Against the Gig Economy: Confronting the 'Masterpiece' of Labor Exploitation

ABSTRACT

Objective:  in this essay, we analyze the gig economy as a sophisticated manifestation of labor exploitation in contemporary capitalism through a critical discussion of the management and control mechanisms applied to platform workers.

Thesis:  we argue that the gig economy constitutes the ‘masterpiece’ of labor exploitation, with spillover effects into other social spheres, by articulating a sophisticated management model and a regime of flexible accumulation that conceals its own structure and enables platform companies to intensify exploitation. We argue that this ‘masterpiece’ is grounded in a process of labor flexibilization, technological transformation, datafication, and social inequalities. We further argue that the management model of digital platforms operates through sophisticated strategies of worker control that combine, respectively, the coercive apparatus of algorithmic management and ideological co-optation.

Conclusion:  the metaphor of the ‘masterpiece’ is proposed as a conceptual exposition that highlights the sophistication and the concealment of control in the gig economy. Based on this metaphor, we offer theoretical reflections and critical inquiries regarding the structuring, rise, and consolidation of a new form of worker subsumption under capital. We claim that there is no alternative but to challenge, confront, and overcome the gig economy and, to that end, we discuss resistance practices adopted by workers.

Keywords:
gig economy; platform work; algorithms; non-standard employment; working conditions

RESUMO

Objetivos:  neste ensaio, analisamos a gig economy como uma manifestação sofisticada da exploração do trabalho no capitalismo contemporâneo, a partir da discussão crítica dos mecanismos de gestão e controle aplicados aos trabalhadores de plataformas.

Tese:  sustentamos que a gig economy constitui a ‘obra-prima’ da exploração do trabalho, com rebatimentos para outras esferas sociais, ao articular um modelo de gestão sofisticado e de acumulação flexível que oculta sua própria existência e permite às empresas-plataforma intensificar a exploração. Argumentamos que essa ‘obra-prima’ está alicerçada em um processo de flexibilização laboral, na transformação tecnológica, na dataficação e nas desigualdades sociais. Argumentamos, ainda, que o modelo de gestão das plataformas é operacionalizado por meio de estratégias sofisticadas de controle dos trabalhadores que combinam, respectivamente, o aparato coercitivo da gestão algorítmica e a cooptação ideológica.

Conclusão:  a metáfora da ‘obra-prima’ é proposta como exposição conceitual que evidencia a sofisticação e a dissimulação do controle na gig economy. A partir dela, como contribuição teórica, apresentamos reflexões e tensionamentos acerca da estruturação, ascensão e consolidação de uma nova forma de subsunção do trabalhador ao capital. Defendemos que não há alternativa senão contestar, combater e superar a gig economy e, para isso, discutimos formas de resistência adotadas pelos trabalhadores.

Palavras-chave:
gig economy; trabalho em plataformas digitais; algoritmos; emprego atípico; condições de trabalho

INTRODUCTION: PRESENTING THE ‘MASTERPIECE’

Since the late 20th century, labor relations have become increasingly flexible and precarious: temporary work, informal work, outsourcing, and other arrangements have weakened labor rights (Beck et al., 2025; Lott et al., 2022). Thus, the gig economy has emerged as an emblematic modality of precariousness driven by digital platforms that, in turn, connect companies and consumers to a global mass of workers who lack standard employment relations (Duggan et al., 2023; Meijerink & Bondarouk, 2023). It is important to highlight the wide heterogeneity of professions under the gig economy umbrella, which encompasses professionals linked to qualified and better-paid activities, such as information and communication technology professionals, journalists, designers, influencers, and digital content creators, as well as professionals engaged in simpler and lower-paid activities, such as crowdwork micro-workers, app-based drivers, and delivery workers (Vallas & Schor, 2020). We address reflections and critiques targeting delivery workers and their working conditions, respectively.

A substantial body of theory problematizing work management, organization, and control modes has been formed after more than a decade of academic research on this topic. This scenario was imposed by platform companies that have refuted the idea that workers are subordinate to them (Goods et al., 2024; Schor et al., 2023). These studies mainly highlight the pervasiveness and effects of algorithmic management in controlling, monitoring, assessing, and punishing workers (Cameron, 2024; Meijerink & Bondarouk, 2023; Zhu et al., 2024). Other studies have also emphasized the complexity of power relations established within the gig economy (Goods et al., 2024; Walker et al., 2021), the forms of exploitation underlying this labor relations model (Franco et al., 2023; Pankaj & Jha, 2024) and their implications both for the labor market (Vaclavik et al., 2022) and for human resource management (HRM) policies and practices (Duggan et al., 2023; Meijerink & Bondarouk, 2023).

