Article

Journal of Industrial Relations

2019, Vol. 61(4) 574–596
Labor control in the ! Australian Labour and
Employment Relations Association

gig economy: Evidence (ALERA) 2019

SAGE Publications Ltd,

from Uber in China Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,

Singapore and Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/0022185619854472
journals.sagepub.com/home/jir
Qingjun Wu, Hao Zhang , Zhen Li and
Kai Liu
Renmin University of China, China

Abstract
The rapid development of digital platform businesses has facilitated the expansion of gig
work in China and elsewhere in recent years. Now that IT-powered platforms have
been used in part to free the capital from taking employer responsibilities, the capital’s
toolkit for labor control has been significantly limited. Drawing on qualitative field
research supplemented by quantitative data on Uber in China, this article provides a
novel empirical account of the labor control of digital platforms, and more importantly,
their effects on different types of workers. The authors have identified three crucial
strategies that Uber has devised to control its drivers’ labor process: an incentive pay
system, a customer evaluation system, and flexible work arrangements. These strategies
will, however, demonstrate significant effects on drivers’ working hours and income
only when we consider the different motivations of Uber drivers. Specifically, the work-
ing efforts of those who drive for Uber as their only source of income are responsive to
incentive pay schemes and a platform’s evaluation system, but are not as responsive to
work flexibility. The exact opposite is the case for drivers who have other jobs and
sources of income.

Keywords
China, digital platform, gig work, labor control, labor process

Introduction
Numerous digital platforms have emerged in recent years offering a wealth of dif-
ferent services. In an idealistic sense, economists believe such platforms can realize
an instant match between supply and demand in a given market, minimizing the

Corresponding author:
Hao Zhang, Labor Relations, Renmin University of China, 59 Zhongguancun Avenue, Haidian District,
Beijing 100872, China.
Email: zhang-hao@ruc.edu.cn
Wu et al. 575

transaction costs through these IT-powered platforms (Schmidt, 2017). These indus-
tries have therefore attracted a wealth of investment from global capital that specu-
lates on their profitability in the long run. In the labor market, these platforms have
accentuated the emergence of what is being called a ‘gig economy’, having attracted a
large number of workers to engage in various forms of flexible work. The number of
online platform-based workers has increased rapidly. In the United States alone,
0.5% of all workers in 2015 were found to have engaged in some form of platform-
based work (Katz and Krueger, 2016). A similar gig economy has emerged in China.
Specifically, China’s State Information Center (2019) estimated that 75 million
people in China had offered work through digital platforms in 2018.
In granting workers work flexibility, platform companies do not give direct
commands to arrange the working hours and schedules of their workers. And a
worker is not committed to any specific platform, but can switch platforms to take
other work tasks by simply opening another app. In light of this, we ask how any
single platform can secure quality service and a sufficient and stable labor supply
without such traditional labor control tools. In other words, if the current trend of
‘Uberization’ of work has fundamentally restructured labor–capital relations in
many traditional sectors, what alternative and innovative strategies have platforms
developed in order to control their workers? Unfortunately, while there seems to be
consensus amongst scholars that alternative control tactics have indeed been devel-
oped, the toolkit for platform companies regarding labor control remains some-
thing of a mystery. Some legal scholars have examined how digital platforms
organize their labor process and control their workers, and have noted strategies
that include the use of ‘big data’, mobile phone apps as well as customer evaluation
(Aloisi, 2016; De Stefano, 2016; Veen et al., 2019). Less is known, however, regard-
ing how the workers themselves react to different platforms’ strategies. It is one
thing to devise innovative strategies that seek to control labor, but it is another to
actually win workers’ consent through the application of such tactics.
This article provides a novel empirical account of the labor control strategies of
digital platforms and their effects, using Uber in China as an example. In particular,
it focuses on an important taxonomy of Uber drivers – namely whether Uber driving
constitutes their sole source of income – and examines the effects that Uber’s labor
control strategies may have on these different types of workers. Since the existing
literature on the subject does not offer much of a theoretical basis to derive specific
hypotheses for testing, a qualitative inductive approach is utilized for this study to
conduct exploratory research and identify the important strategies that Uber uses to
control its drivers. The authors have also constructed a major dataset with the help
of Uber. Some of the data from the dataset are used in this article to show the effects
of Uber’s labor control strategies over drivers’ working hours and income.

Relevant literature
The theme of labor control has been gaining limited but growing scholarly atten-
tion in recent research on digital platform-based economy. This pertains to two
576 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

theoretical perspectives. The first is the legal perspective. Labor and employment
law scholars recommend examining managerial tactics in order to determine the
existence of employment relationships within gig work. They have focused their
efforts on the specific control tactics of digital platforms but have often overlooked
the effects of these strategies on workers. The second is the labor process perspec-
tive. Derived from Marxist thinking, labor process theory provides great insights
into understanding class subsumption and conflict between labor and capital in
modern workplaces. But scholars have just started to apply the labor process theory
to the new platform-based economy and have not generated much empirical work.

