March 28, 2022

In a commentary titled ‘Ending cheap, convenient deliveries will help platform workers in Singapore’ (Channel NewsAsia, March 2022), Professor Sumit Agarwal (NUS Finance, Economics, and Real Estate) and Dr Chua Yeow Hwee (NTU Economics) write about the problems of platform work and a few workarounds to overcome these challenges. With the gig economy offering flexibility, autonomy, and the potential to earn more, many people in Singapore have been attracted to platform work. However, such work offers little protection or a way out of precarity. Furthermore, not every platform worker draws the large sums platforms claim to offer online.

Economics explains that the conditions of platform work reflect what the market is willing to accept. However, the new digital economy has the potential to mold platform work into more equitable jobs. According to Prof Agarwal and Dr Chua, the problem is that deliveries cost far too little and platform workers are too unproductive. This means that platform workers are not maximizing their full potential per trip, and inefficiency arises from food delivery drivers waiting around for orders to be completed.

One way to increase productivity would be to increase the value of goods platform workers transport per trip, doing away with extreme convenience as a default. By having consumers order in advance, platforms can plan ahead and optimize resources, reducing unnecessary waiting times and deliver to more places in a shorter time window, earning them more per trip. Group buys can also help platform workers scale up and deliver more per trip. They assert that a tiered delivery system, with higher delivery fees for shorter delivery times, will ultimately allow the platform delivery market to become more sustainable in the long term, reducing the challenging conditions platform workers face.

Read the article here.