The present analysis is grounded in critical management studies, mainly in the Marxist tradition, which guides its foundational categories in order to acknowledge these studies’ relevance and to trigger new reflections on labor and power relations within the gig economy. Nevertheless, we establish dialogues with authors known for following other epistemologies whenever necessary in order to emphasize relevant expository aspects related to the development of the ‘masterpiece’ metaphor. The adopted metaphor embodies an epistemological and analytical function, as it highlights the qualitatively distinct feature of labor exploitation in the gig economy. The novelty of the study does not lie in the principles of value extraction, but rather in how different management and control devices are combined to enhance the effectiveness and social legitimacy of the gig economy.

Accordingly, we analyze the gig economy as a sophisticated manifestation of labor exploitation in contemporary capitalism based on a critical discussion of the management and control mechanisms applied to platform workers. We advocate the thesis that the gig economy is the ‘masterpiece’ of labor exploitation because it has effects on other social spheres, as it uses a sophisticated management and flexible accumulation model to conceal its own existence and enable platform companies to intensify labor exploitation.

Thus, the ‘masterpiece’ metaphor illustrates why the gig economy is more than just the continuation of previous stages of labor exploitation. It is a wage labor phenomenon expressing the broad remodeling of capital’s management and control strategies and of its scaling capacity. The term ‘wage labor’ is not understood in correspondence with labor relations’ legal arrangements (formal, informal, self-employed, among others), but rather with the buying and selling of labor power. This process features labor exploitation and surplus value production, which are conditions sine qua non for capitalist sociability. The metaphor of the ‘masterpiece’ of exploitation is employed to highlight the aforementioned antithesis, as it helps point out that the sophistication of the gig economy lies in the mastery achieved by capital over the technological, organizational, and ideological mechanisms substantiating labor exploitation.

This metaphor is built through two interrelated arguments. First, work ‘flexibilization,’ technological development, datafication, and social inequalities are structuring and inseparable elements of the ‘masterpiece’ of exploitation. Second, algorithmic management and ideological co-optation are sophisticated management and control strategies aimed at expanding labor exploitation by obscuring the existence of management, producing workers’ consent, and weakening labor resistance. Based on these arguments, we present an integrative discussion on the foundations of the gig economy, the increasing sophistication of worker management and control strategies, forms of labor resistance, and the implications of these dynamics for understanding the ‘masterpiece’ of exploitation engendered by digital platforms.

THE ‘MASTERPIECE’ FOUNDATIONS

Far from exhausting the analytical possibilities, we argue that the rise and consolidation of the gig economy are grounded in four interrelated elements: work ‘flexibilization,’ technological development (development of productive forces), datafication, and social inequalities emerging from contradictions between capital and labor. Altogether, these elements allow a better understanding of how the gig economy cannot be detached from the evolution of accumulation patterns and the reproduction of the capitalist system. The so-called ‘alternative work arrangements’ are used to define simpler, more flexible, and less costly labor hiring models (Rubery et al., 2018; Gandini, 2019).

Capitalism is a hegemonic system that requires its own reformulation and that of its domination mechanisms, from time to time (Tirapani & Willmott, 2023). The aim of such reformulations is to maintain and reproduce the system, and to find solutions to its own crises, new forms of productivity gains, cost reduction, and, consequently, capital accumulation (Franco & Ferraz, 2019; Gandini, 2019). Despite their peculiarities and implications, some examples of these transformations include the Taylorism-Fordism binomial, Toyotism, globalization, economic ‘financialization,’ neoliberalism (Tessarini et al., 2023) and, more recently, digital platforms (Srnicek, 2017).

In essence, the gig economy reflects a continuous and global process of work ‘flexibilization’ that emerged in the late 20th century. At that time, the industrial/productive sphere became subjected to a volatile and ephemeral financial sphere, alongside an unbearable level of international competition that, in turn, did not accept state regulation (Sennett, 2016), although its technological development was heavily financed by public funds. This process is currently known as flexible accumulation (Harvey, 1992). Society increasingly deals with short-term relations, time restructuring, more flexible institutions, and the creation of new forms of power and control over workers under this new regime (Sennett, 2016). More flexible labor rules emerged as a sort of hegemonic and inseparable feature of the capitalist mode of production (Tessarini et al., 2023). Everything must be flexible according to the interests of capital: organizational structures, production processes, management and control methods, labor relations, and, ultimately, the workers themselves (Sennett, 2016). Contexts of transformation were established as attempts to normalize alternative and flexible forms of labor hiring, including precarious and insecure ones (Rubery et al., 2018).

