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A Worker-Centered Study Exploring Trust, Dependency, And Worker Identity In Digital Platform-Mediated Labor, Wael Altali

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Digital gig platforms have transformed labor markets globally. This dissertation critically examines the intersections of platform design and worker experiences through four interrelated studies. The research identifies how differences between on-demand and cloud work platforms shape identity, trust, and autonomy.

Drawing on Cultural Domain Analysis, the first study proposes a practical classification system for digital gig platforms. Experts categorize platforms as on-demand or cloud work, avoiding theoretical subtypes like skill level. This framework supports targeted analyses of platform design and regulatory implications.

The second and third studies examine the paradoxes of worker identity in platform-mediated environments. A survey of 268 …

Empowered Margins: Women, Work, And Justice In Educational Labor, Erin Woodford

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation examines economic justice and employment precarity faced by educators in both K-12 and post-secondary education systems. While literature explores themes of changing demographics in union membership, collective bargaining, labor activism, and gendered and intersectional inequities in academia, and women in leadership in unions, a critical gap of disabled women’s voices and solutions to the inequities remains. This study highlights how job insecurity, unequal pay, hiring biases, limited recognition of prior learning, and inadequate institutional support exacerbates mental health challenges, professional invisibility, and economic instability. In the K-12 unionized system, systemic barriers such include disregard for substitute teaching as …

Más Que Pedalear: Mujeres Deliveristas En Nueva York Equilibran Cuidado, Trabajo Y Sus Cuerpos, Mariana Navarrete Villegas

Capstones

In New York City, immigrant women delivery workers face unique challenges as they juggle the care duties of their families and the demands of a grueling job. They endure harassment, navigate unsafe conditions, and adapt their work routines to their menstrual cycles—all while confronting limited support networks. This article profiles the experiences of four women who rely on delivery work for its flexibility but remain largely excluded from male-dominated labor activism. These women’s stories reveal the systemic inequities in the gig economy, from the lack of gender-specific protections to the marginalization of women’s voices in advocacy efforts. Amidst these struggles, …

The State Of The Unions 2023: A Profile Of Organized Labor In New York City, New York State, And The United States, Ruth Milkman, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

This report released by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, State of the Unions 2023: A Profile of Organized Labor in New York City, New York State, and the United States, is a part of an annual publication series, documents recent trends in unionization patterns. The overall level of unionization in both the City and State has been roughly double the national rate over the past two decades. But recently, union density has fallen more in New York City and New York State than in the United States as a whole. In the mid-2010s, both the City and …

Grabbing The Paycheck: A Glimpse Into The Modern Economic Livelihoods Of Xe Máy Grab Drivers In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Maddie Davis

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Woven into the very fabric of urban life in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam is commuting via motorcycle (Vietnamese: xe máy). The versatility of xe máy can be witnessed in the surge of rush hour traffic, the shipment of a great variety and quantity of goods, and the crunch of people in order to get the whole family atop a single bike. Due to xe máy as the primary way much of the population gets around, Ho Chi Minh City’s transportation infrastructure and traffic patterns are highly conducive to this method of transit. Resulting from these favorable conditions, a multitude …

Trans* Streamers On Twitch.Tv: The Intersections Of Gender And Digital Labor, R. Lawson

Theses and Dissertations

Twitch.tv is a live entertainment platform where individuals live stream events, including playing video games, playing board and tabletop games, creating art, and more. Twitch has a diverse base of streamers, but Twitch has just begun. The most common approach has focused on cisgender, heterosexual white men in the cases where it has been studied. Though these streamers should be studied in sociology, this focus leaves out the experiences of both cis women and Trans* streamers. This research proposal tries to situate the relationship of Trans* streamers with both the platform and their audience, seeing if these relationships affect their …

