy

Susan Carland:

Welcome to another episode of What Happens Next? I'm Dr. Susan Carland, and this time on our investigation into the future of the gig economy, we're talking about what's helping to change it for people in a tough job market and also ethical alternatives to popular sharing economy platforms. Jacqui Alexander from Monash Art, Design and Architecture tells us about how a local community is fighting back against the sharing economy platforms using an ethical spin on the old model. Nathaniel Diong, who's just 19, wears many hats, is a commerce and global studies undergraduate student at Monash University. He's also an entrepreneur, mentor, fundraiser, and employment educator. Nathaniel set up the Future Minds Network, which has helped 11,000 young people through employment education. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia's youth unemployment rate rose up to 14.5% prompting Nathaniel to run $90,000 worth of subsidised programmes to support global youth education and retraining. Here's Nathaniel.

Nathaniel Diong:

Hey, I'm Nathaniel Diong. I'm an educator and designer at heart, and the CEO at Future Minds Network. So we help youth by building businesses. We've actually been able to work with 11,000 youth to unlock their endless creativity through startups, whilst practising skills for future employment.

Susan Carland:

Nathaniel Diong, welcome.

Nathaniel Diong:

Thanks for having me, Susan.

Susan Carland:

Well, apart from having the great esteem of being one of my students, you're also a very busy, busy 19 year old. You're involved in a million things. You've started a million things. Tell us, what do you do?

Nathaniel Diong:

I think the way that I would describe myself is an educator and a community builder. So I'm the CEO of Future Minds Network where we help youth through building businesses. We've been really lucky to have worked with 11,000 youth to really unlock their endless creativity through startups, whilst practising skills for future employment.

Susan Carland:

So, I imagine that has been particularly relevant during the pandemic and particularly Melbourne's lockdown. I imagine there were quite a few young people who worried about poverty or homelessness, either for themselves or wanting to help other people. Did you see a spike in interest in your work during that time?

Nathaniel Diong:

Yeah, 100%. And we look at reports from the Productivity Commission of Australia saying that right now young people with bachelor's degrees were better off in the global financial crisis in terms of employment prospects than they are now.

Susan Carland:

So we're particularly looking at the gig economy in these episodes. Does your work in any way utilise or think about the gig economy?

Nathaniel Diong:

100%. Look, the gig economy is such an interesting grey area right now. Let's paint the picture first, right? We're currently in a global unemployment crisis. So in 10 years, 2.8 million young Australians, will need to be significantly re-skilled, according to the Foundation of Young Australians. And so we're talking about structural unemployment, where there's an innate lack of human or enterprise skills. and one of the biggest challenges of that is that those can't be taught from a textbook. And so this presents a challenge, and the gig economy presents a massive opportunity, because it allows young workers to actually gain real life experience, but also understand the complexities of work in a fast paced environment. A trend that happens particularly in gig work is that tasks are often more clear, because the employer has put more effort into the job description, because they want a specific job done quickly.

You compare that to fixed work, which often ties young workers down a lot, because they're already juggling trying to get straight A's, working part time, trying to find an internship for graduation, navigating uncertainty, all whilst working in a system that works against them. And so the gig economy does really well in helping avoid some of these impacts. But then on the other hand, you have huge negative impacts from the gig economy, as well. And I think you see large corporates dodging bullets and often treating young people like disposables. And I think in order for us to really thrive in the workplace, we almost need to create a new social contract, if you will. Like a concept mentioned by a French entrepreneur, Nicholas Colin, where he talks about, a contract where workers are actually covered to meet the new risk of today, like navigating the impossibility of affordable housing, for example.

Susan Carland:

So tell us, how would you see that new social contract playing out? What do you think that should look like?

Nathaniel Diong:

Yeah, I think it's complex and it's not something that one person can answer. I think when we really want to think about the social contract, the first thing that we need to do is help workers actually understand what their rights are, because right now it's a big grey area and we have an employment model law. We have the national employment scheme, but even then the sort of structures that we have in place greatly disadvantage women, and young migrants, and young people. I think the other thing is we have to consult young people on the issues that they're facing. This doesn't happen a lot. And it's an approach of co-design where you work with young people to solve issues for young people, because these are the people who are at the core of that problem.