The capacity to virtually and globally mobilize and control a huge spectrum of workers is what distinguishes the gig economy from other flexible work arrangements (Duggan et al., 2023; Zhu et al., 2024). The business model adopted by platform companies turns them into large global corporations that operate with little or no regulation (Liang et al., 2022). They benefit from the lack of burdens and labor costs intrinsic to the business activity, which then leads to unfair competition in comparison to the environment faced by traditional companies (Vallas & Schor, 2020). Therefore, platform companies have consolidated a new stage of capitalism in which the production, circulation, and reproduction of social life are technologically intertwined. This new scenario opens productive and innovative possibilities, as well as enables new forms of labor exploitation and precariousness (Ferraz et al., 2021).

This new stage was made possible by the development of productive forces, mainly through the information and communication technology apparatus, which enabled broader simultaneous real-time control over the work of thousands of people. The following factors opened the doors to the aforementioned process: the production and distribution of fiber optic cables across the globe, the spread of mobile devices, internet popularization, the creation of data centers, and the combined use of neuroscience and algorithms (Filgueiras, 2022).

However, it is important to briefly highlight the contradictions of technological advancement within this societal structure. According to Lukács (2013), technology, which comprises a complex of techniques, models, and apparatuses developed by the social being to transform nature in its constant self-engenderment, must be understood within a historical, human, and social process that takes into consideration how the labor process and its relations are structured and that, above all, recognizes that technology is not neutral. Filgueiras (2022) synthesized that “the mere fact that technical capacity advancement in a society becomes a problem shows a central contradiction of capitalism” (p. 3). If this contradiction between technical advancement and its enjoyment by individuals is part of capitalist development, it was exacerbated in the era of platform-mediated work, when ‘innovation’ and ‘technology,’ rather than reducing working hours and improving average living standards, ended up achieving precisely the opposite.

One observation lies at the center of this technological development: “twenty-first-century capitalism has found a massive new raw material to appropriate: data” (Srnicek, 2017, p. 50). Faustino and Lippold (2023) highlighted how the so-called ‘big techs’ (large corporations in the digital technology sector) play a key role in capital accumulation processes in the current stage of capitalism. The process of turning actions, behaviors, and interactions into quantifiable data aimed at enabling tracking and predictive analyses expresses developments in datafication (Van Dijck, 2017). Digital platforms have become an increasingly effective mechanism for organizing companies in order to monopolize such data; in other words, to extract, analyze, use, and eventually sell them (Srnicek, 2017). Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon, Netflix, Uber, and a multitude of corporations are examples of platforms that have emerged, become dominant, and, apparently, indispensable to mankindd (Duggan et al., 2023).

Zuboff (2021), disclosed how the digital footprints produced through everyday interactions are systematically captured, turned into commodities, and integrated into an accumulation regime based on surveillance. Accordingly, data embody a strategic role in both value extraction and the modulation of social behaviors. Ferraz et al. (2021) further observed that data also play a core role in value creation and in reorganizing contemporary modes of production. They highlighted the productive use of information and new technologies as instruments of capitalist accumulation. However, it is important to emphasize that datafication should not be understood, by itself, as if it had intrinsic value. This is so because its value depends on how data are appropriated and used within the capitalist system. This process defines who collects, profits from, and is exploited through data collection and processing.

Although the gig economy is a global phenomenon, its effects differ across contexts (Huang, 2023), and have a particular impact on peripheral economies or on the economies of countries in the Global South, such as Brazil (Abílio et al., 2021; Vaclavik et al., 2022), This finding highlights the fourth foundation: social inequality. When we shift our focus to these economies, it is easy to observe how aspects of precariousness typically associated with the gig economy are part of these countries’ historical reality, which is characterized by informality, income intermittency, and self-employment (Amorim & Moda, 2020; Vaclavik et al., 2022). These elements form peripheral ways of life; they are appropriated, centralized, and rationalized by platforms to become management and value extraction devices, besides reinforcing preexisting social cleavage (Abílio, 2020).