Unlovable Labour: Rejecting The "Do What You Love" Ideology, Trey Dykeman

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

Miya Tokumitsu’s article ‘In the Name of Love’ is polemic against what she refers to as the DWYL (Do What You Love) movement that has been most recognisably popularised and transformed by Steve Jobs. She denounces this movement as an insidious ideology cleverly disguised as an uplifting lifestyle which has as its tenets labour, profit, and individualism; through her analysis of these tenets, she unveils them as alienation, erasure, and precarity, respectively. Her insights aid her in her aim to demonstrate that these ideological pillars do not support the wellbeing of the proletariat but rather reinforce the rugged structure of …

Art/Work: Labor, Identity, And Society, Zirui Feng, Elinor G. Gass, Ran Li, Lauren C. Mcveigh, Matthew S. Montes, Lin Zhu, Yan Sun

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Artists, perhaps to emphasize their own dedication to the intellectual and manual skills required for making art, have long been drawn to the theme of labor, both in their depictions of workers and scenes of making. In the late seventeenth century, Dutch paintings frequently portrayed earnest and diligent artisans performing trades at shops or on the streets. Later, rapid economic, social and political changes throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth century led to a more radical approach to realist representations of labor. This exhibition ART/WORK: Labor, Identity, and Society considers these art-historical precedents to explore the issues of labor in art. …

Budgetary Obstacles To Police Reform: The Case Of San Francisco, Hayden Anderson

Master's Projects and Capstones

In response to the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement issued a statement calling on cities to Defund the Police. The event sparked a nationwide reckoning that has reshaped the narratives and strategies for remedying the racial bias and police brutality apparent in the criminal justice system. The shift in police reform efforts embraces notions guiding police budgeting decisions. Today's advocates are transforming their approach to police reform to include budgeting decisions by promoting a municipal practice known as police budget reform. This Capstone explores the feasibility of successful police budget reform under current …

Employment Security In Egypt In Light Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Rethinking Policies And Practices, Heba M. Khalil, Kareem Megahed

Faculty Journal Articles

Crises such as COVID-19’s have inequitable impacts on different countries, various population groups and diverse sectors of society and the economy. Areas of work and employment were met with a lot of challenges worldwide, and in particular in countries like Egypt with a large sector of vulnerable and precarious workers. This policy paper addresses the question of employment security both in response to crises such as COVID-19, and on the long term. To do so, the research maps ‘vulnerable work’, including informal labor, labor in the gig economy, self-employed and other types of precarious work. It then assesses Egypt’s policy …

A Dozen To One: An Examination Of Workers' Satisfaction In Menial Labor, Colin Larter

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This mixed-methods study explores the workplace experiences and employee satisfaction of menial laborers. Using an anonymous online survey, this thesis examines workers’ experiences through the lens of K. Marx’s and M. Seeman’s forms of alienation. From the perspective that part of general satisfaction comes from the differences between what an employee value and what they actually perceive at their job, this study found quantitative evidence of the relationships between the need for pride in work and satisfaction. In the data analysis, satisfaction’s predictability is measure both by the perceived experiences of workers but also in the difference in those perceived …

The Future Of Work In The Mountain West, Ember Smith, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet highlights the potential net job growth in the Mountain West states (Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado) and automation employment implications in each county in the region as detailed in The future of work in America: People and places, today and tomorrow, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute.

The Internet's Invisible Cleanup Crew, Emily Drabinski

Publications and Research

Review of Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadow of Social Media by Sarah T. Roberts

Building Momentum For Collectivity In The Digital Games Community, Johanna Weststar, Marie-Josee Legault

Management and Organizational Studies Publications

Studies of digital game labor have tended to document problems in the working lives of developers while devoting relatively limited attention to solutions, or to collective representation as a step toward solutions. An increasing number of game developers are dissatisfied with their working conditions, and dissatisfaction is a necessary condition for workers to engage in collective action to gain the representational power needed to achieve change in the workplace. Noting that the landscape of collective mobilization in the game industry has not yet been systematically mapped, this article documents collective actions over the past five decades, and asks, “Are the …

Multiplicity In Movements: The Case For Redneck Revolt, Teal Ruthschild

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

Teal Rothschild on the importance of a holistic approach to social movements.