Legal perspective
The labor control of capital has become one of the key features that define employ-
ment relationships in the modern legal regimes for labor and employment.
‘Employees agree to be economically dependent on their employers by relinquish-
ing control over many aspects of their work lives (and, to some extent, their eco-
nomic futures) and, in return, employers must provide workers with a degree of
economic security’ (Harris and Krueger, 2015: 7). In other words, labor control
and employer responsibility are two sides of the same coin. In the United States, for
instance, various laws have factored the theme of control – that is, whether the
employer maintains control over pay, time, work manners, means of production,
and other work-related issues – in their determination tests for employee status.
Through such tests, workers are divided into two categories, namely, independent
contractors and employees. The user firms of independent contractors are
exempted from many legal employer obligations, including minimum wages,
social insurance contribution, and refraining from employment discrimination
(Harris and Krueger, 2015). In China, where this study was conducted, the
courts draw on the Labor Ministry’s 2005 ‘Notice on Various Issues Regarding
the Determination of Employment Relationships’. It constitutes one of the three
defining features of employment relationships in this regulation if the employer
disciplines, manages, compensates, and schedules work for a worker.
In its latest developments, capital has begun proactively restructuring the labor
process by utilizing digital platforms in traditional industries in order to avoid
assuming employer responsibilities and to achieve cost-effectiveness on a larger
scale (Friedman, 2014). However, this process of informalization has greatly
limited capital’s toolkit for labor control. In particular, through such new systems,
continuous employment relationships have been fragmented into small task assign-
ments. Work tasks are assigned and scheduled via virtual networks and smart-
phone apps. In this process, a feeling of ‘bosslessness’ has emerged amongst
workers, as this process provides these workers with the illusion that they are
instructed rather by IT algorithms (Steinmetz, 2015). Not only are the actual
employers hidden, but in many ways the workers themselves are hidden as well.
In the rhetoric of the gig economy, terms such as ‘share’, ‘task’, ‘help’, and ‘service’
are now used in place of words like ‘work’, ‘job’, and ‘employee’. Workers have
Wu et al. 577

thus become invisible, and are seen by their customers as a simple extension of IT
equipment, virtual platforms, and cellphone apps (De Stefano, 2016).
In light of this, scholars have engaged in debate regarding whether it should be
lawful to regulate platform-based work within the traditional employment relations
(vs independent contracting) framework (Aloisi, 2016; Cunningham-Parmeter,
2016; Finkin, 2016; Scott and Brown, 2017) or within innovative paradigms that
reach beyond these schemes (Cherry and Aloisi, 2017; Harris and Krueger, 2015;
Stewart and Stanford, 2017). But a consensus has been reached among these scho-
lars that while employers and managers have become invisible in a sense as a result
of these recent developments, capital’s control over the labor process has been at
best obscured, rather than relinquished, and surplus value has become similarly
made invisible. In many ways, argues Aloisi (2016), platform companies have
demonstrated features as employers rather than just media or databases.
In sum, the legal perspective has generated a series of important studies that seek
to decipher the business models of platforms, and examined how platforms like
Uber and Amazon Mechanical Turk organize and control the labor processes
through various tactics. But more knowledge is needed regarding labor subjectivity,
namely how workers react to these strategies.

Labor process perspective

Labor process theory has a Marxist tradition of looking at how capital controls
labor in its organization of work and production. This originates from the classic
Marxian premise that only labor produces value such that capital has to control the
labor process in order to extract surplus value – typically understood as profit (Marx,
1867 [1990]). Early labor process scholars also somewhat overlooked labor subject-
ivity. Their scholarship focused on economic and disciplinary tools that manage-
ment had devised for the purpose of labor control. These include the Taylorist
scientific management (Braverman, 1974), organizational bureaucracies and tech-
nologies (Edwards, 1979), subcontracting (Clawson, 1980; Littler, 1982), and prac-
tices of granting workers limited but responsible autonomy (Friedman, 1977).
This early focus on control tactics has also been criticized for being inattentive to
labor subjectivity. In other words, workers should be taken as proactive participants
in the labor process rather than just subject matters (Burawoy, 1985; Thompson,
1990). Two relatively recent developments in industrial sociology are relevant here.
The first looked at workers’ reactions to the control of labor, in particular resistance
(or nonresistance) at work. Burawoy’s (1985) politics of production theory provided
an evolutionary account for that. He argued that in the capitalist world the control of
labor has historically transformed in format. It started with despotism, a system that
draws on coercive and disciplinary measures as well as workers’ dependence on
individual employers. Thereafter, management gradually adopted hegemonic con-
trol that seeks to win workers’ consent. Specifically, as the state institutionalized
labor-protective policies as well as social security systems, workers were no longer
dependent on their individual employers. Capital has to therefore develop new
578 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

