The low incomes of many gig workers leave them especially vulnerable to making poor decisions. Researchers have found that juggling the many competing demands of poverty can affect a person’s ability to focus on other problems, “just as an air traffic controller focusing on a potential collision course is prone to neglect other planes in the air.”7
It’s not enough to be on top of response times and TaskRabbit policies. Workers also need to be smart about which tasks that they take on, being careful not to accept tasks that are outside their schedules or beyond their abilities, and recognizing when a gig is questionable. Workers who are financially more comfortable are better able to evaluate possible tasks and identify possible problems. This concept is clearly illustrated by Brandon’s experience. A thirtysomething African American man who had worked in finance for a number of years, Brandon planned to attend law school and had taken a year off to travel. Our interview was conducted during the summer before he started classes. More financially secure than most Taskers, he was not dependent on the app for paying his bills and could afford to be more discriminating when it came to declining tasks that seemed questionable. One client wanted to send him a mailbox key. “They wanted me to go to Westchester,” he said, mentioning a town roughly forty-five minutes away. “I would go to the mailbox, get something out, then mail it back to them because they were supposedly out of town for a month.” It doesn’t take much imagination to suggest that the mystery package was probably not going to help his legal future. He declined the task.
SAFER TO PARTICIPATE THAN TO PROTEST
Aside from the financial aspect, workers whose future employment often hinges on reviews may feel added pressure to engage in potentially criminal activities. It’s important to note that no one actually posts tasks that appear criminal. Gig work generally features activities such as helping with moving, standing in lines, cleaning homes, and running errands. There’s no option to hire a drug mule on TaskRabbit or a getaway driver on Uber. Likewise, when Airbnb guests want to host wild orgies or ransack someone’s apartment, they don’t advertise such activities in their communication with hosts. As a result, workers often don’t know that they’re participating in possibly illegal activities until they’re well into a job. In some cases, once they suspect that criminal activity is going on, workers may be in a dangerous situation where it is safer to acquiesce than protest.
This is especially evident with ride-sharing services such Lyft and Uber. New York is one of the few locations to embrace sharing economy drivers as its own: drivers are fully licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) and undergo the same background checks as taxicab drivers. But in New York, cab drivers’ protections include a bullet-resistant partition, security cameras, and a panic button that actives a trouble light near the car’s license plate; some of these tools date back to the 1960s. Beginning in 1967, the city required bullet-resistant partitions only in cabs driven at night, expanding the requirement in the early 1970s to all cabs. The partitions were made voluntary in the late 1970s. But beginning in 1994, the requirement was reinstituted after numerous cab drivers were killed as part of the crack cocaine crime wave. In 1997, the partition requirement was expanded to include fleet-owned livery cars. At first, drivers who had their own vehicles were exempt; eventually they were required to use a partition or security camera. Although most New York City taxi drivers keep their partitions open, allowing for easy payment and communication with the passenger, they at least have the option of closing the partition. Ride-sharing drivers don’t.8
The partition was originally intended to reduce or prevent robberies and can be considered a success: No taxicab driver has been killed in a robbery since 1997. Fidel F. Del Valle, TLC chairman from 1991 to 1995, explained in an interview, “Whatever goes through the brain of somebody intent on physical violence, partitions seem to stop them. The attractiveness of robbing a cab is that it’s basically a piggy bank on wheels. You don’t want to make the opportunity for crime any easier than it is.”9
In part because Uber and Lyft drivers do not carry cash and are prohibited from picking up street hails in New York or accepting cash payments, there’s an expectation that they’re less likely to be robbed. The lack of protections for drivers also appears to be part of the ethos of the sharing economy, where the app-based invisibility of payment, partnered with user profiles, promotes the idea of trustworthiness and small-town safety. When you request an Uber or Lyft, the company is supposed to have your name, credit card number, billing address, and photo on file—a taxicab driver simply has an anonymous figure on the side of the road. Indeed, as noted earlier, when Lyft, with its motto “Your friend with a car,” began operating, passengers were even encouraged to sit in the front seat, further reducing a driver’s options in case of a dangerous situation.10 However, as I’ve pointed out, the app-based profiles may provide a false sense of security—it’s entirely likely that the information included is fake or otherwise useless, and drivers can still find themselves in situations that they perceive as dangerous and illegal. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the lack of a camera and trouble light may even increase the possibility that drivers will find themselves with passengers seeking transportation anonymity.
Hector, a thirty-one-year-old Hispanic man, reached out to me in response to a request for research participants that I posted on Uberdrivers.net, an online discussion board for ride-sharing drivers. A college graduate, he was working as an assistant manager for a furniture rental center, working forty-seven hours a week and making $460 a week after taxes, until an Uber ad promising thousands of dollars in monthly income caught his eye.11 Unwilling to pay the TLC costs in New York City until he knew what he was getting into, he tried driving in New Jersey for a weekend and made $200 his first night out. “That’s half of what I made for a week,” he said, still sounding impressed several months later. “So I called my boss, ‘Listen, I got a better job opportunity. I’m going to go with it.’ I knew it was time for a change, so I just went and did it; and in that first week, I made about $1,200. So I was just saying, ‘All right, I made the right decision.’”
