Volcano on La Palma has been steadily spewing molten rock into the sea, enlarging the size of the island
Lava from the volcano in Spain’s Canary Islands that began cascading into the ocean two days ago has already covered an area bigger than 25 football pitches.
By late Thursday, the newly wrought peninsula on La Palma had doubled in size to 20 hectares (50 acres) since the morning, according to the Volcanic Institute of the Canaries (Involcan). Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8hcfR
Mali’s military leaders under pressure to pull back from suspected agreement with Wagner Group
The UK has joined a mounting international campaign of pressure on Mali’s military leaders to step back from a suspected deal with a Russian mercenary company, amid fears that the agreement will further complicate insecurity in the region.
Mali’s leaders, battling a jihadist insurgency – and amid a fragile political transition following multiple coups – have been coy on details of a reported deal with the Wagner Group.
Yet Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, conceded last week that talks with Mali had occurred. “They have turned to a private military company from Russia,” he said at the UN general assembly last Saturday. “France wants to significantly draw down its military component which was present there.”
The developments have sparked international concerns, anger in France, and mixed reactions within Mali amid the worsening violence suffered in the country. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8hcfD
Clinical trial on joint flu, Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccinations reported only mild to moderate side-effects
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Flu jabs are safe to give at the same time as the Pfizer or AstraZeneca Covid vaccines, according to the first clinical trial to investigate co-administering the shots in a single appointment.
While some people experienced more side-effects with certain combinations of flu and Covid shots, the ailments were mainly mild to moderate, the study found. The most common side effects included pain at the injection site and temporary fatigue, headache or muscle pain. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8hcf3
The Senate and House passed a bill to keep the government funded through 3 December. Now the US must raise the debt ceiling
The US government went into Thursday embroiled in a game of three-dimensional chess with time running out and trillions of dollars at stake.
The first dimension was a must-do: fund the government by midnight to avoid it shutting down. In a typical shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees stop getting paid and many stop working; some services are suspended and numerous national attractions and national parks temporarily close. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8hcdn
Output, orders and employment all fell in September, according to official data, as Beijing turns to Russia to ease its electricity shortages
China’s factory activity has shrunk unexpectedly amid curbs on electricity use and rising prices for commodities and parts, raising more concerns about the state of the world’s second biggest economy.
A closely watched survey released on Thursday showed that China’s factory activity contracted in September for the first time since the pandemic took a grip in February 2020. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8dbBd
It was with great reluctance that I decided to write about my thirty-year friendship with Emily Dickinson. To many who would read my book, Miss Dickinson was a cherished literary icon, and any attempt to describe her in human terms would, understandably, be resented. And yet by not writing this book I would be depriving her most ardent admirers of meeting the Emily Dickinson I was privileged to know: more than a mentor, she was my anchor, my compass, my lighthouse.
Illustration by Gary Hovland
Except when she was drunk. At those times, usually beginning at the stroke of noon, she became a gluttonous, vituperative harpy who would cut you for your last Buffalo wing. Once she got hold of her favorite beverage, Olde English malt liquor, the “belle of Amherst” would, as she liked to put it, “get polluted ’til [she] booted.” This Emily Dickinson would think nothing of spitting chewing tobacco in a protégé’s face, blithely explaining that she was “working on [her] aim.”
Who, then, was the real Emily Dickinson? Daughter of New England in chaste service to her poetry, or backstabbing gorgon who doctored your bowling score when you went to get more nachos? By exploring this question, I decided, I had a chance not only to learn about Miss Dickinson but also to learn about myself, and to learn even more about myself if the book went into paperback.
When I first met Miss Dickinson, I was a literary greenhorn with a handful of unfinished poems, struggling to find my voice and something that rhymed with “Nantucket.” Believing that she would be more likely to take me under her wing if I appeared to be an ingénue, I entered her lace-curtained parlor in Amherst dressed as a Cub Scout. But she took no note of my attire as she read over that day’s work: “Parting is all we know of heaven, / And all we need of hell.” Putting down her quill, she brushed the bonnet-crowned curls from her forehead. “Well, it beats stealing cars!” she croaked in a husky baritone.
Declaring that “quittin’ time is spittin’ time,” she reached into her sewing box for a pouch of her favorite “chaw,” as she called it, and pulled a “tall and foamy” out of the icebox. She generously agreed to look over my poems, pork rinds spilling from her mouth as she read. Finally, she anointed my efforts with words of encouragement that would sustain me throughout my early career: “You’re a poet and you don’t know it. Your feet show it. They’re long fellows. Now I gotta hit the head.”
Years passed before I saw another, less merry, aspect of Miss Dickinson’s character, at a book party for Ralph Waldo Emerson. Miss Dickinson was experiencing a trough in her career; she had been reduced to writing advertising copy, most notably, “Nothing is better for thee / Than me,” for Quaker Oats. At the party, Miss Dickinson sat alone at the bar, doing tequila shooters and riffing moribund, angry couplets that often did not scan. I sensed that it was time to take her home.
In the parking lot, she stopped abruptly near Emerson’s car. “Let’s key it,” she said, her eyes dancing maniacally. I assumed that this was just “Emily being Emily,” and tried to laugh it off. “Don’t be such a wuss,” she said, scratching “Waldo sucks” into the passenger door. I gently upbraided Miss Dickinson for her actions, which only served to inflame her: “Emerson’s trying to steal my juice, baby. It took me years to get where I am, understand what I’m saying? I used to run three-card monte on the streets of Newton. And I ain’t goin’ back!” At this moment, I found myself confronted with a possibility that I had never wanted to consider in all our years of friendship: Emily Dickinson was a real jerk.
Some years later, Boston University asked me to moderate a panel including Miss Dickinson, William Dean Howells, and the author, long since forgotten, of the verse “Finders, keepers / Losers, weepers.” I was by this time a successful poet in my own right, having become renowned for my series of “Happiness Is . . .” gift books and pillows. Seated next to Miss Dickinson, I attempted to mend the breach that had developed in our relationship; I went on at some length about my debt to her work. She took a sip of water, cleared her throat, and replied, “Bite me, you self-aggrandizing weasel.”
The last time I saw Emily Dickinson, she said she didn’t have time to speak, as she was on her way to the greyhound races in Taunton. But I could not let her go without asking what had happened to our friendship. Her eyes downcast, she said, simply, “You’ve got ketchup on your tie.” Quizzically, I lowered my head and took a right uppercut to the jaw. As I crumpled to the pavement, Miss Dickinson unleashed a profane tirade, along with a pistol-whipping that was startling for both its vigor and its efficiency.