According to Paiva (2025), platform-mediated work finds fertile ground in Brazil, just as it does in other countries characterized by peripheral capitalism. This scenario results both from productive restructuring and the crisis of capital, as well as from the conditions under which the national working class finds itself. These conditions encompass structural unemployment (a stagnant relative overpopulation) and attacks on social rights. This point is also emphasized by Neves (2022) and Abílio et al. (2021). Vaclavik et al. (2022) argued that the gig economy gave new meaning to informality and self-employment in Brazil. They referred to it as ‘managing the informal economy.’ This process allows global digital platforms to economically exploit activities that are typically informal in the country (e.g., delivery services), as well as enables their expansion and reconfiguration. In other words, the operating strategy of big tech companies in the gig economy lies in accurately targeting places with a large labor force availability and where living conditions are below the average standards of the working class. Therefore, workers in these regions are more prone to accept high workloads for low wages (Paiva, 2025).

This condition is reflected in some indicators. The number of workers on Brazilian digital platforms was close to 1.7 million in 2024. This number sheds light on an increase of more than 25% in comparison to 2022 (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística [IBGE], 2025). Only 23% of this total autonomously contributed to the Brazilian social security system - this number reached approximately 40% in 2016. The remaining gig workers were employed in the informal sector (Martins et al., 2023). These individuals worked across more than 120 digital platforms in the country: 19% of them were in the delivery sector and 10% in the transportation sector (Carneiro et al., 2023). These indicators point toward a trend of vulnerability and growing precariousness among gig economy workers in Brazil. This scenario is simultaneously accompanied by the exponential growth of this labor force.

However, we understand that this issue is no longer just about informal and precarious work, but rather about its configuration in light of the entrepreneurship ideology supported by the ‘autonomy and freedom’ flag. The gig economy promises workers the much-desired freedom, yet offers nothing more than instability, uncertainty, and vulnerability; furthermore, it seeks to convince them that it is the best option. This observation reflects one of the facets of this ‘masterpiece.

THE ‘MASTERPIECE’ SOPHISTICATION

Consensus shows that platform-mediated work can control the labor process through algorithms. This approach is much more Taylorist than the time-motion methods applied by its precursor. However, the main issue does not concern this aspect, because there is already a substantial body of management knowledge on this topic. Rather, the focus should be on how platform companies deploy a set of coercive and ideological mechanisms to justify informal work, albeit not without rules. Thus, our argument lies in the fact that platform companies adopt increasingly sophisticated management and control strategies to expand labor exploitation in the gig economy by concealing the very existence of management, while obtaining workers’ consent and weakening labor resistance.

We present and discuss two interrelated strategies, namely: algorithmic management (the coercive face) and co-optation (the ideological face).

Algorithmic management model: the coercive face

The use of algorithms on gig economy platforms leads to sophisticated modes of work management, organization, and control (Huang, 2023; Kellogg et al., 2020). This strategy is effective in assessing, monitoring, engaging, remunerating, and, ultimately, punishing workers (Cameron, 2024; Duggan et al., 2023). We can assert that algorithmic management redefines how human resource management (HRM) policies and practices are traditionally conceived and implemented by organizations (Rezende et al., 2025), Therefore, they externalize management sophistication and what the literature has conventionally named algorithmic HRM (Duggan et al., 2023; Meijerink & Bondarouk, 2023). This sophistication emerges from algorithmic management, which is an omnipresent management model encompassing all activities performed by workers. Moreover, it also directly and/or indirectly includes other non-organizational actors in the worker control process, such as customers and merchants (Duggan et al., 2023; Zhu et al., 2024).

Notably, platform workers are exclusively remunerated based on the amount of performed tasks, and this feature is known as piece-rate pay. As emphasized by Paiva (2025): from a Marxian perspective, the goal is not to assess the value of the piece based on embodied labor time, but rather to measure workers’ effort based on the amount of produced pieces. Thus, while time-based salaries take into account the duration of labor activity, piece-rate pay considers the number of products materializing labor within a given period of time. Each delivery carried out by a delivery worker, or each passenger transportation service performed by a driver, corresponds to a task. In other words, workers are paid only ‘by commission’: those who produce more earn more; i.e., those who work longer hours, even while facing exhaustion and the risk of accidents.

Sophistication lies in the ability to bring the gig economy closer to scientific management along Taylorist lines (Duggan et al., 2023; Mika & Polkowska, 2024), It must simultaneously set obstacles to workers’ perception of exploitation and collective organization against these practices. This scenario features the labor precarization process that, in turn, enables the broadening of labor force exploitation, as workers must remain permanently connected to the platforms in order to obtain tasks. However, they are not paid for the time spent available between tasks, nor for rest time (if there is any) (Franco et al., 2023; Muldoon & Raekstad, 2023). Moreover, the funds kept by platforms after each task as an ‘intermediation fee’ can vary and are unilaterally defined by the platforms themselves. Thus, workers have no decision-making power (Franco et al., 2023).