The Social Value Of Seiu Women, Alex Rothfelder

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper analyzes women in health care unions by specifically examining the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as a case study. Moreover, this paper asks: what motivates these health care workers; is it primarily patient care, or are there other significant issues? How do workers think about their product of care, and how does this affect unionism? And how is gender connected to these issues? After interviewing six health care workers in SEIU, this paper found that the motivation of health care workers is partially motivated by patient issues, but that this occurs in a negative sense. Union organizational limitations …

Network Effects On Labor Contracts Of Internal Migrants In China- A Spatial Autoregressive Model, Badi H. Baltagi, Ying Deng, Xiangjun Ma

Center for Policy Research

This paper studies the fact that 37 percent of the internal migrants in China do not sign a labor contract with their employers, as revealed in a nationwide survey. These contract-free jobs pay lower hourly wages, require longer weekly work hours, and provide less insurance or on-the-job training than regular jobs with contracts. We find that the co-villager networks play an important role in a migrant’s decision on whether to accept such insecure and irregular jobs. By employing a comprehensive nationwide survey in 2011 in the spatial autoregressive logit model, we show that the common behavior of not signing contracts …

Female Migrant Labor In The Philippines: The Institutionalization Of Traditional Gender Roles In The Name Of Economic Development, Sabiha Iman Mohyuddin

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

This paper investigates the ways the Philippines’ government applies Filipino ideas of femininity and kinship in pushing Filipina women into becoming transnational migrants as a means of economic development. Given that remittance money sent back by migrants to the Philippines makes up nearly ten percent of the country’s GDP, and that over half of Filipino overseas migrants are female, the Filipino government is committed to maintaining and overseeing transnational migration. As a way to maintain economic stability, the Filipino government has utilized traditional conceptions of femininity, domesticity, and kinship that influence the procurement, recruitment processes of oversea migration, and the …

Garment Workers In Kentucky Oral History Project (Fa 865), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project FA 865. Interviews conducted by Lisa Karen Miller containing details about the lives of garment workers in Kentucky and Tennessee. Some of the topics included were technological changes, job layoffs, and labor unions.

Invest In Your Librarians: An Open Thesis To Nypl President Tony Marx, Wilfredo Rivera-Scotti

Publications and Research

An exploration of the resources required to address the issues New York City public libraries – particularly those in underserved, low-income communities – face in dealing with patrons afflicted by homelessness, mental illness and addictions.

Using a New York Public Library branch in the Bronx as a case study, there will be ample evidence indicating a lack of resources for both employees and patrons alike.

Understanding Fair Labor Practices In A Networked Age, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

Unionization emerged as a way of protecting labor rights when society shifted from an agricultural ecosystem to one shaped by manufacturing and industrial labor. New networked work complicates the organizing mechanisms that are inherent to unionization. How then do we protect laborers from abuse, poor work conditions, and discrimination?

Explaining Political Activeness And Attitudes Toward Unionization Among Nurses In The United States., Crystal L. Lesmeister

Political Science Theses and Capstones

There is no question; nurses play a key role in healthcare. Nurses provide direct care, coordinate health promotion activities, educate, and provide support and advocacy to patients. Today, there are over two million registered nurses in the United States. My research aims to determine the variables that influence some nurses to be more politically active and more engaged in unionization than their counterparts. I analyze The National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses 2004 looking at a variety of potential explanations for union participation. Findings show a strong regional variation in the percentage of unionization, however, some of the conventional explanations …

Gender, Emotional Labour, & Interactive Body Work: Negotiating Flesh And Fantasy In Sex Workers’ Labor Practices, Barbara G. Brents, Crystal A. Jackson

Sociology Faculty Research

Body/Sex/Work focuses on the intimate, embodied and sexualised labour that occurs within body work and sex work. Bringing together an internationally renowned group of academics, it explores, empirically and theoretically, labour processes, workplace relations, regulation and resistance in some of the many work sites that make up the body work and sex work sectors. The book makes a key contribution to research recognising the embodiment of labour and the body, reframing the key questions in critical studies of work and employment.