As I review this last memory, it occurs to me that some readers might conclude that I am trying to cast Emily Dickinson in a negative light. Nothing could be further from my intentions. In fact, when I regained consciousness I realized that Miss Dickinson, in her tirade, had given me a final, precious gift. True, I no longer had my wallet, but I had, at long last, a separate identity, a voice. And, perhaps most valuable of all, a rhyme for “Nantucket.” ♦
Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.
Police and military help regain control of prison in Guayaquil after violence caused by dispute between Los Lobos and Los Choneros
The death toll in a gang battle in a penitentiary in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil has risen to more than 100 as authorities discovered the bodies of dozens more victims, including at least five that had been beheaded.
The country’s prisons bureau said in a tweet that “as of the moment more than 100 dead and 52 injured have been confirmed” in Tuesday’s clash at the Guayas prison. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8cq79
Manchester United’s Champions League win against Villarreal was ill-deserved – the team are too open and will be punished for it
How much time does love buy you? That Manchester United fans want Ole Gunnar Solskjær to succeed is understandable. It’s not just that he scored vital goals, it’s that he embodied a golden age. Who would not want a returning hero to restore the club to glory? But wishful thinking will not organise a midfield.
The win will part the clouds a little. Solskjær has survived another mini-crisis, but each one leaves him slightly weaker. And this one comes with Cristiano Ronaldo. It may not be fair, given Ronaldo is 36 and, for all his goalscoring ability, increasingly an anachronism, but his signing has increased the pressure on the manager. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8cq6z
Analysis: Beijing’s increasingly hardline approach sends a chilling message
The release of two Canadian hostages by China has ended a lengthy feud between the two countries, but experts caution the saga foreshadows a deepening rift between the two nations.
After facing charges of espionage and spending more than 1,000 days in detention, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were set free by Chinese authorities late last week. Accompanied by Canada’s ambassador to China, the pair arrived home early on Saturday morning. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8cq6k
Channel island’s government rejected third of French boats and ordered them out of its waters within 30 days
Jersey’s government is bracing itself for a blockade of its main port by angry fishers and France said it would look at “retaliation measures” after a third of French boats applying to fish in the Channel island’s waters were turned down.
The French maritime minister, Annick Girardin, said France and the EU would work on potential responses over the next two weeks unless the UK was able to resolve the dispute quickly. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8cq5S
Delta was recognised as a SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern in May 2021 and has proved extremely difficult to control in unvaccinated populations.
Delta has managed to out-compete other variants, including Alpha. Variants are classified as “of concern” because they’re either more contagious than the original, cause more hospitalisations and deaths, or are better at evading vaccines and therapies. Or all of the above.
So how does Delta fare on these measures? And what have we learnt since Delta was first listed as a variant of concern?
How contagious is Delta?
The R0 tells us how many other people, on average, one infected person will pass the virus on to.
Delta has an R0 of 5-8, meaning one infected person passes it onto five to eight others, on average.
This compares with an R0 of 1.5-3 for the original strain.
So Delta is twice to five times as contagious as the virus that circulated in 2020.
SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted through droplets an infected person releases when they breathe, cough or sneeze.
In some circumstances, transmission also occurs when a person touches a contaminated object, then touches their face.
One person infected with Delta infects, on average, five to eight others.Shutterstock
Once SARS-CoV-2 enters your body – usually through your nose or mouth – it starts to replicate.
The period from exposure to the virus being detectable by a PCR test is called the latent period. For Delta, one study suggests this is an average of four days (with a range of three to five days).
That’s two days faster than the original strain, which took roughly six days (with a range of five to eight days).
The virus then continues to replicate. Although often there are no symptoms yet, the person has become infectious.
People with COVID-19 appear to be most infectious two days before to three days after symptoms start, though it’s unclear whether this differs with Delta.
The time from virus exposure to symptoms is called the incubation period. But there is often a gap between when a person becomes infectious to others to when they show symptoms.
As the virus replicates, the viral load increases. For Delta, the viral load is up to roughly 1,200 times higher than the original strain.
With faster replication and higher viral loads it is easy to see why Delta is challenging contact tracers and spreading so rapidly.
What are the possible complications?
Like the original strain, the Delta variant can affect many of the body’s organs including the lungs, heart and kidneys.
Around 10-30% of people with COVID-19 will experience prolonged symptoms, known as long COVID, which can last for months and cause significant impairment, including in people who were previously well.
Even previously well people can get long COVID.Shutterstock
Longer-lasting symptoms can include fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain, heart palpitations, headaches, brain fog, muscle aches, sleep disturbance, depression and the loss of smell and taste.
Is it more deadly?
Evidence the Delta variant makes people sicker than the original virus is growing.
Preliminary studies from Canada and Singapore found people infected with Delta were more likely to require hospitalisation and were at greater risk of dying than those with the original virus.
In the Canadian study, Delta resulted in a 6.1% chance of hospitalisation and a 1.6% chance of ICU admission. This compared with other variants of concern which landed 5.4% of people in hospital and 1.2% in intensive care.
In the Singapore study, patients with Delta had a 49% chance of developing pneumonia and a 28% chance of needing extra oxygen. This compared with a 38% chance of developing pneumonia and 11% needing oxygen with the original strain.
Similarly, a published study from Scotland found Delta doubled the risk of hospitalisation compared to the Alpha variant.
Emerging evidence suggests Delta is more likely to cause severe disease than the original strain.Shutterstock
How do the vaccines stack up against Delta?
So far, the data show a complete course of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccine reduces your chance of severe disease (requiring hospitalisation) by more than 85%.
While protection is lower for Delta than the original strain, studies show good coverage for all vaccines after two doses.
Can you still get COVID after being vaccinated?
Yes. Breakthrough infection occurs when a vaccinated person tests positive for SARS-Cov-2, regardless of whether they have symptoms.
Breakthrough infection appears more common with Delta than the original strains.
Most symptoms of breakthrough infection are mild and don’t last as long.
It’s also possible to get COVID twice, though this isn’t common.
How likely are you to die from COVID-19?
In Australia, over the life of the pandemic, 1.4% of people with COVID-19 have died from it, compared with 1.6% in the United States and 1.8% in the United Kingdom.
Data from the United States shows people who were vaccinated were ten times less likely than those who weren’t to die from the virus.
The Delta variant is currently proving to be a challenge to control on a global scale, but with full vaccination and maintaining our social distancing practices, we reduce the spread.
