Data

Face-to-Face, Online, or Both?
Both
General Type of Method
Collaborative approaches
Typical Purpose
Deliver goods & services
Develop the civic capacities of individuals, communities, and/or civil society organizations
Spectrum of Public Participation
Not applicable or not relevant
Collections
Linking Participation and Economic Advancement
Files
Up & Go: A Platform for Fair Work and Liveable Wages (case study)
Links
Up & Go website
Open to All or Limited to Some?
Open to All
Number of Participants
Large groups
Types of Interaction Among Participants
Express Opinions/Preferences Only
Negotiation & Bargaining
No Interaction Among Participants
Decision Methods
Voting
If Voting
Don’t Know
Scope of Implementation
Metropolitan Area
Level of Polarization This Method Can Handle
Low polarization
Level of Complexity This Method Can Handle
Moderate Complexity

METHOD

Up & Go - a platform for fair work and liveable wages

Face-to-Face, Online, or Both?
Both
General Type of Method
Collaborative approaches
Typical Purpose
Deliver goods & services
Develop the civic capacities of individuals, communities, and/or civil society organizations
Spectrum of Public Participation
Not applicable or not relevant
Collections
Linking Participation and Economic Advancement
Files
Up & Go: A Platform for Fair Work and Liveable Wages (case study)
Links
Up & Go website
Open to All or Limited to Some?
Open to All
Number of Participants
Large groups
Types of Interaction Among Participants
Express Opinions/Preferences Only
Negotiation & Bargaining
No Interaction Among Participants
Decision Methods
Voting
If Voting
Don’t Know
Scope of Implementation
Metropolitan Area
Level of Polarization This Method Can Handle
Low polarization
Level of Complexity This Method Can Handle
Moderate Complexity

Up & Go is an online platform which brings together several cooperatively owned cleaning businesses for fair work conditions and liveable wages in a sector usually characterized by informal, precarious, and low-paid work. It is a sharing economy platform owned by its workers.

Problems and Purpose

While the ‘gig-economy’, in which companies ‘use technology to deliver labor to [customers]’ [1], has brought some benefits to workers, such as flexible working hours and remote work, it remains more precarious and has fewer benefits than other types of wage employment. Workers are non-employees and therefore typically have no rights to minimum wage, overtime, compensation for injuries, protection from discrimination, nor compensation pay. These workers also do not have protection through joining unions nor do they have co-workers per se to whom they can talk and discuss issues [2]. Furthermore, although workers are considered independent contractors they often lack the freedom that comes with that distinction: They are unable to set their own rates or working methods and are sometimes even limited to when they are allowed to work depending on demand [3]. Yet, despite the drawbacks to becoming a gig-economy/on-demand worker, companies that employ independent contractors continue to expand. From 2012 to 2015, for example, the number of Uber drivers doubled every six months [4]. Given these growth opportunities, some workers have managed to capitalize on the popularity of on-demand work and app-based technology while preserving worker’s rights to fair compensation and job security. These include the worker-owners of Up & Go; a platform cooperative. 

Up & Go is an online platform which brings together several cooperatively owned cleaning businesses for fair work conditions and liveable wages in a sector usually characterized by informal, precarious, and low-paid work. It is a sharing economy platform owned by its workers. 

Origins and Development

The origins of Up & Go start with the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park (CFLSP), New York in 2006. CFLSP began by helping local businesses organize themselves into cooperatives [5]. Cirenia Dominguez set up her own cleaning cooperative, Brightly Cleaning, in early 2017 with assistance from La Colmena community job center and CFLSP. Then in May 2017, Brightly Cleaning and two other female-owned cooperative cleaning businesses, Cooperative Cleaning of New York and Ecomundo Cleaning Worker Cooperative, came together to form Up & Go, an online booking service for cleaners, using similar systems to other sharing economy platforms [6]. However, Up & Go is different from other gig-economy set ups in that the people who provide the service, i.e. clean the houses, are also the people who own the platform and the businesses, cutting out extortive middle managers. Today, four different majority-women and minority-owned cleaning cooperatives contribute to Up & Go: Brightly Cleaning Port Richmond, Brightly Cleaning Carroll Gardens, Brightly Cleaning East Harlem and Apple Eco Cleaning Co-op

Participant Recruitment and Selection

Participants are both the workers and business owners of Up & Go, and the customers using the service.

How it Works: Process, Interaction, and Decision-Making

With funding and support from the Robin Hood Foundation, Barclays and the CFLSP, the Up & Go website was developed by CoLab Cooperative with guidance from Cornell Tech. The website aimed to take advantage of what gig-economy apps offer: a digital presence, online payments and easy scheduling tools. The website functions to match customers (individuals who want their home cleaned) to service providers (cleaners) based on the needs of the customer and the capacity of the worker. First time customers specify preferred time and date of service, the size of their home, whether they have pets, whether they will provide their own cleaning products and appliances, and any other customized instructions, such as fridge cleaning or laundry. Worker owners of Up & Go then receive this information as well as an estimated payment before they accept or decline a job [7]. 