strategies for labor control at the workplace in order to prompt workers to volun-
tarily subscribe to capitalist accumulation (Burawoy, 1979).
This hegemonic transformation is reflected in modern workplaces through the
increasing use of self-managing teams, in place of the traditional Weberian bur-
eaucratic organization of work (Barker, 1993), the adoption of flexible work
arrangements in place of strict controls on the time and place of work (Rau and
Hyland, 2002), as well as the development of various media for employees to make
their voice heard in both union and nonunion settings (Batt et al., 2002).
As capital accumulation became increasingly intensified in the service sector, the
notion of emotional labor emerged to denote a social process where capital has
imposed on the labor process as new forms of managerial control (Hochschild,
1983). This scholarship factors customer–worker relations in their analysis of the
labor process in various often feminized service settings, including call centers
(Mirchandani, 2012), hotels (Otis, 2012), and home-based care work (England,
2005). In these workplaces, workers are required to effectively manage their own
feelings and manipulate displays beyond natural conditions in order to achieve
desirable outcomes, in particular customer satisfaction. Emotional labor has
become a popular instrument for studying labor control in service work since the
notion was coined (Steinberg and Figart, 1999).
In general, labor process theory has provided important analytical constructs for
studying labor process in the capitalist world, but empirical works have by and
large focused on waged workers within formal organizations, but overlooked the
current gig economy (Gandini, 2018)1 which often has nonstandard forms of work
organization, obscured employment relationships, and flexible arrangements of
time and space (Cappeli and Keller, 2013). Also, labor process scholars tend to
focus on the point of conflict, and spend great effort in explaining workers’ resist-
ance (or nonresistance, or rather, consent). In the gig economy with more flexible
work arrangements and less commitment between platforms and workers, we argue
that workers’ consent to a digital economy is embodied in the time they commit
themselves to the platform. In other words, workers with grievances most often
would just offer fewer hours or simply switch to another platform instead of going
on strike. In this study, the authors therefore use working hours and income as
opposed to labor conflict to measure the effects of platforms’ control tactics.
That being said, we found that labor process theory maintains great power in
explaining labor control in the digital economy. The notions including disciplinary
control, consent-giving, and emotional labor are relevant for theorizing our own
findings about Uber, to which we now turn.

Methods
For this study, the Chinese branch of Uber Technologies Inc. was investigated as a
significant case for understanding digital platform-based work. After its launch in
China in February 2014, Uber rapidly expanded to many major Chinese cities.
By the end of April 2016, 48.9 million users and over 5 million drivers in China had
Wu et al. 579

registered on the platform. Uber is the inventor of the current global business
model for digital platform-based ride-hailing services, and the term ‘Uber’ has
even become synonymous with ‘platform economy’. Didi Chuxing Technology
Co., formally Uber’s biggest competitor in the Chinese market, purchased
Uber’s Chinese business in August 2016. Before the acquisition, Didi and many
other market players (e.g. Yidao and Kuaidi) engaged in very similar business
models. Therefore, Uber can be regarded as a prototypical case for understanding
the labor processes that exist in the platform-based ride-hailing industry, and can
also be regarded as an important case for better understanding work relations in a
gig economy as a whole.
For this study, exploratory field research was conducted from January 2015 to
April 2016. The qualitative data that were collected can be divided into three parts.
First are the interviews. A total of 120 interviews were conducted with Uber drivers
as well as Uber managers. Key informants hailed from the Beijing headquarters of
Uber’s branch in China. We interviewed them first in order to gain systematic
understanding of Uber’s business strategies and tactics for driver control. These
interviewees then introduced their subsidiaries in Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou,
and Hefei, where further interviews were conducted with both drivers and local
managers. In the drivers’ interviews we asked about their work experience with
Uber and possibly competing platforms, and how they reacted to the platforms’
control tactics; and in the local managers’ interviews we focused on the interaction
between drivers and the platform as these interviewees functioned to bridge the
platform and drivers in the real (offline) world.
The second part of our qualitative data was collected through observations. In
addition to the nonparticipant observations made as passengers on a regular basis
in all these cities during the fieldwork, one researcher also engaged directly in
participant observation, working as a driver in Beijing under Uber from January
to April 2016. The observation was geared towards gaining firsthand experience of
Uber driving, as well as direct information regarding managerial practices of Uber
in China. It therefore constituted a major source of information for qualitative
research. Finally, note that throughout 2015 and 2016, supplementary documents
available online, as well as internal documents provided by Uber, were also col-
lected. These materials provided more precise information on the platform’s weekly
market-subsidy policies, internal rules for managing drivers, and various marketing
strategies, which served as an important source of triangulation for the data
obtained through the interviews and observations. All the qualitative data collected
were coded and analyzed through standard procedures of an inductive exploratory
research with the help of Atlas.ti.
To show the effects of Uber’s labor control strategies, the authors also drew on a
major dataset the authors have established. A major survey of Uber drivers was
conducted first. With Uber’s assistance, questionnaires were distributed to drivers
in nine major Chinese cities. These questionnaires were sent out via cellphone
messages in May 2016. A total of 15,484 responses were received. In this study’s
analyses, 3061 cases were excluded due to missing values in key variables. In the
580 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