As the star dives into a giant glass of fizz for her first online extravaganza, she talks about this new golden age for burlesque, why the French Strictly gives her costume problems – and how #MeToo has changed her
Dita Von Teese is looking divine. Her lips are that signature red, she’s wearing 1950s cat eye glasses, and her black hair falls in a thick wave across a Snow White skin – and all this on the unglamorous stage of a glitchy Zoom call. Only knowing Von Teese from her femme fatale image, her teasingly aloof burlesque performances, and her time in the tabloids as former wife of goth rocker Marilyn Manson, you might expect an icy demeanour, an impermeable mystique. So it’s surprising to discover quite how normal she is: chatty, self-deprecating, not very vampish. It’s easy to see traces of Heather Sweet, the “super shy” girl from small-town Michigan who transformed into Von Teese.
The reason for our conversation is a new film, Night of the Teese, made with director Quinn Wilson and featuring some of Von Teese’s classic routines alongside guest performers from male burlesque artist Jett Adore to hula-hoop virtuoso Marawa. While others rushed out online content during the pandemic, Von Teese took her time to get the details right. “When I was watching a certain famous talkshow host doing his show from his backyard, I thought, ‘Oh, you really do need some showbusiness,’ you know?”
Von Teese is all about the showbusiness, from the giant clam shell she emerges from in her opening routine to the finale bathing in a fizz-filled champagne coupe. It’s a land of satin, ostrich feathers and diamanté nipple pasties, with each of her many-layered outfits drenched in sparkle. “I love trying to come up with the most complicated striptease costume,” she smiles. “That’s my speciality.” Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8Ynzh
Russian state-backed broadcaster was found to have breached YouTube’s rules on coronavirus coverage
YouTube has deleted Russian state-backed broadcaster RT’s German-language channels, saying they had breached its Covid misinformation policy.
“YouTube has always had clear community guidelines that outline what is allowed on the platform,” said a spokesperson. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8Y0Z1
The long-awaited 25th outing for Ian Fleming’s superspy is a weird and self-aware epic with audacious surprises up its sleeve
The standard bearer of British soft power is back, in a film yanked from cinemas back in the time of the toilet roll shortage, based on a literary character conceived when sugar and meat rationing was still in force, and now emerging in cinemas as Britons are fighting for petrol in the forecourts.
Bond, like Norma Desmond, is once again ready for his closeup – and Daniel Craig once again shows us his handsome-Shrek face and the lovable bat ears, flecked with the scars of yesterday’s punch-up, the lips as ever pursed in determination or disgust. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8Y0Xv
Results of two studies may explain why some people develop diabetes after catching the virus
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Covid-19 can infect insulin-producing cells in the pancreas and change their function, potentially explaining why some previously healthy people develop diabetes after catching the virus.
Doctors are increasingly concerned about the growing number of patients who have developed diabetes either while infected with coronavirus, or shortly after recovering from it. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8Y0Hm
Analysis: Senators’ questions to military leadership a contest in sharing out responsibility for failures
The deeply partisan US Congress is rarely a conducive place for national introspection and Tuesday’s Senate hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal did not provide an exception.
In the midst of the point-scoring and blame-shifting on display in the senators’ questions to the nation’s military leadership, it was clear that it was a contest to apportion shares in failure. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8Y0GG
How the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker became one of the world’s most contentious thinkers
On a recent afternoon, Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author of upbeat books about human progress, was sitting in his summer home on Cape Cod, thinking about Bill Gates. Pinker was gearing up to record a radio series on critical thinking for the BBC, and he wanted the world’s fourth richest man to join him for an episode on the climate emergency. “People tend to approach challenges in one of two ways – as problem-solving or as conflict,” Pinker, who appreciates the force of a tidy dichotomy, said. “You can think of it as Bill versus Greta. And I’m very much in Bill’s camp.”
A few weeks earlier, Gates had been photographed in Manhattan carrying a copy of Pinker’s soon to be published 12th book, Rationality, which inspired the BBC series. “We sent it to his people,” Pinker said. Pinker is an avid promoter of his own work, and for the past 25 years he has had a great deal to promote. Since the 1990s, he has written a string of popular books on language, the mind and human behaviour, but in the past decade, he has become best known for his counterintuitive take on the state of the world. In the shadow of the financial crisis, while other authors were writing books about how society was profoundly broken, Pinker took the opposite tack, arguing that things were, in fact, better than ever. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8TyV5
The move challenges Beijing's claim to the sensitive waterway and marks a rare voyage by a non-US military vessel
Britain sent a warship through the Taiwan Strait on Monday for the first time since 2008, a move that challenges Beijing’s claim to the sensitive waterway and marks a rare voyage by a non-US military vessel.
HMS Richmond, a frigate deployed with Britain’s aircraft carrier strike group, sailed through the strait on a trip from Japan to Vietnam, Britain’s defence ministry said. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8T9y1
Data also finds smokers more likely to die from disease compared with those who have never smoked
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Smokers are 60%-80% more likely to be admitted to hospital with Covid-19 and also more likely to die from the disease, data suggests.
A study, which pooled observational and genetic data on smoking and Covid-19 to strengthen the evidence base, contradicts research published at the start of the pandemic suggesting that smoking might help to protect against the virus. This was later retracted after it was discovered that some of the paper’s authors had financial links to the tobacco industry. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8T9xq
Jury finds singer guilty of running a criminal enterprise that recruited women and children and subjected them to unwanted sex and mental torment
A jury has found the R&B superstar R Kelly guilty of being the ringleader of a decades-long racketeering and sex trafficking scheme that preyed upon Black women and children.
The disgraced singer was found guilty on all nine counts on Monday afternoon after decades of avoiding criminal responsibility for numerous allegations of misconduct, in a major #MeToo victory for Black women and girls. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8T9xR
Keir Starmer and industry leaders call on PM to do more as ministers decide against immediate deployment of troops
Boris Johnson has ordered the army to remain on standby to help fuel reach petrol stations hit by panic buying, as Keir Starmer and businesses called on him to get a grip on the shortages rippling across the economy.