Up & Go IP rights (the platform) and brand are co-owned and managed by its workers. Profits derived from the services remain with the workers: 95 per cent of the cleaning fee is given to the worker who performed the job and only 5 per cent goes to maintaining the platform [8]. Not only do workers maintain the bulk of Up & Go’s profits, they also collectively negotiate and decide pricing for the entire business [9]. One worker stated that ‘the worker-owner arrangement has given her and her colleagues more control over the business and more equity in the operation’ [10]. While the website helps the cooperatives attract and maintain new business, the platform also functions to bring members of different cooperatives together to exchange ideas, knowledge and learning [11]. Up & Go holds monthly meetings for its worker owners where they can discuss any issues [12]. Through the platform cooperative, worker-owners vote on major decisions, such as cancellation policies and pricing [13, 14]. Up & Go maintains collaboration and cooperation at its center. Unlike other service apps, customers cannot rate individual workers. They can still leave comments, but no individual is singled out.

Influence, Outcomes, and Effects

Nationally, home care workers and cleaners are some of the lowest paid workers, but in 2017, Up &Go workers received an average of US$22.25 per hour compared to a New York City average of US$17.27 and earned US$4-5 more per hour than an average cleaner working in the same area [15]. In addition, Up & Go allows workers to compete competitively with large businesses. The general manager of Cooperative Cleaning of New York, Mariana Ortega, said ‘We can’t compete, not individually, and Up & Go brings us all to that ability and level to do that. It’s a stepping-stone’ [16]. Furthermore, workers are better informed of their rights and can avoid exploitative work environments [17]. Also, in 2019, the CFLSP was the Financial Inclusion Regional Winner of the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge [18]. However, platform cooperatives like Up & Go are not without their challenges as investors are reluctant or unwilling to lend money to a business that won’t be sold on for a profit. 

Analysis and Lessons Learned

Want to contribute an analysis of this method? Help us complete this section!

See Also

References

[1] Smith, R. and Leberstein, S. (2015) Rights on Demand: Ensuring Workplace Standards and Worker Security In the On-Demand Economy, New York, New York: National Employment Law Project. Page 3.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Hall, J.V. and Krueger, A.B. (2016) ‘An Analysis of the Labor Market for Uber’s Driver-Partners in the United States’, NBER Working Paper 22843, Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, http://www.nber.org/papers/w22843 (Accessed 30 January 2020)

[5] Mancori, A. and Vicari, S. (2020) A Cooperative Story No. 8: Up & Go, New York, USA, recorded at Aroundtheworld 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QnB_jwcl3E&feature=emb_title (Accessed 6 March 2020)

[6] Rosenblum, D. (2017) ‘How to Hire a Housekeeper – with a Clean Conscience’, NYNMedia, 6 June, https://www.nynmedia.com/news/how-to-hire-a-housekeeper-with-a-clean-conscience (Accessed 30 January 2020) 

[7] Ibid.

[8] Up & Go (2019) Find a Better Home Cleaning Service - Up & Go Cleaners, https://www.upandgo.coop/ (Accessed 30 January 2020)

[9] MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (2019) Center for Family Life - Up & Go - 2019 MIT IIC GLOBAL FINALIST - US & CANADA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4WfJ9_vvWk&feature=youtu.be (accessed 6 March 2020) 

[10] Rosenblum, D. (2017) ‘How to Hire a Housekeeper – with a Clean Conscience’, NYNMedia, 6 June, https://www.nynmedia.com/news/how-to-hire-a-housekeeper-with-a-clean-conscience (Accessed 30 January 2020) 

[11] Murphy, L. (2017) Can the Gig Economy Save Itself?, BTR Today blog, 1 June, https://www.btrtoday.com/read/featured/can-the-gig-economy-save-itself/ (Accessed 13 February 2020)

[12] Thompson, C. (2019) ‘When Workers Control the Code: the Emergence of Worker-owned Apps could Save the Gig Economy from Itself’, Wired, 22 April, https://www.wired.com/story/when-workers-control-gigeconomy/ (Accessed 13 February 2020)

[13] Coca, N. (2017) How Innovative Funding Models Could Usher in a New Era of Worker-Owned Platform Cooperatives, 28 August, https://www.shareable.net/how-innovative-funding-models-could-usher-in-anew-era-of-worker-owned-platform-cooperatives/ (Accessed 30 January 2020) 

[14] Hayes, R. (2019) Worker-Owned Apps Are Trying to Fix the Gig Economy’s Exploitation, Vice blog, 19 November, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa75a8/worker-owned-apps-are-trying-to-fix-the-gig-economysexploitation (Accessed 6 March 2020)

[15] Rosenblum, D. (2017) ‘How to Hire a Housekeeper – with a Clean Conscience’, NYNMedia, 6 June, https://www.nynmedia.com/news/how-to-hire-a-housekeeper-with-a-clean-conscience (Accessed 30 January 2020) 

[16] Ibid.

[17] Mancori, A. and Vicari, S. (2020) A Cooperative Story No. 8: Up & Go, New York, USA, recorded at Aroundtheworld 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QnB_jwcl3E&feature=emb_title (Accessed 6 March 2020) 

[18] MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge (2019) Center for Family Life in Sunset Park (CFL), https://www.mitinclusiveinnovation.com/winners/center-for-family-life-in-sunset-park-cfl/ (Accessed 6 March 2020) 

External Links

https://www.upandgo.coop/cms/terms

Notes

The first submission of this Participedia entry was adapted from a research project by the Institute of Development Studies, 'Linking Participation and Economic Advancement’ licensed and reproduced under Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0).

Original source: https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/15218