Susan Carland:

So do you think the gig economy can be better than it is at the moment? There are a lot of negatives to it. It's certainly been in the news a lot lately, the awful deaths of Uber delivery drivers.

Nathaniel Diong:

It's tragic.

Susan Carland:

But then on the other hand, it is also fulfilling a need that no other industry really is. When we went into lockdown in Melbourne, I knew a couple of people who were here as international students, and they had previously been working doing domestic cleaning, cleaning houses and nannying. Once the pandemic hit, they lost all of that. None of that work was allowed to be done, and the only work they could get was Uber delivery. It was that or nothing because the Australian government wasn't, there was no JobKeeper or JobSeeker for international students. The gig economy seems to be the only thing stepping into a much needed market, but then of course it can be quite predatory as well, if you are the only person or the only organisation that's serving a vulnerable community. What do we do?

Nathaniel Diong:

The gig economy is changing, just as the future of work is changing. And so the way that we know the gig economy now is not how it's always going to be. I think with the influx of Industry 4.0 and manufacturing technologies changing everything, there'll be a lot less sort of gig work, I think, particularly in the delivery space as automation takes over and what we know as what gig work is. It will really go into tasks and roles that require more human skills. Like an example of good gig work is I used to work as an associate consultant at YLab, where we put young people at the centre of complex problems to design the future. And so I think particularly with gig work, what it does is, like you mentioned, it gives an influx of jobs where young people can actually get that real life experience and often work in a culture that allows for failures. Because particularly when you have fixed work, right, you have to almost assimilate into this new culture, understand all the mindsets that are going into play, and you have to play a long-term game, because you'll almost trying to hold onto your job as much as you can. What the gig economy does is it allows you to play with new areas and understand new employment opportunities without having to invest your next two, three years into a permanent career.

Susan Carland:

So how do we take the good stuff of the gig economy, the flexibility, jump right in, no long-term commitment required and protect workers from the bad stuff, lack of adequate training, lack of proper insurance? How do we fix that model? How do we convince the organisations that create these great gig job opportunities and industries to provide all that great flexibility that you spoke about, but also to give workers the protection they need so they're not really exploited? Because that's going to cost them, and the reason they're in this is to make a huge amount of money.

Nathaniel Diong:

Yeah. I think for this sort of question, it's almost like a systemic issue where we're dealing with large corporates who, like you said, are using the gig economy because it's easier to exploit young workers. I think where we have to begin is where we can make an impact, and that's actually helping young workers understand their rights first and foremost, because it's such a grey area, because the NES in employment law doesn't really cover workers, we need to start with the workers themselves so that they understand what they're getting into. And I think that really starts with honest conversation and being really open about what the expectations, time commitments, and what to do in times of crisis are.

Susan Carland:

What do you think an ethical gig industry would look like?

Nathaniel Diong:

I think starting with having a workplace culture which doesn't treat you as a disposable. And so understanding that the nature of the gig economy is that it's short term work and it is casual employment, but the workers' rights are actually protected. And so that thinks about safety, that thinks about wellbeing, that thinks about how someone fits into a workplace and really accommodates for diversity and inclusion there. And so, a really good example of someone who does that well is the Australian Network of Disability, where they essentially link graduates to gig-like internships or work, and what they do really well is they actually co-design with young people with disabilities and the companies they're working into. And so, again, it starts with that honest conversation around how might we help these young people without trying to make, I guess, decisions that don't inform them at all and don't ask them the problems that they're facing.

Susan Carland:

Is part of the problem the profit? So I think for other industries where large profits can be made, particularly the care industry, age care, childcare, when they're assessed often, but not always, it's the for-profit models that are the worst to the people. When we start to have not-for-profit childcare, aged care, disability, that's actually when you see the highest level of care. What if some sort of savvy, young entrepreneur developed the ethical Uber delivery which paid drivers a reasonable wage, because it's not taking a profit for itself and it's not skimming money off the restaurant owners, either? It wasn't a for-profit model, ethical consumers would feel that they'd much rather use that app than Uber, or Deliveroo, or the others that take money for the restaurants and don't give enough money back to the drivers, because they're making a profit. Is there a space for a not-for-profit Uber? And if there is, I would just like to say, I came up with that idea, and I am trademarking it right now.