No 10 said army drivers would be ready to help deliver petrol and diesel on a short-term basis, but stopped short of an immediate deployment, even though some essential workers have not been able to carry out their jobs without fuel. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8T9w0
At 78, with three Baftas and a Palme d’Or under his belt, the director still sees himself as an outsider. He talks about Hollywood’s obsession with big names, his determination to portray ‘real people’ – and being accused of pretension
Interviewing Mike Leigh is a daunting prospect, not because of his intimidatingly central plinth in the pantheon of British cinema – well, maybe a bit of that – but because he is extremely exacting. You just couldn’t work the way he does – his scripts are improvised, not written, resting on collaboration, trust, instinct, bravery – without weighing every word, cross-examining every sentence. Otherwise it would just be baggy. He takes this perfectionism into every interview, every conversation: Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, a close textual and visual reading of his life’s work by Amy Raphael, reissued next month, bristles with this energy.
Then there’s the incredible range of his output: since 1971, he has not just been making films and TV dramas, but breaking and recasting the expectations of form and genre. It bugs him when people always talk about the same few works – Abigail’s Party, Life Is Sweet, Secrets & Lies – and neglect the films of which he is equally proud – Peterloo, or Meantime, a magnificent 1983 exploration of the hard edges of Thatcherism, which maybe didn’t launch, but certainly put a rocket under the careers of Tim Roth and Gary Oldman. The British Film Institute (BFI) has a retrospective this autumn that includes every film he has ever made – “including the Play for Todays,” he says, as if the world has finally recognised that you have to watch them all, like film-Pokémon – and a remastered Naked, which will go on general release in November. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8Q33F
Labour leader says it is not right to say ‘only women have a cervix’ and calls for ‘respectful debate’ over issue
Labour and the Conservatives have clashed on the issue of trans rights, as Sir Keir Starmer said it was wrong to say “only women have a cervix” and the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said this was a “total denial of scientific fact”.
The Labour leader called for laws to go further to protect trans rights after he was asked about one of his MPs, Rosie Duffield, who said “only women have a cervix”. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8PHT9
Initial election result gave women 33 seats, but total was later revised down to 30
Iceland briefly celebrated electing a female-majority parliament on Sunday, before a recount produced a result just short of the landmark for gender parity in the north Atlantic island nation.
The initial vote count gave female candidates 33 seats in Iceland’s 63-seat parliament, the Althing, in an election in which centrist parties made the biggest gains. The result would have made Iceland the first country in Europe to have more women than men in parliament. Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8PHT3
* Line forms outside funeral home near New York City
* Missing Brian Laundrie charged with illegal bank card use
Mourners attended a Long Island funeral home on Sunday for a viewing for Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old woman whose death on a cross-country trip sparked a manhunt for her fiance.
Related: Gabby Petito’s death is tragic. But I wish missing women of color got this much attention | Akin Olla Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8PHSz
Republican tweets picture just of George W Bush after Trump pac sends out image that spliced Cheney with former leader
One of the less dignified spats in US politics rumbled onwards on Sunday, as the Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney responded to a bizarre insult from Donald Trump.
Related: ‘He knows he lost’: Georgia Republican opposes Trump before rally in Perry Continue reading... http://dlvr.it/S8PHSb
As soon as everyone was vaccinated, we invited my family to our home for a holiday meal outdoors. We also included my brother-in-law, who is my wife’s only living relative and has nowhere else to go. My own brother expressed surprise at this: Unbeknown to us, my brother-in-law had unfriended us on Facebook and posted a rant accusing us of elder abuse that led to his mother’s death. (We cared for her in our home until she died, and I’m proud of the years we took care of her.) Knowing this, I would like to disinvite him. But my wife says that she’s ignored similarly awful statements from him in the past, and there’s no point in arguing with him: He never admits he’s wrong. What should we do?
KATHLEEN
In my experience, people occasionally say horrible things after the death of a loved one. It’s often the grief talking; it can warp rational thought. And now, thanks to social media, we can broadcast our cruelest takes, hatched at the peak of anguish, to nearly everyone we know. This is not an excuse, merely a possibility.
Still, like you, I would not relish entertaining someone who thinks I murdered his mother. Your wife seems to take a different view, though. She may have greater faith that her brother doesn’t really believe what he said. She also may feel it isn’t worth the fight to get her stubborn sibling — whom she wants to keep in her life — to recant.
Try to defer to your wife here. Ask her, “Do you really want your brother to come?” If she does, include him as an act of love for her. She may also authorize a conversation with him in advance: “Your ugly post about our treatment of your mother really hurt us. But your sister loves you and wants you to come.” This way, you let him know where he stands without trying to wrestle an apology out of him.
Image
Credit...Miguel Porlan
Say More About That …
If someone tells you they’ve had surgery or been ill, is it rude to ask for details, such as the nature of the illness? My sister says it is: If the person wanted to tell you, they would volunteer the information. I see her point, but perhaps the person doesn’t want to give more details unless we express interest in them. Not everyone wants to know. So, is it more polite to say, “May I ask what the illness was?” Or is it better to leave it alone?
KATHRYN
You and your sister offer plausible readings of an encounter. Balancing the risks, though, I would go with her approach. It is kinder to respect people’s privacy about health matters (that don’t affect us) and to avoid asking them to recount possibly traumatic events than it is to pose potentially unwanted follow-up questions.
A general statement of support (“I’m sorry for your troubles”) works fine. And with close friends, you may add: “I’m here to talk if you want to.” This has the additional benefit of putting the person who was ill in charge of the conversation.
No Strings Attached?
I started hanging out with this girl I met online a few months ago. Since then, she’s sort of implied that she thinks we’re seeing each other exclusively, but we never had that conversation. I am not seeing her exclusively, and I don’t want to. Can I keep on seeing other people until we actually have the discussion and reach an agreement about it?
D.J.
Simply asking the question indicates that you know what the right answer is. Now that you’re aware that this woman misunderstands the nature of your commitment to her — even if it’s through no fault of your own — you owe her the truth.
This may lead to a conversation that will end your time hanging out together. (Or it may not!) But being honest with our intimate partners, even when they jump to the wrong conclusion on their own, is essential to maintaining any kind of relationship, exclusive or not. Speak up!
Just a Dab
An artist friend offered to make a painting for my new home. I don’t love her work, but I wanted to be supportive, so I agreed. Unfortunately, the abstract painting she gave me looks like something you’d find in a generic hotel hallway. I’ve never hung it. But I have thought I might really enjoy the painting if I could make some amateur, lighthearted changes to it. Would that be OK?
FRIEND
Technically, the painting is your property to do with as you like, and you are free to alter it. That would be an act of disloyalty to your friend, though, who gave you her artwork as a sincere gesture of friendship.
Taste is a personal matter; respect for our friends is not. Here, I see no reason to offer a critique of her painting or to deface it, which you know would likely hurt her. Just thank her for her gift, then store it, donate it or give it a friend — as is.