end, a sample of 12,423 valid responses was acquired. The survey data were then
matched with the internal data provided by Uber regarding working hours and
weekly income, among others. The survey data and the internal data together
constitute a novel quantitative dataset on the labor and employment of gig econ-
omy workers in China. Given the space constraint, only a limited portion of this
dataset is utilized in the present study to supplement the qualitative findings.
In particular, this study uses working hours (and income, which is highly
contingent on hours) to evaluate the effects of labor control. The reasons are as
follows. According to Marx, capital seeks to maximize surplus value in two ways.
One is to extend working time or increase work intensity, which generates what
Marx called absolute surplus value. The other is to shorten socially necessary labor
time and extend surplus labor time (i.e. increasing productivity) through techno-
logical advances, which increases relative surplus value in turn. In the contempor-
ary gig economy, IT-powered platforms enable capital to reduce transaction costs
and market segmentation through efficient matching between service providers and
consumers. Such technological advances have significantly increased the relative
surplus value generated by labor. While these strategies have been applied to all
workers at the platform level, they do not exhibit variation across workers.
Therefore, there is a focus on the generation of absolute surplus value for this
study, and drivers’ average weekly working hours are used to measure the effects
of Uber’s labor control. Another reason to examine the length of working time as a
proxy for the effectiveness of labor control is the simple fact that Uber always
benefits when more drivers are on the road. It is clearly Uber’s goal to encourage
longer working times for its drivers, which means faster customer response times at
very low cost to the platform.
It is worth noting that Uber’s willingness to facilitate this study’s research was
the result of a collaborative project between the authors and the Chinese branch of
Uber for evaluating Uber’s impact on the Chinese labor market. It was mutually
agreed that the authors would be permitted to use the data from the project to
carry out wholly independent research, without any censorship or interference on
the part of Uber. The collaborators at Uber in China respected the data collection
processes, which were by and large developed and conducted by the authors.

Who are driving for Uber?

Before delving into Uber’s labor control strategies, we answer the question, who
are driving for Uber? As noted, Uber drivers have been reduced in many existing
studies to one undifferentiated group of subjects who are coopted in the new busi-
ness model. An important contribution of our study is to uncover the features of
this group of people and, more importantly, their different motivations for Uber
driving.
Specifically, the authors found that the work motivations of those who drive for
Uber as their only source of income (called sole-source drivers hereafter) signifi-
cantly differ from the motivations of those who have other sources of income
Wu et al. 581

Table 1. Demographic features of sole-source and multiple-job Uber drivers.

Sole-source Multiple-job
drivers drivers
P-value
Variable Category N Percentage N Percentage (t-test)

Age <30 1763 26.97 1987 22.22 <0.001

30–34 1497 22.90 2156 24.11
35–39 1164 17.80 1976 22.10
40–45 1010 15.45 1513 16.92
>45 1104 16.89 1310 14.65
Education Primary school 1580 24.17 1059 11.84 <0.001
Middle school 3603 55.11 3842 42.97
High school 1017 15.56 2475 27.68
Bachelor’s degree 338 5.17 1566 17.51
and above
Number of children 0 1451 22.19 1938 21.67 <0.001
1 2988 45.70 4796 53.63
2 1834 28.05 1985 22.20
3 265 4.05 223 2.49
Hukou (household Without local 4189 64.07 4353 48.68 <0.001
registration) hukou
With local hukou 2349 35.93 4589 51.32
Length of driving (year) 6528 9.86 (mean) 8919 9.72 (mean) 0.163
Length of service (day) 5470 137.99 (mean) 7281 123.13 (mean) <0.001
City Non-first-tier 2679 40.98 4566 51.06 <0.001
cities
First-tier cities 3859 59.02 4376 48.94