Like many drivers, Hector drove for both Uber and Lyft, often deciding which app to activate based on the active guarantees and his own experience with passengers and demand. He described Lyft passengers as nicer, but also noted that Uber had more clients. Although his income appears to be higher than his earnings at the furniture rental center, the start-up costs of becoming a driver were considerable: trading in his car for an Uber-approved model, increasing his car note by $8,000: and the addition of roughly $4,000 in fees and insurance prepayments for his TLC license and registration. In addition to maxing out his credit cards, he borrowed his college-student girlfriend’s life savings of $2,000, and additional money from his brothers. Even though Uber advertisements guarantee $5,000 a month, money remains a serious concern: between his car payment of $800 a month and insurance bill of $500 a month, he hasn’t been able to save.
From the beginning, Hector knew that driving could be dangerous or have legal implications. In New Jersey, where he started driving, ride-sharing was illegal. His first ride was a group of five, technically more than his car could fit, but “they made it work somehow.” He dropped the passengers off at a local bar. Later that evening, when they called him back for a pickup, he arrived to find a brawl in the parking lot. “I was about to leave because it was like it was turning into ten guys fighting, and they were right in front of my car,” he said. “I had to put the car in reverse to keep them from hitting my car. So I was like, ‘Okay, this is getting real bad,’ but then I realized I was blocked. They were blocking the exit, fighting.”
Fortunately, Hector’s passengers left the bar at that time, and he was able to leave with them—just as the police arrived. But Uber’s notorious strategies for legalization reassured him that he didn’t have to worry about the cops.12 He explains, “As they do in every state, they just go in, and they’re like, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll
cover all your legal fees.’”
Even though he’s not worried about the police, a recent situation has made him consider getting a camera. Having grown up in Jamaica, Queens, Hector was aware of the difficulty a young man of color has in getting a cab in an outer borough. When he first saw that a young African American man had requested an Uber ride, he accepted. “They put the address as a park. So I’m sitting there, and all of a sudden four dudes get in my car. They’re all wearing hoodies. I have a tablet in the back for people to play music; I have a lot of gadgets in my car. And I’m like, ‘Am I going to get robbed?’ But then they were cool. They were eating all my snacks, ’cause I provide snacks, and they ate all of it. And I provide little bottles of water, and they drank all of it.”
The ride went well, until, as Hector puts it, “they wouldn’t let me go.”
I was driving them around for an hour, multiple stops. One guy would get out, he would run to wherever it was and then come right back. And then I’d go to another, and then one would get out; or they would swap and pick someone else up; or someone with a hoodie would be waiting outside, and they would meet up and then come back in the car. . . . I think they’re doing illegal activity of selling [drugs]. And I was encouraging them to go to college.
One of them was like, “All right, you know, I’m going to go and I want to be a nurse.” All the other three didn’t say anything. I was trying to make small talk, like: “So why are you stopping here?” Like, “Oh, he’s got to get something.” They would come back with nothing. So in my mind I was on a drug run.
The experience became even more concerning when he was directed to pick up a fifth passenger. “The new guy we picked up, he was a little older, and then it was like he was running the show. And he was just telling me where to turn, and he wouldn’t tell me the address. So he’s like, ‘All right, turn here, after the light, make a left.’”
Hector followed the man’s directions until they arrived at the destination. Then the older man jumped out and approached a man standing outside, someone who “looked like he was up to no good.” Hector demonstrated the discreet drug handoff handshake that the men exchanged before the passenger returned to the car, asking to be brought back to his original location.
So I honestly wanted to say to all of them, “Get out, I’m not doing this,” but didn’t know if they had weapons or not, and I couldn’t tell from their baggy sweatpants or hoodies if they had anything. They could be carrying knives. I didn’t even have a pen to defend myself. They could just put a knife to my throat, and what am I going to do? And then there’s no photo. I don’t even know who was the account holder. It just said A—. I don’t even know who was A—.
Hector’s passengers may have used a real name. But with only a first name and no photo, it was difficult for him to determine which passenger owned the account. Without a camera, there was no record of who was in the car. Hector believes that ride-sharing services may be especially appealing to drug dealers because the prevalence of Uber and Lyft cars in the outer boroughs of New York City may mean that they are less likely to draw the attention of the police. Hector’s assumption may be right: research shows that Uber outperforms taxis in serving the outer boroughs of New York City.13
Eventually the young men began talking about traveling to the Bronx, a forty-minute drive without traffic. Hector told them that he was trying to get home to dinner. They agreed to end the ride, but not before one last request. “They’re like, ‘Okay, give me your number.’ They wanted to use me again. And I was going to give him a fake number, but he was just standing there. So I rethought it. I just gave him my real number. And he enters the number, and then he called it. He saw that it rang, and then he left. He was like, ‘All right.’”