This past July, Singh was on a midnight run, biking a chocolate mousse cake 7 kilometers across Mumbai, when he was rammed by a drunk driver on a scooter from behind. He got off with a few scratches and sprains, but his bike was badly smashed up. The cost of fixing it — 14,000 rupees ($189) — is about what he takes home in a month working for Zomato, the Indian food and grocery delivery app. So for the last month, he’s been fixing it up a bit at a time whenever he can get the money together.
Singh, in his 40s, speaks in long, flowing sentences peppered with literary references and fatalistic humor. He began riding for Zomato in 2020 after struggling to find work in India’s shrinking job market. “I googled ‘jobs I can find today,’” he told Rest of World. “And food delivery popped up. … It was the easiest job I’ve ever gotten in my life.”
Within an hour of signing up, he was delivering meals. For the first couple of weeks, it felt like easy money — he was on target to earn roughly $350 in a month, within the range the app had promised, around twice the average monthly salary in India.
But then the orders started drying up. Riders would be directed to “red zones” — areas where there was supposed to be a glut of orders — but there’d be no work there. They’d be sent onto another red zone, burning uncompensated time and fuel. He had to work longer and longer to make enough money, often riding for 12 hours or more a day, and the technology that directed him from gig to gig felt ever more intrusive.
Whenever the app decided he was behind schedule, his phone would ring, and an automated voice would tell him to speed up or face a penalty. To make up the time, he’d take risks, darting up a one-way street or jumping a red light. During idle moments, the app would serve up videos telling him how to please customers by smiling and bowing. Sometimes, those videos would remind drivers not to speak to the media, which is why Singh asked to be identified only by his surname, for fear of being banned from the app.
“You are a number, whether you like it or not,” Singh said, describing the exhaustion and anxiety that come from working for an algorithm whose decisions — who gets what gig, who gets suspended, who gets fined or rewarded — often feel arbitrary. “You are a number, you are an ID, you are a scooter icon that moves around a map. … The app does not know you. The app does not listen to you.”
Zomato didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A Zomato driver is seen on the streets of Bangalore, India in August, 2021.
With his bike currently in disrepair, Singh has been on the sidelines for the last month. It’s given him time to muse on his situation and that of his colleagues. He’d already created a Twitter account, @DeliveryBhoy, to chart his experiences on the road. Starting in August, he began sharing screenshots from within the Zomato app, showing the tiny payouts, unattainable targets, and arbitrary deductions that riders struggle with. His message — that platform work is hard, insecure, underpaid, and unappreciated — has resonated, not just among fellow riders in India, but with platform workers across the globe.
His account has only around 4,600 followers, but it’s already been cited by newspapers, academics, and activists worldwide. In August, Singh linked up with the Gig Workers Collective, which campaigns for rights for platform workers, primarily in the United States. Through the collective, Singh spoke over the phone with Willy Solis, a Texas-based “shopper” for the grocery delivery company Shipt and a leading figure in the U.S. platform workers’ movement. “In speaking to him, I heard our story,” Solis told Rest of World.
To understand how platform work is experienced worldwide, Rest of World, in partnership with the research company Premise, surveyed more than 4,900 gig workers across 15 countries. We combined their responses with data compiled by global labor bodies and academic researchers, along with in-depth interviews with gig workers in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe. We also approached six of the largest platform companies operating globally, none of which agreed to be interviewed. The data shows that, while the experience of platform work is very local and takes on features of the societies and economies in which it operates, it’s also universal. Platform workers, whether they’re based in the U.S. or Nigeria, Indonesia or Ethiopia, are all struggling with a shared set of challenges: insecurity, anxiety, low wages, and high costs.
While the nature of platform work means that workforces are atomized and divided — and platform companies have often refused to recognize workers’ groups and unions — the common experience of precarious and often dangerous work has helped to create a genuine, global movement that is taking the fight to the tech companies.
“There is just so much commonality. And it transcends cultures and transcends languages,” Solis said. “We’re all trying to figure out a way to fight back together collectively.”
To understand how platform work is experienced worldwide, Rest of World, in partnership with the research company Premise, surveyed more than 4,900 gig workers across 15 countries.
The data shows that, while the experience of platform work is very local and takes on features of the societies and economies in which it operates, it’s also universal.
Platform workers, whether they’re based in the U.S. or Nigeria, Indonesia or Ethiopia, are all struggling with a shared set of challenges: insecurity, anxiety, low wages, and high costs.
After he left the Ukrainian army in 2019, Pavlo, who asked to be identified by only his first name, spent the winter months in Poland, working in warehouses and delivering for Uber Eats in his spare time. As the pandemic worsened, he returned home, but struggled to find work. He ended up in the capital, Kyiv, in need of money, so he signed up with Uber Eats again. After all, he reasoned, he’d already paid for the branded delivery bag. When Uber Eats suddenly withdrew from the Ukrainian market in June 2020, he went to work for its rival service, Bolt, instead.
A lot of former Ukrainian soldiers end up delivering for the platforms, Pavlo told Rest of World, because they get free public transport. That means they can sign up to deliver on foot, without having to buy or rent a bike, and then ride on the buses instead. And because most of the platform companies don’t report back to the authorities on who’s working for them, veterans can also keep claiming their unemployment benefits.
Delivery platforms have thrived in the pay-to-play informality of the Ukrainian economy. When Pavlo needed to get a health certificate to work for Bolt, the health centers were shut due to the pandemic, so he bought one online. The platforms, he said, rarely ask for documentation, and if they do, it’s easy enough to get hold of fakes. Some riders don’t have driver’s licenses, and Rest of World heard from several drivers that it’s common for accounts to be traded around, so that people — those without documentation, underage users, and riders previously banned from the platforms — can keep working. It should be against the law, Pavlo said. “But with our terrible economic situation, people are basically surviving by working for this platform, so what can you do?”
A Bolt spokesperson said, “Bolt checks the identification and legal ability to drive for all Bolt drivers. Any confirmed case of a driver letting other persons use their account will lead to a permanent block of the drivers’ account and may involve legal action.”
Gig work, which has often been characterized as part-time, flexible labor, is increasingly filling the gaps left by more stable work. Of the gig workers surveyed globally by Rest of World, more than half said that working for platforms makes up the majority, or all, of their income.
“With our terrible economic situation, people are basically surviving by working for this platform, so what can you do?”