Performance appraisal is another practice promoting significant changes in algorithmic management. It is based on the use of two main strategies. First, platforms define a worker classification system based on the rate of accepted and canceled tasks (Gandini, 2019; Zhu et al., 2024). Second, workers receive ratings assigned by customers after the completion of each task. Scores range from 1 to 5 stars and form the workers’ reputation system and a sort of ‘management by customers’ (Gandini, 2019; Wood & Lehdonvirta, 2023), It is important to highlight the limited transparency regarding the adopted criteria (Kellogg et al., 2020). The indicators established by these two forms of control are not trivial. Platform companies hierarchize workers and define rewards and punishments based on them. These elements are indispensable to algorithmic management (Duggan et al., 2023; Huang, 2023).

This hierarchy helps spread the idea that work is, in fact, a competition or a ‘game’ (Mika & Polkowska, 2024), that can be won through adherence to quality standards based on informal, opaque, and uncertain criteria (Abílio, 2019). This metaphorical conception of work as a ‘game’ is associated with gamification techniques widely applied by platform companies to stimulate workers’ engagement and productivity through scoring, rewarding, and competition systems (Zhu et al., 2024). Vasudevan and Chan (2022) emphasized that workers must adopt two main strategies in this ‘game’: ‘grinding’ - repeatedly performing tasks and engaging in challenges to achieve the goals proposed by the platform - and ‘opposition,’ asserting their autonomy, attempting to outmaneuver the algorithm in order to obtain higher financial gains and gain social recognition from other workers. Such dynamics update the ‘work games’ metaphor proposed by Burawoy (1979) and show how workers become involved in productivity targets defined by managers, which turns competition into a form of engagement. The same author argues that workers become more concerned with ‘winning the game’ when seeking rewards and recognition than with the working conditions themselves. This process turns workmates into ‘adversaries,’ which reinforces managerial control.

Platform companies often provide bonuses and financial incentives as rewards. In essence, these are labor management mechanisms. There is little novelty regarding this topic in comparison to what was advocated by Taylorism, Fordism, and Toyotism, as these systems keep work under the logic of productivity, discipline, and obedience. Workers can receive rewards by accepting a sequence of tasks, completing a minimum number of tasks within a previously established period of time, and relocating themselves to regions known for higher predictable customer demand (e.g., rush hours) or sporadic demand (e.g., specific events) (Cameron, 2024; Rezende et al., 2025). The better the worker’s indicators, the more tasks and better incentives they may receive (Meijerink & Bondarouk, 2023; Zhu et al., 2024).

Punishments reaffirm the coercive face of platform companies. These punishments are expressed through threats, lower task supply, temporary suspensions, and permanent exclusion from the platform (Cameron, 2024). They often occur when workers record low acceptance rates, high cancellation rates, or when they are poorly evaluated by customers (Abílio, 2019; Duggan et al., 2023). However, they are not uncommonly arbitrary and unfair (Zhu et al., 2024). Studies have shown the absence of transparency or standardized criteria for the application of sanctions (Rezende et al., 2025), and the absence of a ‘right to defense’ in order to contest punishments (Zhu et al., 2024) furthermore, they often result from bias and prejudice, including race- and gender-related prejudice (Pankaj & Jha, 2024). Punishments also reveal the precarious character of this work. There is no firing because there is no hiring; there is merely exclusion, the erasure of workers (Abílio, 2019).

Co-optation: the ideological face

The sophistication of management and control strategies also lies in their subtler, more diffuse, and less perceptible face of control, known as ideological co-optation. What we call co-optation engages with the concept of subjectivation proposed by Fleming and Spicer (2014) which refers to a way of exercising power in order to influence the process of building subjectivities and shaping the self, as well as individuals’ experiences and emotions. This concept also engages with the sense of governmentality proposed by Foucault and revisited by Dardot and Laval (2016), It refers to embodying rationalities that allow individuals to govern themselves according to neoliberal imperatives. However, although these formulations are closely related, the idea of co-optation emphasizes the strategic, situated, and relational dimension of the exercise of power in labor relations, which is intentionally mobilized by organizations to legitimize structures of domination and expand exploitation.