Hector was called by the young men less than a week later. They wanted him to pick them up in Brooklyn again. He lied and told them he was in Manhattan, too far away. He thinks about alerting Uber; but the passengers have his cell phone number, and he’s concerned that if they’re deactivated by the app they may take action against him. In the meantime, he’s researched cameras for his car, but a TLC-approved camera costs roughly $350, not counting installation. He explains, “I don’t want to invest that yet, because I’m still trying to get out of debt.”
It would be easy to explain away Jamal’s and Hector’s experiences as aberrations in the sharing economy or maybe even misunderstandings. Perhaps people really do move to new continents and forget to pack prescription medications; maybe the young men that Hector was driving were looking for a missing cell phone or simply checking in with friends. In conducting nearly eighty in-depth interviews, one is likely to encounter a few outrageous stories. Yet, time and time again, workers told me about situations that certainly sounded illegal.
DISTANCE DOESN’T MEAN PROTECTION
For instance, Christina, a thirty-year-old Asian woman, was hired through TaskRabbit to do research. Although many TaskRabbit gigs are local, this one was “remote,” a task that Christina could complete from home. TaskRabbit discourages workers from communicating outside the platform in an effort to keep them from circumventing the system. But while the official system allows for short messages, it’s not equipped to handle the file uploads often associated with remote tasks such as researching, writing, or designing websites. As a result, clients and Taskers sometimes share personal email addresses for the delivery of the final product and to more effectively communicate.
Although many TaskRabbit workers admitted to working off the platform, they were also quick to indicate that it was often at the behest of the client. Cutting out TaskRabbit as middleman generally meant lower rates for the client and more money in the pocket of the Tasker, but it also opened up Taskers to the possibility of being stiffed when clients renegotiated payment rates after the fact or simply refused to pay, something several Taskers mentioned experiencing.
But Christina had the opposite problem. Her client kept the task in TaskRabbit, but took advantage of their off-platform communication to learn her email address. It was the same address Christina used for her PayPal account. But instead of underpaying, the client deliberately overpaid.
CHRISTINA:
It was just a regular task. Or, it seemed like a regular task. I did research on art schools, putting a spreadsheet together, and then research on something on a website. So I did both for her, and she said I did a really good job. And then she was like, “Oh, can you also help me with learning how to do PayPal?” And that was when she was like, “Oh, I sent you this amount of money on PayPal; can you please send this to the person who did the design for my website?”
INTERVIEWER:
It sounds like she knew how to use PayPal if she was able to send you money, right?
CHRISTINA:
[Laughs.] I was not sure. I was confused when I saw that I had money in there from her. I was like, ‘Is she paying me extra for the task?” I thought that is what it was. But then it was: “Oh, send this money over to somebody else.”
Christina did as requested and transferred several hundred dollars to the website designer. That was the last she heard from the client. But later, when she met some fellow TaskRabbits, she learned that she wasn’t the only one to get such a strange request. “This girl was talking about the same thing, and I think it was the same person who was doing it,” she said. “She just found someone else to send the money to.”
Christina’s experience sounds suspiciously like money laundering or a common overpayment scam where victims are asked to return excess funds, only to later discover that the original payment was a ruse. As of the date of our interview, Christina was not aware of any repercussions; but the transfer was conducted through PayPal, which allows chargebacks within 120 days of the payment. A chargeback is a demand by a credit-card provider for a retailer to make good the loss on a fraudulent or disputed transaction, and it is triggered when a customer disputes a credit card charge. It’s unclear whether Christina was inadvertently involved in money laundering
or was a victim in an overpayment scheme.
AIRBNB AND THE RISE OF THE ILLEGAL RENTAL
In addition, some gig workers end up in illegal situations of their own doing. Although New York is one of the largest markets for Airbnb, with more than twenty-five thousand active hosts and 30,342 listings, it has been illegal in New York State since 2010 to rent out apartments in buildings with three or more units for less than thirty days.14 Hosts can get around the law through the so-called roommate rule, which allows hosts to live with one unrelated person if that individual has access to the entire apartment and the host is present the entire time. But most hosts prefer to rent their space when they aren’t present. A report in October 2014 from the New York attorney general found that 72 percent of Airbnb listings for entire units offered during the period from January 2010 through June 2014 ran afoul of this and other codes.15
Even advertising short-term rentals is illegal. In June 2016, the New York State Legislature passed a measure that forbids landlords and tenants from listing whole apartments for short-term rental on Airbnb and similar sites. The act was signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo in late 2016. Violations result in fines of up to seventy-five hundred dollars.16 As a result, many Airbnb hosts, otherwise law-abiding citizens, are in the unusual situation of actively and publicly working to market themselves in an illegal endeavor.
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