The work can be demanding. In Ukraine, Pavlo, who uses a bicycle rather than a motorbike, has to contend with Kyiv’s steep hills. Bolt compensates riders for the distances they travel, unlike its competitors, but it doesn’t take inclines into account. “The app thinks that you are always fresh to go, not tired,” he said. Eleven- or twelve-hour shifts are common, and some drivers have been found using amphetamines, possibly to stay awake. Road accidents involving couriers are common, and there have been several deaths. During Ukraine’s first wave of Covid-19, riders were offered masks by the platforms. But they had to go to the companies’ headquarters to pick them up, and there were few other health checks. Pavlo caught the virus in the summer of 2020 and spent two weeks holed up in self-imposed isolation. Others kept riding. “The only thing that was saving them was a mask and maybe cough syrup,” he said.
The Ukrainian government has struggled to regulate platform companies. Since 2014, political unrest, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, an ongoing war with Russian-backed separatists in the east, and the pandemic have battered Ukraine’s economy. Despite the precarity that’s built into platform work, it’s seen as a way for thousands of people to get at least some income at a point where traditional employers aren’t hiring. “I would say that those companies really banked on this vulnerability, and this instability that has been part of the labor market in Ukraine, especially as the pandemic hit,” said Svitlana Iukhymovych, a workers’ rights campaigner at the Ukrainian advocacy group Labor Initiatives.
Delivery drivers from Glovo and Rocket pass each other in Kyiv, Ukraine in August, 2021.
Globally, ride-hailing and food and grocery delivery platforms are well adapted to social stress. Once they’ve established themselves in a market, their model allows them to almost infinitely grow their workforce without dramatically increasing their costs. Workers pay for their vehicles, data, fuel, and often their insurance too. When they aren’t actively carrying a passenger or package, they’re typically not compensated. While the companies have invested billions in their technology and in subsidies to bring users onto their platforms, it’s actually their riders and drivers who are paying to scale them on the street — and carrying a lot of the risk if demand doesn’t match supply.
It’s also in the platform companies’ interest to create an oversupply of riders or drivers. Having more riders gives the platform more pricing power, pushing down costs for consumers. With a glut of workers, platforms can manipulate supply and demand at a granular level, flooding an area — the red zones that Singh talked about in India — with riders or drivers, engineering scarcity for their partners, who are compelled to take unprofitable gigs by algorithms that penalize them for not doing so. It’s this oversupply that allows the platforms to make increasingly ambitious promises to customers.
In India, for example, the major grocery delivery services are engaged in a race to the bottom on delivery times, with the major platforms now promising essentials to consumers’ doors in under 30 minutes. That’s partly enabled by their tech — their data allows them to anticipate demand and put popular products into fulfillment centers close to the customer — but it’s possible only with a large idle workforce who can be positioned in advance and compelled to take whatever gigs come. RedSeer, an Indian internet economy research company, forecasts that the country’s “quick commerce” market could grow by 15 times to reach $5 billion by 2025.
“The app thinks that you are always fresh to go, not tired.”
This dynamic also explains why, in the early days after a platform enters a market, it seems good for everyone. A small number of workers have the pick of the jobs. Fares and fees are subsidized by the companies, which are willing to burn investors’ capital to seed the market and build their user base. But as it absorbs more and more labor, the algorithm has more pieces to move around the board. It can become more demanding of its workers. Wait times between orders grow. Because many drivers and riders rent their vehicles, or have taken out loans to buy them, they have to work longer and longer shifts.
Rest of World spoke to riders and drivers in Ukraine, South Africa, Nigeria, Singapore, and India who all said the same: they had to be online for upward of 12 hours a day, simply to service the debt they’d taken on to work for the platforms. They weren’t in the majority — our survey shows that many workers do work less than eight hours per day — but on an hourly basis, 42% of the workers surveyed earned less than the statutory local minimum wage.
Workers have often found it hard to challenge platform companies on their pay. The earnings that platforms promise are theoretically achievable if workers can hit specific conditions — a certain number of gigs, for example — but those targets are often contingent on factors outside of the workers’ control.
It’s hard to know if the algorithm’s decisions are unfair or not, but it’s easy for the platform to say that a worker’s low earnings are their own fault because they’ve failed to achieve arbitrary targets, or because customers haven’t rewarded them through higher ratings or tips. (Fifty-one percent of respondents to Rest of World’s survey said that they make more than half their earnings from gratuities — tip your rider.)
Rest of World did find one Ukrainian delivery rider, Serhii, who was a vocal supporter of algorithmic management and was adamant that those who couldn’t cut it on the platforms were simply lazy. He rides in Kyiv for 12 hours a day on a rented motorbike, which he drives without a license.
Everyone Pavlo knew who complained to the platforms about their pay and conditions was told the same thing, he said, “You have to be grateful that you have the job when other people lost theirs because of the pandemic and be happy for what you have.”
A delivery driver from Glovo in Kiev, Ukraine in August, 2021.
Rest of World’s survey shows that workers’ feelings about the platforms are complex. Many — more than 60% — said that they were financially satisfied. But, at the same time, 62% also said that they were frequently anxious and scared on the job, afraid of accidents, assaults, illness, or simply not making enough money to cover their costs. More than two-thirds of the workers surveyed by Rest of World said they want out within a year. More than a quarter said they were planning on quitting within a month.
The individual stresses and the insecurity faced by gig workers are likely to have a broader social impact as platform work becomes more deeply embedded in economies. While the label “the Uber of …” has passed into parody, “platformization” is a standard feature of venture-funded technology. Meanwhile, the pioneers of the industry continue to expand their reach into new sectors — from ride-hailing into food delivery, and food delivery into groceries and logistics — as they look for ways to sweat their model.
Unchecked, they’re likely to succeed. The platforms have been able to outcompete incumbents in industries they’re trying to disrupt because they have ready cash and aren’t hemmed in by the same rules. They’re adjacent, separate, feeding off the markets without the social and regulatory obligations that slow traditional companies’ growth. They grow like strangler figs, which attach themselves to the outside of trees, starving them, eventually killing them and replacing their roots and branches with their own.
But the very facets of labor that these platforms disrupt — basic wages, workers’ rights — matter. “Normal employment, though it’s a contract between a firm and a worker, also has a collective good, because it contributes to the overall stability of consumption in the economy, and it also provides stability to people’s lives, so that they are less likely to have need of social support,” the sociologist Colin Crouch, professor emeritus at the University of Warwick, who has studied labor relations for more than half a century, told Rest of World. “When firms move into platform work, they’re actually dumping the costs of what they do onto the wider public. … In a way, the platform firms are parasitical.”