Thus, what we understand as co-optation within the scope of the gig economy is distinguished by the representation of a set of symbolic, discursive, and ideological strategies used by capitalist organizations to obtain workers’ consent. This strategy seeks to involve and seduce workers so that they legitimize an unequal power structure and direct their psychic energy toward maintaining this ‘order.’ This aspect sheds light on the notion of consent by highlighting how workers legitimize subordination and authority relations that stand in contrast to the notion of resistance (Burawoy, 1979). Accordingly, rather than merely describing a general mode of subject production, the concept of co-optation shows how values such as autonomy, flexibility, and entrepreneurship are ‘instrumentalized’ in order to turn domination into submission, disguised as autonomy and experienced as choice. Therefore, it becomes an obstacle to class consciousness.

The ‘be your own boss’ rhetoric stands out from the outset as a means to enable control over one’s own working hours and to obtain incomes higher than the national minimum wage, based on the practices of platform companies. Thus, discourses expressing aversion to being formally employed as a registered worker under the CLT (in reference to the Brazilian Consolidation of Labor Laws) have not been reinforced accidentally. This rhetoric constitutes the backstage of our argument, according to which the co-optation promoted by digital platforms primarily operates through the dissemination of the supposed ideology of entrepreneurial spirit (Ferraz & Ferraz, 2022), This feature reflects the practice of precarious entrepreneurship characterizing micro and small businesses in Brazil. Based on Meszáros (2004, p. 65), ideology is “a specific form of social consciousness, materially grounded and sustained”; in other words, it is rooted in the material conditions of social life. Thus, this ideology blurs subordination relations and establishes ways of thinking and acting that often hinder the development of critical consciousness.

Therefore, becoming an ‘entrepreneur’ would be the solution to fight the ills of capitalism, such as poverty and inequality, and to pursue prosperity and social mobility, as if the solution to the problems engendered by contemporary capitalism were ‘capitalism in small individual capsules’. The belief in self-management is the ideological expression sustaining the sought consent. It is worth observing that entrepreneurial practices in Brazil have served as a means of pauperizing the working class over the last 40 years, as well as an obstacle to collective organization and a mechanism for the expansion of capitalist accumulation. Capitalism has fed on this ideology to intensify competition among formally free individual workers, weaken working-class resistance through class struggles, and maintain bourgeois domination (Ferraz & Ferraz, 2022).

Studies have pointed out that app-based drivers may see themselves as entrepreneurs because they use their own vehicles and manage the costs of their own activity (Yasih, 2023); They also consider themselves their own bosses (Purcell & Brook, 2022); have the ability to choose their working hours (Valente et al., 2019); and guide their interaction with customers/passengers (Gandini, 2019); among other aspects. The belief that work is an individual action that is both necessary and sufficient to solve social problems, such as unemployment and underemployment, is also legitimized in the gig economy; therefore, it helps valorize meritocracy and individualism (Amorim & Moda, 2020). This legitimization takes place across different socioeconomic contexts, which make the gig economy ‘masterpiece’ even more complex and sophisticated. Studies conducted in countries such as Brazil (Queiroz et al., 2025), Australia (Purcell & Brook, 2022) anda Indonesia (Yasih, 2023) have shown how workers accept and reproduce these discourses, while valuing their autonomy and entrepreneurial status.

These beliefs make workers assume responsibility for all business costs and risks, namely: cars, mobile phones, internet access, passenger safety, among others (Franco & Ferraz, 2019; Gandini, 2019), Yet, this is still perceived as a fair exchange for the ‘autonomy and freedom’ provided by the platforms (Yasih, 2023). Thus, workers are subordinated to a sort of ‘ghost employer,’ to an invisible managerial figure that controls them continuously and covertly (Bucher et al., 2021; Gandini, 2019). Platform companies conceal labor exploitation through the discursive mask of innovation, convenience, and lower prices in comparison to the same ‘non-platformized’ services by presenting themselves merely as technology companies whose function is to mediate the relationship between workers and customers (Franco et al., 2023). However, this mask is not sustained only by corporate rhetoric; it is amplified and naturalized by the media, advertising, and an entire cultural production that reinforces the values of entrepreneurship, meritocracy, and individual freedom. Partnerships with mainstream media and political lobbying aimed at preventing the regulation of this sector exemplify this articulation.

However, above all, ideologies emerge and adhere to social consciousness in the everyday work process and in lived experiences. This set of ideas is disseminated and taken as truth because of material bases such as information and communication technologies, algorithmic management, structural unemployment, lack of rights, low wages, moral and sexual harassment, among others, which are controlled by big tech companies (the capitalist class) and provide the necessary conditions for their manifestation. Hence, ideological co-optation helps platform companies establish a labor relation in the gig economy according to which the supposed autonomy entails a high cost, namely: the expansion of labor exploitation through the growth of precariousness. It somehow ‘glamorizes’ precarious work by selling a poor commodity (uncertain, insecure work without rights) in more sophisticated packaging (flexibility, autonomy, freedom). Co-optation leads to a process of workers’ adhesion and to consent regarding the platform management model. Consequently, this process softens workers’ perceptions of precarious working conditions. Awareness of precarious work is damaged, and workers become ‘partners’ in their own exploitation as soon as they legitimize the ideology and discourse of entrepreneurship.