Key Benefits:

• The first book that draws together the sub-disciplines of body work and sex work

• Written …

Narrative Identity Within A Workers' Rights Organization, Emily Ann Hallgren

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research includes in-depth interviews and participant observation to examine the construction of narrative identity by the staff members and worker-members of a workers' rights organization in Northwest Arkansas. I seek to understand how the organization negotiates the broader cultural and institutional narrative identities with the personal narrative identities of the worker-members in a cultural context hostile toward undocumented immigrants. Further, I examine how the worker-members themselves both internalize and challenge the organizational, institutional, and cultural narratives about undocumented immigrant workers. Findings reveal that the staff members and the worker-members create different narratives for different purposes, though both are concerned …

Interview With Michael Elliott, Brian Gibson

Chicago Anti-Apartheid Movement

Length: 56 minutes

Oral history interview of Mike Siviwe Elliott by Brian Gibson.

Mr. Elliott begins by recounting his childhood in Detroit, raised in a working-class union neighborhood on the west side of the city. He talks about his early challenges in school, attending an alternative school where he received his GED, then attending Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan where he studied political science for three years. He explains how he first became involved in activism, working for the Black Panthers when he was young and serving as chair of the Association of Black Students in college. He recalls how …

An Analytical Framework For Studying The Politics Of Consumption: The Case Of The National Consumers' League, Wendy A. Wiedenhoft Murphy

Sociology

Consumption is not often addressed in the literature on social movements even though consumer organizations and consumer tactics have been successful in achieving social change. This paper offers an analytical framework for studying the politics of consumption, which suggests that consumers can be conceived of collectively as active agents rather than passive individuals. I capture this active agency through four concepts: mobilization, problematization, identification, and contention. I focus on one consumer organization, the National Consumers' League, and its three consumer tactics, white lists, white labels, and legislation, in order to demonstrate how the analytical framework I construct can be applied.

What Makes For Effective Labor Representation On Pension Boards?, Johanna Weststar, Anil Verma

Management and Organizational Studies Publications

This article examines the efficacy of labor representation on pension boards. Using existing literature and interviews with labor trustees, this article develops a model where a more formal approach to recruitment and selection, skill acquisition, and accountability is hypothesized to aid labor trustees in achieving effective integration and representation on pension boards. Data indicate that labor trustees are placed in a challenging environment with insufficient support from their union, other trustees, or the board. These findings have important implications for the selection, training, and integration of labor trustees and the success of a labor agenda on pension issues.

Labor Struggles, New Social Movements, And America's Favorite Pastime: New York Workers Take On New Era Cap Company, Victoria Carty

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Contemporary economic globalization, which is driven and regulated primarily by multinational corporations, has a direct impact on workers' lives. Trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) tend to be controlled by corporate interests in the wealthy, industrialized nations. Those countries set the agenda to protect the interests of foreign investors and facilitate the mobility of capital, but they do little to protect the interests of labor. In response, workers in both the global North and South have been forced to rely on their own individual efforts to protect themselves against unfair labor practices. This article presents …

Organizing In The Garment Industry In Mexico: Implications For New Social Movement Theory, Victoria Carty

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

This paper examines attempts to improve workers' rights in the Maquila Industry in Mexico by using two case studies. It analyzes the struggles that recently occurred at the Kukdong and Duro plants. The underlying question of the research is how to balance the co-existence of market economies with effective means to ensure adequate conditions for workers, and most importantly, ensuring their right to freedom of association. Under recent forms of global economic restructuring, the state is often unwilling or unable to uphold workers' rights. To combat the present form of corporate-driven global capitalism, workers in the South, in solidarity with …

Human Rights, Health, And Corporations, Gerald Montgomery

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Unfettered economic policies have had a notable effect on the state of human rights. With the increasing spread of transnational corporations (TNCs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a major role in setting ethical and moral standards for with the quality of life in the developing states where TNCs do business. Many TNCs are trying frantically to implement strategies that would alleviate labor injustices and corrupt practices in order to meet the standards argued for by NGOs.