Society absorbs the costs in different ways, some very visible, others harder to see. In Ukraine, the wages that platforms pay to former soldiers are being quietly subsidized by unemployment benefits from the state and public-funded transport. In India, Zomato and its rival delivery platform Swiggy, along with ride-hailing operators Uber and Ola, have appealed to the public to help crowdfund for the welfare of their workers during the early days of the pandemic.
Sidestepping the obligations that society places on employers also allows platforms to avoid progressive policies put in place to reduce systemic inequities. Basic anti-discrimination ordinances such as maternity leave and other measures created to reduce inequality often don’t translate to platform work. Opaque algorithms and systems that rely on customer ratings to determine value can encode and amplify inequality, by race, by class, and particularly by gender.
A recent report from the International Labor Organization surveyed location-based platform workers in 2019 and 2020, and found that, in around a dozen countries, roughly 9% of delivery riders and 5% of ride-hailing drivers are female, reflective of higher barriers to entry for women. Around a quarter of the respondents to Rest of World’s survey were women. We found that they were less likely to be working in higher-paying forms of gig work, that they earned less overall than their male counterparts doing the same roles, and that they were less financially satisfied.
“Nobody should expect labor markets to be fair to people because they never have been,” Bama Athreya, a researcher specializing in gender, inequality, and labor at the Laudes Foundation, told Rest of World. But, she said, with technology-driven platforms, discrimination “is being put on overdrive, and that is going to then result in what looked like qualitatively new forms of exploitation.”
That may, Athreya and other experts said, be more acute in the Global South, where institutions and protections for workers and minorities are often weaker. But even in wealthier markets, platforms are rolling back progress already made. Labor experts who spoke to Rest of World were unanimous in their assessment of platform work as it’s currently manifested: Rather than a radical and progressive reimagining of labor, enabled by new technology and huge wells of data, it’s actually an erosion of decades of hard-won social protections and rights.
“The notion is that this is the future,” Crouch said. “But it is actually a very old method of working. It’s just because it uses the internet that gives the impression that it’s ever so modern.”
Rest of World’s survey shows that workers’ feelings about the platforms are complex. More than 60% of workers Rest of World surveyed said that they were financially satisfied.
But, at the same time, 62% also said that they were frequently anxious and scared on the job, afraid of accidents, assaults, illness, or simply not making enough money to cover their costs.
More than two-thirds of the workers surveyed by Rest of World said they want out within a year. More than a quarter said they were planning on quitting within a month.
The way he sees it, Zweli Ngwenya lost his car to an Uber policy change. He’s been driving for the app in Johannesburg for five years and borrowed money to buy a sedan so that he could drive for UberX, the app’s flagship service. But this year, Uber announced a nationwide expansion of a new, cheaper category of ride, Uber Go. His earnings plummeted. “You are never consulted. You wake up one day, and there’s something new. … You receive an in-app message or an email that this thing is going to be introduced at the beginning of this day,” Ngwenya told Rest of World.
The change meant he couldn’t make enough to pay off the car loan, gas, and mobile data, and, in the end, the car was repossessed by the bank. “Honestly speaking, a lot of the drivers are losing cars,” he said. He’s now renting a vehicle to keep driving on the platform.
South Africa is a difficult place to be an Uber driver. Workers there reel off a litany of carjackings, murders, assaults with acid. Some of these have been targeted attacks by the country’s “taxi mafias,” others are just a symptom of the backbeat of urban violence in the country. Drivers have accused Uber of failing to protect them, putting them in harm’s way by pressuring them to take gigs, and being slow to help police to trace attackers. When things go wrong, “Uber is nowhere,” said Teresa Munchik, who has driven for Uber and is a labor organizer for The Movement, a drivers’ group, of which Ngwenya is also a member.
The Movement has put pressure on the company through strikes and protests, but it’s been difficult. “Uber absolutely refuses to recognize a group, let alone any kind of association,” Munchik said. “You’ve got no bargaining power.” Many drivers are also migrant workers, who feel vulnerable or lack proper documentation, making them nervous about joining protests, she added.
As they do elsewhere, Uber has told drivers that it doesn’t negotiate with groups, only individuals. “But … as an individual, you will always be told that if you’re not happy, you can always move out of the platform,” Ngwenya said.
The drivers have won some concessions — Ngwenya said the app now allows them to turn down rides that they feel are unsafe, without penalty, and tells them in advance if the user is paying cash or card. “Most of the drivers that I know, they try and avoid [cash] trips from dodgy areas … because we believe that it is hard to trace a trip in cash, right?” Ngwenya said. But earnings are still low and unpredictable. When he spoke to Rest of World in August, Ngwenya had been driving for seven hours and had made just 200 rand ($13) so far that day.
On the other end of the continent, in Lagos, Uber driver Ayoade Ibrahim described an almost identical situation. Drivers are routinely victims of robberies and assaults. Many are struggling to make ends meet due to dwindling fares and rising costs. As in South Africa, many Nigerian drivers rent their vehicles or buy them on hire purchase, but even those who own their own vehicles are struggling to meet the cost of gas and maintenance, compelling them to work longer hours and take greater risks. “Because people aren’t making [enough] money, they overstress themselves, and they are involved in accidents every day.”
Ibrahim is one of the co-founders of the National Union of Professional App-Based Transport Workers (NUPABW), a 10,000-strong union of drivers working for Uber and Bolt in Nigeria. Ten of his members have died on the roads in just the last few months, he said.
In late August, NUPABW helped organize three days of demonstrations outside the Nigerian parliament in Abuja, with a memorial to its lost members. But getting the government to listen to its concerns has been a struggle, Ibrahim said. The companies have lobbyists, PR, and marketing teams. In Nigeria, as in South Africa, drivers’ groups worry they’ve been infiltrated by strike breakers and corporate informants.
Uber did not respond to requests for comment.
“Uber absolutely refuses to recognize a group, let alone any kind of association. You’ve got no bargaining power.”
The drivers groups who spoke to Rest of World say that they, like the drivers themselves, are strapped for cash and that money goes a long way in influencing policy. “Look at what happened in California. They spent $200 million in order to lock down the drivers with Prop 22,” Ibrahim said, referring to a ballot measure in the U.S. state that exempted app-based transportation and ride sharing companies from having to classify their workers as employees. The bill was backed by tech companies, including Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash. Workers and labor groups said that since Prop 22 passed in November 2020, Californian platform workers’ earnings fell.