Nathaniel Diong:

You have the IP to it. Yeah, intellectual property to that.

Susan Carland:

We'll go into partnership, Nathaniel, but seriously, do you think that could work?

Nathaniel Diong:

I mean, conceptually, that would be really great idea to have some sort of ethical service. And I see particularly, Generation Z and Millennials being increasingly aware of where they're putting their money and where that money goes to. And so, yeah, definitely there would be heaps of people who'd be willing to invest ethically into something that supports them. But I think the other thing that we think about in the gig economy, or let's start with the non-for-profit space.

The other thing that we think about in a non-for-profit space is the lack of systems of support and funding, and so you're going into a market that's already saturated with, basically, monopolies or duopolies, who are just taking all the market share, and then you have to take into account starting up ... This is sort of my startup background as well. Starting up in a completely new environment and building trust, which is one of the biggest things ever, because you can build the best product and service in the world. You can have the best mission behind it, but if nobody trusts you and you don't have a large consumer base, you won't be able to launch. And so I think in a practicality sense, it will be very difficult for a non-for-profit player to jump into an existing service that already works, because a lot of the things we talk about in entrepreneurship is when you have customer discovery, you have a vitamin and a painkiller. So a vitamin is something that you can take every day, but if you miss once, it doesn't matter. But if you have a burning headache, you'll do anything to pay for the painkiller. And in this scenario, the non-for-profit delivery service is great, but it's more of a vitamin, because the existing problem is already being solved really well by Uber or other delivery services.

So it's an interesting divide where it's like, yes, there'd be a lot of interest, but in a practicality sense, how would the non-for-profit actually launch and get to the stage where they can build the trust of an existing service.

Susan Carland:

Nathaniel, thank you so much.

Nathaniel Diong:

No worries.

Susan Carland:

Jacqui Alexander from Monash Art, Design and Architecture got more than she bargained for when she began researching the impact of sharing economy platforms, like Airbnb, on the urban environment. Jacqui tells us more about Melbourne's monster house.

Jacqui Alexander:

Hi, my name's Jacqui Alexander. I'm senior lecturer at Monash University in the architecture department, and I'm also an architecture practitioner. I run my own architecture practice called Alexander Sheridan Architecture.

Susan Carland:

Jacqui Alexander, it is lovely to see you today.

Jacqui Alexander:

It's lovely to see you too, Susan.

Susan Carland:

I want to hear about your research, and particularly your research on the sharing economy, in the built environment and urban design. What did you find out when you started digging into this area?

Jacqui Alexander:

Well, it's been a pretty fascinating journey. I think when I started looking at the sharing economy, originally I was thinking about the sort of soft implications of the sharing economy in a way that behaviour was being changed through these digital platforms. And so I started looking at the kind of activities of people within space, things like the distribution of people within space, started looking into platforms like Airbnb, for example, and what impact they're having. One of the things that came out of this is looking at Melbourne and looking at some of Melbourne's housing towers, and a thing that a lot of them were being marketed to Airbnb or as short term letting platforms. And partly I was hypothesising that this was to do with the fact that in Melbourne we've had a building boom, and a lot of the apartments that were going up were actually not designed particularly well, and they were very high yield bedrooms that didn't have natural light, often lack of storage space, often no outdoor space. And so I think that they were intended to be marketed to the regular rental market, but ended up finding themselves on platforms like Airbnb. And probably much more comfortable to occupy for a few days or short term, as opposed to years at a time.

And I came across a bunch of towers in places like Spencer Street in Melbourne that were just overrun with Airbnb accommodations to the point where visitors were asking for the concierge at the bottom of the towers, because they were assuming that they were staying in hotel accommodation. So you're seeing these kind of very poorly designed apartments with up to eight people per two bedroom apartment, for example. So lots of overcrowded living conditions.

