Taking Platform Domestic Work Offline: Using Platform Leakage to Resist Precarity in South Africa’s Domestic Sector

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on platform domestic workers’ (PDWs’) experiences and their decision to engage in platform leakage—taking platform domestic work offline. We argue that delving into the types of domestic work choices PDWs make reveals their agency with and through digital platforms in response to precarity on the platform and in the domestic sector. The article demonstrates, through an interpretivist case study that included semi-structured interviews with a sample of PDWs in Cape Town and analysis of documents related to their platform company, that platform leakage is an unavoidable and possibly inherent feature of the platform domestic work model. The findings show that PDWs’ experience of platform domestic work as a form of “gig work” is informed and mainly influenced by unemployment and underemployment in the domestic sector rather than its benefits of flexibility for work life balance and fulfilling unpaid reproductive labour needs. Further, the algorithmic management of the labour process shows that flexibility leaves PDWs in a precarious position but also, paradoxically, creates the need and opportunity to engage in platform leakage. As a result, algorithmic management as a form of control over PDWs’ work performance, and its contingence on personalism for reputational ratings, does not always imply the inescapable power of platform companies. We conclude that further research is needed to deepen our understanding of the employment relationship that emerges from platform leakage, particularly how PDWs experience it and the management of it.

KEYWORDS:

• Domestic sector
• flexibility
• intermediaries
• labour process
• labour control
• platform domestic work
• platform leakage
• precarity
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Professor David Cooper for their insightful comments and support. We also thank the UCT BRAAS Programme (Building Research Active Academic Staff) and the UCT International & Refugee Students Scholarship for financial support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These studies describe platform leakage but do not call it that.

2 This article is based on a student’s research master’s thesis, which was supervised by the project’s principal investigator. The ethical clearance reference is SOC2021/07, Department of Sociology, UCT.

3 We chose partial anonymity: our key informants’ identities are protected while the research site and their platform company, SweepSouth, are explicitly identified. SweepSouth is the largest and most popular of South Africa’s three platform domestic work companies, so complete anonymity could not be guaranteed. The company is also very open about its commitment to provide decent and dignified work for PDWs. The purpose of this article is to contribute to a constructive debate about the platform economy’s role in the South African domestic sector.

4 Fairwork evaluates fair pay, conditions, contracts, management and representation.

5 While PDWs cannot rate their clients on the platform, the company allows workers to report cases of abuse directly to their offices and offers support.

6 Some studies report four a month—see Tandem Research and The Cloudburst Group (2020).

7 See SweepSouth’s “Frequently Asked Questions” web page: https://help.sweepsouth.com/hc/en-us/articles/360008460719-What-of-the-fee-do-SweepStars-earn- ; and their “Terms and Conditions” document on their website (https://sweepsouth.com/terms/).

8 There are no data that suggest this rule is implemented. Yet platform leakage poses a serious challenge for start-up companies trying to establish a growing and regular client base (see Madden 2015). SweepSouth, however, encourages PDWs to inform their clients that they can book a “recurring” cleaning service through the app, at discounted rates, if clients approach them to engage in platform leakage.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Building Research Active Academic Staff (BRAAS), UCT.