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Fairwork Annual Report 2022: The Year in Review
On the final day of this year, Fairwork is very pleased to announce the release of our Annual Report for 2022. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the global economy looked like they might be receding, the eruption of war in Ukraine brought fuel shortages and the disruption of supply chains, leading to inflation and a cost of living crisis which hit workers everywhere – and particularly platforms workers lacking the traditional protections of employment.
Nonetheless, 2022 has seen the Fairwork project extend to a total of 38 countries across 5 continents. Our researchers have applied the 5 principles of fair work to study a wide range of gig economy platforms, thus providing an invaluable tool for understanding working conditions in the platform economy. In 2022, for the first time, we released Fairwork ratings for platforms in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Egypt, France, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, and Tanzania.
Since the project was launched in 2018, we’ve published a total of 33 countries reports and produced 353 platform ratings. This report explains how the Fairwork principles were applied in order to produce 164 platform ratings in 2022, as well as our second international report on Cloudwork platforms, and about the launch of an exciting new project: Fairwork AI. For this project, we have developed a set of principles to guide the deployment of AI systems in the workplace to help ensure that the use of AI is not the detriment of workers. The Fairwork Pledge now has six partner institutions and 35 supporters while the Fairwork Observatory continues to study platforms outside of our standard national league tables.
The Fairwork methodology centres on the experiences and concerns of workers. Our aim is not merely to research working conditions, but to shape policy and dialogue in order to change them for the better. In 2022, our engagement with platforms lead to 63 changes to their practices and policies. Having written 13 op-eds and newspaper articles, nine academic articles and chapters and having been mentioned by over 220 media pieces this year alone, we are excited to see what we can achieve in 2023.