(called multiple-job drivers hereafter). Table 1 reports the various demographic

features of the Uber drivers included in the study’s sample pool. About half of
both sole-source and multiple-job drivers are less than 35 years of age, have received
a middle school education at most, and have one child. Of the sole-source drivers,
64% do not have a local household registration (namely hukou) certificate (meaning
migrant workers) and 59% of them work in first-tier cities (namely Beijing,
Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen), whereas only slightly more than half of the
multiple-job drivers are in the same situations. Sole-source drivers have longer per-
iods of driving experience (9.86 years, on average) as well as longer periods of service
under Uber (137.99 days, on average) than their multiple-job driver counterparts
(9.72 years and 123.13 days, respectively). Finally, t-test results show that all of these
demographic features, with the exception of length of driving experience, are signifi-
cantly different between sole-source and multiple-job drivers.
582 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

The two types of drivers have very different motivations for Uber driving.
Through interviews, it was found that multiple-job Uber drivers are motivated
to work on the platform for various reasons. Some of them see Uber driving as
a way of socializing or killing time, some seek to ‘subsidize the expenditures at the
gas pump’, while others are simply curious. These drivers’ work motivation dem-
onstrates a regional variation within China. Most multiple-job drivers interviewed
in Beijing were white-collar workers who worked the day shift for various
businesses and government institutions. Their formal jobs were well paid. They
would drive for Uber just before and after their formal work, typically working to
subsidize their family income.
In Guangzhou, where small businesses and entrepreneurships are better devel-
oped, the authors came across more salesmen and entrepreneurs. They had to drive
around on a regular basis to visit their clients, and would take some Uber passen-
gers along the way (if possible) as a convenient way to supplement their formal, but
likely unstable, income. In addition, it has been reported in the news that many
drivers will offer Uber rides with their luxury cars, just to make friends or simply as
part of their lavish lifestyle.2 Platform companies are likely manipulating media to
propagate such lifestyles behind the scenes. This last example is certainly not
common, but it shows how the concept of the sharing economy has penetrated
the nation’s upper classes, further encouraging the participation of multiple-job
drivers from the middle class who tend to admire and imitate the lifestyles of the
elite. In any case, these multiple-job drivers own reliable cars that are useful for
more than just working for Uber. These drivers tend to be better educated, and
know the city’s roads better than sole-source drivers, as over half of them hold local
hukou as noted earlier.
In contrast, sole-source drivers have very different motivations. Many of these
drivers formerly drove unlicensed cabs, referred to as ‘black cabs’ by licensed cab
drivers and customers. Now on Uber, they say that they ‘no longer have to hide’.
Indeed, the question of whether drivers working under Uber are simply black cab
drivers had remained legally unresolved until the Chinese central government
finally legitimized the platform-based ride-hailing industry in its July 2016 regula-
tory legislation. In order to initially stabilize their workforces, both Uber and Didi
agreed to refund any fines issued for drivers on their platform if they were caught
by any government agency seeking black cabs.
Another type of sole-source drivers is that of migrant workers who have moved
to China’s big cities from other provinces. These people will self-identify as work-
ers. Although they do not necessarily consider themselves as working for Uber,
they will often refer to their profession as one of being an Uber driver. With the
emergence of the platform-based ride-hailing industry, many of these workers quit
their previous jobs, buying a car no better than required by the lowest standards of
the platform, registering an Uber account, and coming to big cities like Beijing and
Guangzhou to start a new life as a chauffeur. They earned considerable sums of
income in the earlier stages of Uber driving, when the platforms were in intense
competition and thus heavily subsidized. The authors found that these differently
Wu et al. 583

motivated drivers react very differently to the platform’s control strategies,

to which we now turn.

The labor control strategies of Uber

Through exploratory field research, we have identified three strategies that Uber
used to attract, motivate, and retain drivers, namely the incentive pay system, the
customer evaluation system, and the flexible work arrangements. These tactics
respectively pertain to the themes of economic control, emotional labor, and
consent-giving derived from labor process theory. This section examines these
strategies in detail.

