The Gig Rights Project Survey, 2022

Wood, Alex (2025). The Gig Rights Project Survey, 2022. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857891

Millions of people in the UK make a living from gig economy platforms, but what rights do these workers have? While some praise the flexibility of the gig economy, others highlight the insecurity and safety risks it entails, which have only been amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gig workers are hard to research and diverse, having different backgrounds and varying in their attachment to gig work and dependency on particular platforms. The gig economy is also comprised of workers spread across different industries (ride hailing, food and parcel delivery, domestic work and digital services). This makes it difficult to discern what different gig workers actually think about their working conditions, what they want or who they feel represents them.

This British Academy funded project runs from May 1st 2021 to July 31st 2022. The project adopts an innovative survey methodology to reach distinct types of gig workers and makes use of multivariate techniques, such as regression and factor analysis, to identify the labour rights that different workers see as having the potential to improve their lives. It will also facilitate a better understanding of which organisations workers feel best represent their interests in public and policy debates. Our survey design and the questions we ask gig workers are informed by our diverse advisory partners: the Trades Union Congress (TUC); the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA); the International Labour Organization (ILO); the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD); The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS).

Data description (abstract)

The Gig Rights Project survey was undertaken to gain a deeper understanding UK platform worker support for labour rights, policy interventions and collective representation. Therefore, the aim of the survey was to gather data on the policy and representation preferences of these workers as well as other key factors which might influence these preferences. Respondents were asked to select the three labour rights and policies that would most benefit their working life if applied to their platform work. Respondents had a choice of 13 labour rights and 13 other policies to make their selection from. These labour rights and policies were generated from reviewing publicly available policy recommendations and discussions with our external advisory partners (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas), Charted Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD), International Labour Organization (ILO), Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and Trade Union Congress (TUC). We additionally adopted questions from the Understanding Society, COLLEEM, iLabour, Skills and Employment, British Social Attitudes surveys in order to collect data on respondents’ platform work, working conditions, representation preferences, and political values.

The survey was piloted with five current or former platform workers: two current remote platform workers, a former delivery local platform worker, a former ridehail local platform worker and a current handyperson local platform worker. Where possible, to ease comparison with existing quantitative research, we based our questions or survey items on established social surveys. Improvements were made to the wording of the questions based on the feedback provided during the piloting. The research received ethical approval from the Bristol University School of Management Research Ethics Committee.

The survey was administered to a strategically targeted ‘river’ sample which included good representation across conceptually important categories, such as remote or local platform work, migrant or UK-born, male or female, younger or older and more or less educated. By doing so, it is possible to highlight where preferences for rights and policies seem unlikely to be influenced by such characteristics due to the absence of substantial differences between groups. Conversely, this approach allows to identify outcomes that are more likely to be sensitive to the actual makeup of the platform worker population. To generate our targeted sample, we advertised our survey directly to UK-based workers active on Facebook and Instagram using the advertising portal. (Facebook Ads Center) which allows the placement of advertisements on both social media platforms. The advantage of this approach is that Facebook and Instagram use is so widespread that self-selection into the sampling frame is not a concern. Recent estimates indicate that approximately 71 per cent of adults in the UK are active on Facebook and are not especially stratified by demographic characteristics.

Using the platform advertising features, we directly targeted our survey at users who, for example, listed their interests as ‘Ubereats’, ‘delivery (commerce)’, ‘Uber (company)’, ‘Drive with Uber’, ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Hybrid electric vehicle’, ‘TaskRabbit’, ‘Care.com’ or ‘Airtasker’; their employer as ‘Deliveroo’, or their job title as ‘delivery’ ‘Taxi Cab Driver’ or ‘Car Driver’. Users matching these interests, employer or job titles, were targeted with bespoke adverts designed for delivery, drivers and domestic platform workers on Facebook/Instagram. We recruited 257 local platform workers in this manner. Those who completed the survey were offered the chance to win an iPad.

Previous quantitative research has demonstrated the potential for using platform-based adverts to effectively sample remote platform workers. We therefore followed this proven approach and recruited 253 remote platform workers from Upwork - a leading remote work platform. To do this we listed our survey as a job on the platform and in line with quotas for task and gender derived from the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Online Labour Index. Those who completed the survey were compensated with a £10 payment. Between March and June 2022, 510 UK gig economy workers active on Facebook, Instagram or Upwork were surveyed.

Key findings are strong support for labour rights, trade unions and co-determination. Low pay, insecurity, risk and lack of organizational voice provides a rationale for these preferences. Moreover, platform workers’ preferences are seemingly influenced by wider inequalities, with significant differences according to gender and country of birth. Additionally, remote platform work entails significantly better pay, more flexibility, greater influence over how to do their job, greater sense of doing useful work, better health and safety, less pain, and less work-related insecurity. In contrast, local platform work entails greater organisational influence and less physical isolation.

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