And I think not just catering to tourists, but also catering to people like international students or temporary visa holders who may be undertaking temporary work and that sort of thing, as well. So, it's having some interesting soft effects, but also some palpable effects on the built fabric of cities and buildings now, as well.

Susan Carland:

What are some of the potential disadvantages of the impact of these kinds of buildings being used in this way to the broader society?

Jacqui Alexander:

Well, I think broadly speaking there's a few different problems that arise. I think the first thing is generally it's inequality. So we're seeing the redistribution of people throughout the building environment and this kind of real inequality between the space that some people have access to and the limited space that others have access to. The pandemic has really revealed a lot of that sort of spacial inequality that's occurring, and I think the sharing economy brought that to the fore a little bit, because it is unregulated and that leaves it open to exploitation and people trying to profit from it. So, that's one thing.

I think the other thing that's been really well documented internationally is seeing that platforms like Airbnb, because they're operating with leasing short term rentals, it often means cities competing with a regular rental market. So we see the number of rental properties that are available in the inner city shrink and citizens being pushed further and further out, and that's a really common thing. It's also common in Melbourne, as well, so part of my research, one of the projects I was looking at was thinking about ways that we can potentially, as architects, and designers, and urban planners, think about a better use of Airbnb in cities like Melbourne where we might start to redirect the way that Airbnb's used to incentivise Airbnb rentals in areas that are potentially not as overcrowded and there's not as much speculation already in the market. So moving away from the inner city Airbnb rentals, and actually trying to be a bit more strategic about using or incentivising Airbnb users so there's means to rejuvenate areas of the city that might benefit from higher densities, or higher intensity, or more economic injection that could be brought through that way.

Susan Carland:

Could regulations or policy changes address this issue, make it work better for both the consumers, but the people who live around these places that are used for Airbnb as well?

Jacqui Alexander:

I think it needs to. And partly what my research has been about is from an architectural perspective, because I'm architectural practitioner and architecture academic, I've been thinking about Airbnb and these sorts of platforms that are connected to the use and access of buildings and what role architects might have as well in weighing in on the conversation, because really it is a sort of spacial problem, those sorts of problems that are proliferating are definitely spacial, and as I said, they're sort of affecting distribution of people with in space. So are there ways that we could strategically approach this to start to address the inequities that are occurring in cities? And also, address some of the inequities that are blatantly occurring in the built environment and the built fabric of cities?

So one example, Susan, I was telling your colleague about, is this house that I found in inner city Melbourne, which is sort of seemingly purpose built for Airbnb, and it's got 18 bedrooms and 18 bathrooms. It's on a sort of average, inner-suburban block, and the whole thing's just basically rented on Airbnb year round, every room individually, listed, so up to sort of 36 people who probably don't know each other staying the same house with an oversize kitchen and oversized living room, and it's just nothing like anything you could ever imagine. It's this sort of hotel, house hybrid that's sort of emerged seemingly to sort of cash in on these sorts of unregulated practises. And when you dig a bit deeper, you realise that this house has actually been built under the building code as a rooming house, which means that it's probably, even though it's not housing the sorts of people that rooming house accommodation usually assists and being totally marketed to sort of the tourist market, it’s sort of basically masquerading as affordable housing, and often those types of accommodation won't need to go through the planning permit process, because they're seen to be doing a kind of social good for the community. 

When I dug a bit deeper, I realised it wasn't a single oddity, and that there's sort of several of these types of dwellings that have popped up in the same suburb, so it's really having quite tangible impacts. And I think those very architectural outcomes that we're seeing, really need to be engaged with by architects and design professionals, because we can see that these new technologies and infrastructures are having an impact with or without architect's involvement or planning permission or regulations, so I think it's time that we started to pay attention to this. Not only to the problems that are arising, but also the kind of opportunities that could potentially present if we went about this in sort of designer-ly way with a little bit of forethought and imagination. So that's the sort of work that I've been doing.

Susan Carland:

18 bedrooms.

Jacqui Alexander:

Yeah, 18 bedrooms.