Economic control: The incentive pay system

Uber’s first tool for labor control was its incentive pay system. This system had two
major components. The first was the ride fare, from which Uber used to deduct a
20% commission in 2016. And Uber used part of that revenue to subsidize a very
complex bonus system – the second component – which was geared towards both
motivating and managing its drivers. Uber had developed a fare system that cov-
ered different types of vehicles. By 15 September 2016, the fare for the lowest class
of vehicles (which comprises the majority of all vehicles operating under Uber)
increased from 1.50 to 1.80 Chinese renminbi yuan per kilometer (RMB yuan/km)
and from 0.25 to 0.35 yuan/minute. These numbers were still significantly lower
than the respective 2.30 yuan/km and 0.46 to 0.92 yuan/minute fares paid for
traditional cabs in Beijing.
What made Uber driving a rewarding line of work was the various bonuses the
platform offers its drivers. Management in contemporary business organizations
often use incentive pay to encourage high performance (Gerhart et al., 2009). The
most straightforward example of this is piece rates, which function as a useful tool
for labor control in manufacturing as well as many other industries. Piece rates on
the one hand encourage high productivity (Lazear, 2000), and on the other hand
reduce labor–capital conflict by gaining worker consent (Burawoy, 1979). Cabs
essentially function as a piece-rated service. However, in this study it was found
that Uber had devised a much more sophisticated incentive pay system.
Specifically, this system was designated to encourage not only a larger labor
supply, but also work schedules that were structured according to market
fluctuations.
It is important for a platform to actively manipulate drivers’ online time in order
to accommodate the relatively high ride demands that accrue during peak hours. In
Beijing during early 2016 for instance, Uber offered drivers a peak-hour bonus.
Moreover, when a driver within a given peak period failed to make a certain
amount of money, an amount that Uber had earlier guaranteed, the company
paid out the difference to ensure this guarantee. This bonus was offered to a
driver on four conditions. The first was that the driver worked online for at least
584 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

45 minutes and completed at least one ride in every single hour during the specified
peak period. The second was that the driver scored a customer rating above 4.7 out
of 5. The third was that the driver achieved a ride-completion rate higher than
45%. The fourth and final condition was that the driver had completed at least 10
trips throughout the preceding week. As a result, although drivers had autonomy in
determining their working time in principle, they often found themselves involved
in some routine work schedule that was expected by the platform in order to ensure
that bonuses could be made now and in the future.
Furthermore, it was found that most workers were enthusiastic about winning
these bonuses. The income received from subsidies and bonuses could possibly
account for up to 90% of an Uber driver’s total monthly income, according to
an estimate from Uber’s management. Note, however, that this instance repre-
sented an exceptional case in 2016, when Uber was involved in the most intensive
stage of its initial (and ultimately unsuccessful) competition with its Chinese rival,
Didi. On average, however, such bonuses still accounted for 30–50% of an Uber
driver’s total income from the platform. Indeed, both Uber and Didi intentionally
set fares that were considerably lower than those for traditional cabs, in order to
strengthen the power they held over drivers in their control through bonuses. In
addition, this strategy also functioned to undercut business that used to go to taxis.
Yet another type of bonus was aimed at encouraging better service. This was
linked to the platform’s customer-based driver-evaluation system. If a driver
achieved a ride completion (accepting the request and completing the ride) rate
higher than 60%, scored a total average customer rating above 4.8, and completed
more than 80 trips in a week, the platform would issue a bonus of 80% of the total
fares that the driver earned in that week, up to 2000 yuan. Moreover, the top 100
drivers in a given city, in terms of weekly rides, would receive an additional 400
yuan each.
In addition, various other bonuses were presented by Uber on occasion. For
example, a newly registered driver would typically during the first week of work get
a bonus of 200, 500, or 800 yuan if the new driver completed 5, 10, or 15 trips,
respectively. Uber sometimes also subsidized nonpeak hours in order to reduce the
occasionally stark disparity between driver income during peak hours and the
income during nonpeak hours.
This wide portfolio of bonuses – which was somewhat unique to China during
late 2015 and early 2016 – served Uber’s goals in labor process control. As a result,
drivers ended up involved in something of a game, whereby they often found
themselves somewhat unconsciously taking more rides. Such bonuses and subsidies
constituted a major proportion of an Uber driver’s daily income, and in order to
win these various bonuses, a driver would voluntarily extend online time and
increase the number of rides offered beyond their own personal preferences other-
wise. More importantly, drivers would maneuver their work schedules to accom-
modate the rocketing demands of peak hours. While a traditional cab driver’s
primary task at the beginning of a work day is earning back the daily rent paid
for the cab and its service license, it was found in this study that ‘completing today’s
Wu et al. 585

tasks for bonuses’ very often explained an Uber driver’s primary work goal. One of
the authors once took an Uber ride around 12:00 a.m. Before arriving at the des-
tination, the researcher was asked by the driver to terminate the ride in advance.
The driver promised that the researcher would still be sent to the destination, but
that the driver had to procedurally finish the ride on the app, in order to accumu-
late one more ride before the next day. This was because the driver was only one
more ride away from achieving the next level of bonuses. To be exact, the driver
told the researcher:

The platform has a very tricky bonus system. You almost have to work for over 15 hours
in order to receive a decent bonus. From morning to night, you have to accumulate rides
to reach Uber’s standards, and it will be recalculated after 12:00 a.m. on the last day of
the week. You have to reach that standard in order to receive the weekly bonus, with no
exceptions for any single week . . . Our fares are much lower than those for taxis, and
we bought our own cars. If I do not get these bonuses, it is not worth it. (Interview,
April 2016)

It is worth noting here that the rules for receiving bonuses, as implemented by the
platform, changed constantly over time as an intentional business strategy for
tackling market fluctuations and competition. Thus, drivers also had to adjust
their work schedules to accommodate these continuously changing rules. No
matter how these systems for receiving bonuses changed, however, Uber made
the rules transparent to all drivers. Although some drivers were at times ‘confused
about how the payment is calculated’, the transparency of these rules gave drivers a
feeling of ‘fairness’. It is also important to note that Uber served as the adminis-
trator of the platform’s system for pay as well as its pay standards, whereas neither
the drivers nor legislation had a direct say in that regard. Once workers were
involved in the ‘game’, however, they stopped questioning the rules of the game,
which invariably won the platform labor consent anyway.
In conclusion, the platform’s incentive pay system facilitated drivers’ consent to
Uber’s demanding work relations. The results of descriptive analysis of the quan-
titative data demonstrate the effects of the platform’s control strategies. Table 2
shows workers’ weekly working hours on Uber over a dichotomy of their appre-
ciation of the labor control tactics, while Table 3 shows workers’ weekly income
they made on Uber over the dichotomy. As shown, those who appreciated the
incentive pay system on average spent significantly more time (28.27 hours/week)
and also made significantly more money (636.97 yuan/week) on Uber than those
who did not appreciate the system (26.38 hours and 588.46 yuan).
It is worth noting that after Didi’s acquisition of Uber’s Chinese business in
2016, the new Didi had moved to gradually reduce its bonuses for drivers until 90%
of the bonuses were cut off.3 As Didi had become a market monopoly, market
expansion had been deprioritized as a result, and the corporate focus had shifted
more toward efforts to expand the company’s profit. As a result, incentive pay had
become less relevant as a labor control strategy.
586 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

Table 2. Drivers’ weekly working hours and their appreciation of labor control strategies.
All Sole-source Multiple-job
Category drivers drivers drivers

Do you think the plat- Yes 28.27 38.35 20.52

form’s incentive pay No 26.38 36.21 19.70
system is good? P-value <0.001 <0.001 0.015
Does the evaluation Yes 28.22 38.23 20.36
system incentivize you No 26.00 35.76 19.71
to serve passengers P-value <0.001 <0.001 0.042
better?
Do you think working Yes 28.74 37.14 21.03
through the platform is No 25.99 37.22 19.41
more flexible? P-value <0.001 0.553 <0.001

Table 3. Drivers’ weekly income (yuan) and their appreciation of labor control strategies.
All Sole-source Multiple-job
Category drivers drivers drivers

Do you think the plat- Yes 636.97 884.17 443.41

form’s incentive pay No 588.46 842.03 412.71
system is good? P-value <0.001 0.026 0.006
Does the evaluation Yes 638.22 894.72 432.99
system incentivize you No 575.88 816.72 417.79
to serve passengers P-value <0.001 <0.001 0.102
better?
Do you think working Yes 674.44 896.91 467.10
through the platform is No 558.57 824.90 398.72
more flexible? P-value <0.001 <0.001 <0.001

Finally, this economic control strategy had divergent effects on sole-source and
multiple-job drivers. As noted, the sole-source drivers invested tremendously in the
business of Uber. They invested their time, gave up their past careers, and even
bought their means of production, the cars themselves. Because of this, the sole-
source drivers were much more concerned than their multiple-job counterparts as
to whether the bonus policies for the upcoming weeks would be fair or favorable
for them, and whether the platform’s evaluation system was sound. These drivers
often compared Uber with Didi when making such considerations. Most sole-
source Uber drivers interviewed easily recalled Didi’s bonus policies on the spot,
and all of them noted that they were ready to switch over to Didi if feelings of
unfairness were to be fomented.
Wu et al. 587

In contrast, the considerable income that multiple-job drivers earned from their
formal jobs and the relatively low income they acquired from Uber made them less
concerned over the platform’s incentive pay and the customer evaluation system.
To multiple-job drivers these systems might be well-designed, but most of them
would not end up receiving many bonuses, as they most often required great com-
mitments throughout the days and weeks. As shown in Table 2, the incentive pay
system’s association with working hours held for sole-source drivers. The t-test for
the multiple-job driver group passed the significance test at the 0.05 level but not at
the 0.001 level.