RESISTING THE ‘MASTERPIECE’

The gig economy ‘masterpiece’ is not unassailable, despite its sophistication and creativity. Although ideological co-optation seeks to alienate and seduce workers in order to obtain their consent, believing in individuals’ total alienation is a mistake made both by platforms and by many social scientists dedicated to assessing the labor phenomenon. Despite their deliberate attempt to weaken labor resistance, platform companies actually operate under a sort of ‘illusion of control’ (Woodcock, 2020): as they can do a lot, but they cannot do everything

Workers may sabotage platforms by persuading customers to request private services through ‘off-app’ arrangements or to migrate to other ‘more advantageous’ platforms if they face lagging remuneration or punishments resulting from customer evaluations, for example (Maffie, 2022). Studies have also pointed out that virtual communities built on social networks such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook foster workers’ mutual support and care, as well as information and experience sharing, which can lead to concrete changes in work practices (Le Breton & Galière, 2023).

Likewise, collective organization and mobilization through unions, associations, self-managed cooperatives, movements, and political-party engagement are effective means of social transformation, although precarious and individualized working conditions impair the achievement of such organization (Walker et al., 2021). Umney et al. (2024), identified two main dimensions in gig workers’ protests across more than 1,200 global cases: (1) distributive protests organized by workers themselves in pursuit of better working conditions; and (2) regulatory protests led by unions seeking regulation and justice in labor relations.

Moreover, one of the most prominent labor resistance strategies lies in the so-called platform cooperativism (Le Lay & Lemozy, 2023). This term is used to refer to digital platforms organized around cooperative principles, such as collective ownership, self-management, and democratic and transparent decision-making (Scholz, 2016). There are plenty of examples of such platforms, even in Brazil, as discussed by Grohmann (2022) in a study on delivery workers’ cooperatives and collectives. In addition, worker-owned platforms also exist without necessarily being cooperatives. This is so because self-managed experiences can take place under several different contexts and arrangements, including non-formally institutionalized ones (Grohmann, 2023). More than businesses’ legal structure, what is actually at stake is the resistance aimed at shifting power from multinational platform companies to workers (Grohmann, 2022; Le Lay & Lemozy, 2023).

CONCLUSION: AFTER ALL, WHY A ‘MASTERPIECE’?

Just as Guernica relates to Pablo Picasso and Mona Lisa, to Leonardo da Vinci, the gig economy relates to labor exploitation. If a masterpiece expresses the technical and aesthetic mastery of an artist over their creation, we may assert that platformization expresses the mastery of capital over the technological, organizational, and ideological means enabling labor exploitation in a more sophisticated manner, both through coercive algorithmic management and ideological co-optation. This is why the ‘masterpiece’ metaphor was chosen to characterize the gig economy as a historical model of labor exploitation marked not by the disruption of previous logics, but by their sophistication, scaling, and expansion. The centrality of platforms as agents of productive relations redefines forms of subordination by deepening the structural asymmetry between capital and labor.

From an analytical standpoint, this metaphor discloses labor exploitation. Although it remains grounded in the private appropriation of produced value, it comes to operate through more complex organizational devices capable of intensifying control while simultaneously concealing their own existence. The gig economy presents itself as innovative, technologically neutral, and pro-meritocracy, just as in a work of art where technical means often become invisible in the final product. It conceals the mechanisms substantiating labor exploitation, the expansion of dependency, and the weakening of collective action. This metaphor was mobilized herein so that we could show dimensions of the labor process that functionalist approaches to productive organizations tend to normalize. Therefore, it helps provide a better understanding of the gig economy as an up-to-date moment in labor submission to the logics of capital valorization.

As we have argued, this ‘masterpiece’ also presupposes attempts to obtain workers’ consent and weaken labor resistance. These goals can only be achieved if workers are placed in a social reality characterized by profound economic, political, and social inequality. Twenty-first-century capitalism has reached an unprecedented level of sophistication when it comes to its ability to expand the exploitation of a growing mass of workers across the globe, mainly in peripheral countries. The metaphor reveals how exploitation can become so sophisticated that it appears as autonomy in this scenario. After all, we are living in a time when unemployment, low wages, and poverty coexist with narratives of innovation and entrepreneurial freedom. These elements are captured by platform companies and painted with a technological and meritocratic camouflage. Accordingly, the gig economy is the most elaborate picture of a world in which precarity has not only been produced, but also ‘glamorized,’ turned into entrepreneurship, and sold as the promise of a better future and life.