Susan Carland:

There is so much to unpack in that story, because first of all, 18 bedrooms is astounding, 18 bedrooms and 18 bathrooms. But what I find particularly insidious about that story is not just the impact that building would have to be having on the local community around it, but that it was snuck in through a planning scheme that was designed for social good to sort of be able to house people who are quite vulnerable and needing assistance. So it was sort of snuck through the process that way, and then actually just used to rent seek essentially, and take a lot of money off tourists or international students.

Jacqui Alexander:

Definitely.

Susan Carland:

And it is astounding to me that at no point a local council thought, "Hmm, I wonder if we should actually look at this."

Particularly as you say, this is not the only one in that suburb.

Jacqui Alexander:

I know. It's quite shocking really, because when you think about it as well, this house is sort of capable of hosting about 36 people, so I think when you do the math, that works out to be about $12,000 per week or about 14 times the average rental property in the suburbs. And when I found this house, I also realised that the same host has 81 other listings on Airbnb, which were not all monster houses, as I like to call them, but I think that they were individual rooms in similar kinds of properties. So, I think there's obviously a level of exploitation and sort of loophole seeking that's going on by some pernicious hosts, and this is sort of the most dramatic example that I've seen. But you're right. It absolutely raises questions about equity, and particularly should we really be sort of closing down opportunities for people who are really struggling to access the housing market, because probably there's also an assumption on some level that there's a certain quota of affordable or rooming house type arrangements that are available per suburb or per local council area.

Susan Carland:

That's exactly what I was going to say. This would actually be working to keep the very people who most need it out of affordable housing, because now another one can't be built on that street. There's the belief in that council that, "Well now we have three of these buildings. Isn't that great? That's that issue taken care of." While the very small amount of available real estate that was available has now been taken away for a higher end product in terms of cost, which makes it even harder for vulnerable people to find housing that they can get into.

Jacqui Alexander:

I know. It's very shocking. I mean, I've been deliberating over what the role is or what the space of agency might be for sort of subverting this kind of thing or finding a positive in all of this. And one of the things that I think, even though I'm sort of not really super willing to engage with some of these really unregulated practises, particularly these sort of global disruptors that have sort of inherently exploitative business models, I think that there are some lessons that we can learn from what the sharing economy has delivered to us, which is this sort of flexible approach to rental. That's been really good.

One of the innovations that has come out of the sharing economy for buildings and space is that platforms like Airbnb have sort of re-imagined what rent can be, so you no longer have to rent at the scale of a title or a sort of strata subdivision. You can rent a room or you can rent a bed within a room. So there's this sort of incrementalisation of rent, both in terms of space but also in terms of time. So you no longer have to rent for a year. You can rent for a day, an hour, a day, a week, a month. And these things I think are inherently good, more flexibility is a good thing, but it's the exploitation of these things that is bad. So one thing that I'm starting to think about is if Airbnb and these sorts of platforms have decoupled the idea of tenancy and title, is there a way to then rethink housing so that there might be more flexibility within housing. Imagine an apartment development where there are no strata subdivisions within the apartment block and just one single title that the whole building is built on. Well, that would mean much more flexible use within the building, occupants would be able to expand into other apartments on demand, as you can with the sharing economy, just by sort of clicking on a button and renting it, or an adjacent room, more or less space depending on their needs.

But also, it would start to subvert this problem that we're having with the commodification of the building environment and speculation, because it's actually strata divisions within apartment blocks that enables apartments to be sold as assets and commodities. So if you're eliminating that and you're just keeping the strata title at the scale of the site, then effectively it could be a potentially a reform model of rent, which takes the best bits of flexibility of the sharing economy and applies it to local housing. But also it sort of subverts this problem that we're seeing with this ultra commodification of the built environment to provide a much more affordable model of rent, that's inherently flexible and potentially long term for residents. So, yeah, I guess that's sort of maybe an illustrative example of sort of where some of the design approaches might come into this, where we can kind of sort of eliminate these really significant affects that the sharing economy is having on cities and buildings, and try and flip it in some way to create better outcomes.

Susan Carland:

Jacqui Alexander, thank you so much for your time today.

Jacqui Alexander:

Thanks, Susan.

Susan Carland:

That's it for episode two on the gig economy. We'll catch you next time for our final episode, where we capture practical tips, resources and advice from all our experts.