Even though it was later declared unconstitutional, Prop 22 felt like a defeat for platform workers worldwide. It’s not the only one. In Ukraine, the country’s self-defined “tech-forward” government passed a new law that effectively allows companies to define themselves as technology platforms and define their workers as contractors. “We have this weird mythology in Ukraine that only the IT sector can bring money,” George Sandul, Labor Initiatives’ legal director, said.
The atomization of the global workforce under the platform companies has made it hard for workers to push back. Most of the companies insist that their relationship is always with individuals — the workforce isn’t a single body but an open market of independent contractors — and that they won’t negotiate with organizations speaking on workers’ behalf. But as conditions get worse, platform workers are increasingly getting organized. Among the workers surveyed by Rest of World, 48% said they’re now part of a formal group or union; 49% said they’d participated in strikes or other industrial actions. Among delivery workers, that rose to 59%.
More significantly, they’re organizing across national borders. Just as the companies that own and invest in the platforms are creatures of globalization, able to move capital and business models from place to place, so too is the workers’ movement, using globalized communications infrastructure to organize, meeting in international WhatsApp groups and Telegram channels, to share experiences, express solidarity, and coordinate their actions. The movement has become increasingly formal, and increasingly focused, working together to find chinks in the platform companies’ defenses, reasoning that each local victory against the giants brings them closer to systemic change.
In Nigeria and South Africa, Ibrahim and Ngwenya are, separately but in parallel, preparing cases against Uber and Bolt, thanks in no small part to a group of Uber drivers thousands of kilometers away in London.
A memorial for lost members on the third day of a demonstrations organized by National Union of Professional App-Based Transport Workers in Abuja, Nigeria in August, 2021. Yaseen Aslam started driving for Uber about a year after the company launched in the U.K. in 2012. In late 2014, he helped create an association of ride-hailing drivers, facing down resistance from traditional transport workers’ unions, who were more interested in lobbying for the apps to be banned entirely. They reached out to drivers groups in San Francisco and New York. “What we found very quickly is what Uber was doing in San Francisco would apply to New York, and then, from New York, it’s applied to other places like London,” he said, over the phone from the U.K., where he’d just come off a night shift. The network grew, albeit informally through WhatsApp and Facebook groups. In 2019, they organized an international drivers’ strike ahead of Uber’s initial public offering in New York.
Not long after, Aslam was approached by the Open Society Foundations, which offered to support him to build a more formal international coalition. In January 2020, the new International Alliance of App-Based Transport Workers (IAATW) held its inaugural event in Oxford, bringing in delegates from 23 countries. They created a manifesto that demands fair pay, transparency in algorithmic management decisions, and a cap on the number of drivers allowed on the platforms.
The association, whose affiliates include the UK App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU), of which Aslam is president, and The Movement in South Africa, meets monthly. Ibrahim is on the board of directors. Being able to swap experiences is, Aslam said, “empowering. … Don’t forget, we’re fighting the giant here. And [the platforms’] whole model is about isolating people.”
The IAATW’s mutual support goes far beyond solidarity, however. In 2016, Aslam and another Uber driver, James Farrar, took Uber to an employment tribunal, arguing that they should be classified as “workers” for Uber, rather than as ‘partners,’ or contractors. Workers in U.K. law aren’t necessarily employees, but they do have access to many of the same rights, including a minimum wage. They won that case and two further appeals, before the case ended up in the U.K.’s high court. In February 2021, seven judges ruled unanimously in the drivers’ favor, stating that under the law, drivers are working for Uber from the moment they log onto the app and should be paid minimum wage for all the hours they’re available for rides.
It is a limited victory. The ruling doesn’t cover couriers for Uber Eats or any other platforms. Uber continues to resist the judgment. In June, it signed a different agreement with another British union, the GMB, which doesn’t allow collective bargaining over wages. Not all countries have the legal category of “worker,” making it hard to replicate in jurisdictions that don’t use common law frameworks. But it does show that it’s possible to beat the giants and chip away at their arguments, one country at a time.
“It makes us stronger. Because if we win something in one country, it’s a victory for all of us.”
The ruling has rippled through the IAATW’s members. In South Africa, drivers had already failed in a similar tribunal, but the victory in London prompted them to reopen the case, with help from Leigh Day, who have represented Uber drivers in the U.K.. Ngwenya has joined the suit. In Nigeria, Ibrahim and the NUPABW are about to launch their own class action suit, demanding to be recognized as workers.
“It makes us stronger,” Aslam said. “Because if we win something in one country, it’s a victory for all of us.”
There is a power in the simplicity of the argument that Aslam, Ibrahim, Ngwenya, and others are making: Platform work is work, so it needs to be fairly paid. Making that stick is the key to preventing platforms from manipulating supply and demand, compelling drivers to take risks, and pushing them into debt.
“For me that’s winning, because then I will know that if I’m online, I’m at work; I am getting something,” Ngwenya said. (In India, Singh put it more colorfully: “If you want to bugger me up the arse, do it,” he said. “But pay me for it.”)
Campaigners said that even though the battle for platform workers’ rights is often portrayed as an existential one for the tech companies, it doesn’t have to be. “They make enough money that they can provide minimum floor guarantees. And they can do this quite easily just … by limiting the number of people that can work for them,” Matthew Cole, a postdoctoral researcher at the Fairwork Foundation, which studies platform work around the world, told Rest of World. If they can’t pay living wages and stay in business, he added, then maybe they simply aren’t viable. “They’re capitalist business models. If you can’t make money, the market will push you out, right? You’re not entitled to be a successful business.”
Aslam, Ibrahim, Munchik, and Ngwenya have stuck at platform work because they’re sure it can be better, despite the many flaws in the model. In Ukraine, Pavlo has quit, taking his chances in the labor market instead of slogging up Kyiv’s hills. In Mumbai, Singh is close to fixing up his bike. He’s kept up his social media onslaught, but he’ll soon be back on the streets.
“I feel very frightened; I’m really intimidated,” he said. It’s still monsoon season, and the roads in Mumbai are often flooded during heavy rain. He’s worried that the next accident he has could be far worse. “This can happen to me again. This was sort of a sign that: ‘Listen, dude, if you continue doing this, the next time you’re going to die,’” he said. “But I have two months of bills to pay my landlord. … I don’t have money to actually live, to eat, or to do any of that. So you know, I have no choice, man. Fear is not an option.”
Peter Guest is the enterprise editor for Rest of World.
