The Observatory is led by Dr Partrick Feuerstein, at the Berlin Social Science Research Center (WZB), and works in collaboration with Fairwork teams around the world.
In its first year of operation the Observatory has started to work on four campaigns:
The first campaign addresses working conditions of domestic workers in the MENA region. Carried out by our team in Egypt, this campaign tries to analyse whether domestic work platforms can serve as an alternative to the often-deplorable conditions of work in this sector.
The second campaign focusses on the ride-hailing sector in Nigeria. Targeting one of the most vibrant markets in Africa, the campaign will highlight working conditions on some of the most relevant ride-hailing platforms in order to also support local unions in organizing platform workers in Lagos.
The third Observatory campaign extends our cloudwork ratings by generating additional scores for translation and transcription platforms, a market segment that is most relevant for different groups of customers in the Global North and that provides important income opportunities for skilled workers in the Global South. By highlighting differences between platforms offering these kinds of services we aim to make our scores even more relevant for, among others, academic institutions and private companies. By providing crucial information to inform their business activities, we also hope to convince them to support fair working conditions by signing the Fairwork Pledge.
Explore ratings Read reportRead Consumer handbook
Lastly, the Observatory is engaged in a campaign that intends to use our principles to advise one of the biggest global delivery platforms, “Glovo”, on how to improve working conditions for their platform’s riders. This campaign includes the creation of additional scorecards for Glovo in countries not covered by our network so far. Beyond the primary purpose of positively influencing working conditions on a global platform, the campaign will thus also generate interesting cross-regional comparative perspectives on the impact of different institutional and regulatory frameworks on working conditions in the platform economy.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
This cookie remains on your computer for 365 days, but you can adjust your preferences at any time by clicking on the "Cookie settings" link in the website footer.
Please note that if you visit the Oxford University website, any cookies you accept there will appear on our site here too, this being a subdomain. To control them, you must change your cookie preferences on the main University website.
This website uses the following additional cookies from third party websites:
These cookies will remain on your computer for 365 days, but you can edit your preferences at any time through the "Cookie Settings" in the website footer.
This website uses Google Tags and Google Analytics to collect anonymised information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages. Keeping these cookies enabled helps the OII improve our website.
Enabling this option will allow cookies from:
These cookies will remain on your website for 365 days, but you can edit your cookie preferences at any time via the "Cookie Settings" button in the website footer.