This ‘glamorized’ scene hides a system that transfers costs and risks to workers, that organizes and disperses labor while keeping control over it, that radically transforms labor relations and HRM modes, and that allows platform companies to operate without significant regulation and without much of the risk inherent to the business activity. At the same time, these companies work to weaken collective resistance, infiltrate social movements, resort to digital influencers, and attempt to criminalize leaders who emerge from labor struggles. Taylor, Henry Ford, Peter Drucker, Henri Fayol, and other ‘gurus’ of management would certainly be impressed by the excellence and near perfection of platform companies’ business model.

It is clear that the power project orchestrated by the gig economy lies in organizing a new stage of capitalism aimed at exploiting the working class. If the productive restructuring of the late 20th century consolidated a regime of flexible accumulation, as highlighted by Harvey (1992), mankind is currently confronting a digital restructuring aimed at consolidating a new capitalism based on a data-driven accumulation regime (Srnicek, 2017). This is the datafication of workers’ lives and labor. In other words, the power project of the gig economy is based on forging itself as a hegemonic and indispensable apparatus of everyday life. Individuals must believe that simple services, such as passenger transportation and food delivery, cannot exist without a mobile app. This perception has normalized the idea that individuals can perform their activities through long working hours, without social rights, and under unhealthy conditions, as long as these services make life easier.

We argue that the gig economy must be contested, confronted, and overcome. Thus, if platform companies disseminate the idea that work is a ‘game,’ we can also assert that it is still ‘being played.’ The near perfection of this business model comes up against considerable examples of resistance, which, in turn, are becoming increasingly larger and more organized. Work fragmentation and individualization, the decline of unions, and ideological co-optation can weaken resistance, but they do not eliminate it. Opposing the gig economy does not mean being against digital platforms, nor against technological development; rather, it means opposing an accumulation model that oppresses and exploits workers who often have no other alternative to support themselves and their families. It means opposing global corporations that are little or not at all committed to the social and environmental impacts of their activities. It means opposing a phenomenon that tends to advance across all professions and aspects of everyday life. We will all become gig workers, ‘uberized,’ ‘platformized,’ and exploited by ‘simple apps’ installed on everybody’s smartphones.

On the other hand, opposing the gig economy means being in favor of other management and organizational models in which technology and digital platforms, which are notably products of human labor, are not turned into instruments of exploitation against workers themselves. Platform cooperativism and other forms of democratic ownership can represent an important path toward the workers’ (re)appropriation of technologies and platforms. After all, even if it appears increasingly utopian, we must not forget the resistance and struggles for a different, fairer, and more sustainable social life, one not driven by capitalist logic.

Thus, departing from the pattern, we do not conclude this essay with a proposal for future research, but with two questions that may inspire scholars in the field of work and organizations: How can workers deal with management and control models that exploit them, make them ill, and, not rarely, kill them? What is the role of researchers in confronting this reality?

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• Funding
  The authors thank the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, nº 421374/2022-5 and 150094/2025-6; the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, nº 88887.717950/2022-00; and the Universidade de São Paulo, and for the assistance provided through the Call for Proposals USP ODS-ONU (Portaria PRP nº 778, de September 21, 2020).
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• Cite as:
  Tessarini, G. Junior, Rodrigues, A. C. A., Ferraz, J. M., & Amorin, W. A. C. (2026). Against the Gig Economy: Confronting the “masterpiece” of labor exploitation. Revista de Administração Contemporânea, 30(3), e250276. https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-7849rac2026250276.en
• JEL Code:
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Edited by

• Editor-in-chief:
  Paula Chimenti (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, COPPEAD, Brazil) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6492-4072

• Associate Editor:
  Ariston Azevedo (Instituto Federal do do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8347-9077

Data availability

RAC encourages data sharing but, in compliance with ethical principles, it does not demand the disclosure of any means of identifying research subjects, preserving the privacy of research subjects. The practice of open data is to enable the reproducibility of results, and to ensure the unrestricted transparency of the results of the published research, without requiring the identity of research subjects.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 Aug 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  29 July 2025
• Reviewed
  13 Feb 2026
• Accepted
  12 Mar 2026
• Published
  27 May 2026