Emotional labor: The customer evaluation system

The second control strategy used by Uber was its customer evaluation system.
Customer satisfaction is key to the success of a service industry, and because of
this, customer satisfaction is often integrated into the managerial practices of many
organizations. For Uber specifically, customers are granted the right to monitor
workers’ performance (Rosenbalt and Stark, 2016). This system allows the
platform to achieve de facto hierarchical control over these outsourced workers
without instituting actual organizational hierarchies, in the sense that the workers
are distributed into different levels, and can be disciplined in various ways based
on their customer satisfaction feedback (Aloisi, 2016). At the end of each trip,
the platform encourages passengers to rate their driver based on a five-star scale.
The workers who achieve higher levels will receive better benefits as well as
other work advantages. These ratings become important ‘capitals’ of workers in
the gig economy. And the fact that they cannot be transferred across platforms has
exacerbated a worker’s dependence on a specific platform (De Stefano, 2016).
However, we found that this customer evaluation system not only served to
increase driver dependence, but also functioned to manipulate a driver’s labor
process in three noticeable ways. First of all, a driver’s past customer evaluations
often functioned as a precondition for any peak-hour or service-related bonuses.
Drivers therefore devised various supplementary strategies to improve their service
and entertain their passengers. For example, some drivers, at their own expense,
provided passengers with paper tissues, bottles of water, Wi-Fi, as well as chargers.
Drivers tried to talk with passengers, and served them in a service-oriented and
sociable manner. They asked passengers whether they wanted the air conditioning
in the car to be turned up or down, and what kind of music they preferred to listen
to. Some drivers even tried to educate passengers on the consequences of their
customer ratings, replete with stirring tales of past hardships. All in all, this process
involved going far beyond one’s duty as a chauffeur, taxing drivers with additional
emotional labor (Gandini, 2018) and handing a substantial amount of control over
drivers’ working environment to their unwitting passengers.
Second, drivers’ working time was affected by this customer evaluation system.
A driver’s total score was based on the last 500 rides that the driver had offered.
The drivers who had a relatively low score would tend to increase the number of
588 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

trips they offered in a day, hoping to eject their past poor ratings from the last 500
trips as soon as possible. As speculated upon by the drivers interviewed for this
study and confirmed by Uber’s management thereafter, the platform factored a
driver’s instant total score in its ride dispatching system, and higher ranked drivers
would receive more ride calls with better, longer routes. Sometimes, the eligibility
of a driver for all bonus packages depended on their customer evaluation results
from the preceding week. If a passenger rated a driver one star, the driver would
thus be forced to complete more five-star trips in order to offset the negative effect
of that one rating as soon as possible. A good total score would not guarantee
income security for a driver, but regardless, drivers had to be cautious about every
single ride they provided in a given week.
Finally, Uber would also punish drivers directly based on their customer evalu-
ation results. Low evaluation scores would disqualify drivers from certain bonuses,
as noted – essentially a form of economic punishment. In addition, Uber would
shut down a driver’s account if their scores dipped below a certain standard – a de
facto outright termination. A customer could also appeal to Uber’s representatives
to file complaints and the relevant driver would be open to variable penalties,
which could build up to a lifetime ban from working with Uber once a complaint
had been confirmed.
The customer evaluation system functioned as an effective tool for Uber to
control their drivers, advertised under the misleading mantra that the ‘passen-
gers are the best judge of service quality’. This passenger supervision occurred
anywhere and at any time, and at low cost for Uber. Allowing customers to
directly evaluate worker performance had also obscured the control the plat-
form exerted over its drivers. Uber had become an invisible employer, and its
drivers were kept from feeling supervised or managed directly by the platform.
Driver complaints regarding any low ratings they might receive were invariably
directed towards the passengers, as opposed to the platform itself. In extreme
cases, this tension between drivers and passengers would boil over into confron-
tation, either right after a ride or later, through other means. When either one
or both parties ended up taking a case to Uber directly, the company would
almost always punish the driver, sometimes even compensating the passenger as
well. Through this system, many potential labor–platform conflicts ended up
neutralized.
In conclusion, this customer evaluation system facilitated drivers’ consent to
Uber’s demanding work relations. We found that drivers who appreciated
Uber’s customer evaluation system tended to spend more hours online as well as
make more money per week, as shown in Tables 2 and 3. Given the fact that
customer evaluation was strongly linked with the incentive pay system, sole-
source drivers likewise were more sensitive to this control tactic than were
multiple-job drivers. The t-test analysis on the effects of working hours did not
pass the significance test at the 0.001 level for multiple-job drivers. And the analysis
on the effects of income did not pass the significance test at the 0.05 level for the
same group.
Wu et al. 589

Consent making: Flexible work arrangements

Uber’s platform granted drivers certain nominal work flexibility and autonomy in
exchange for their consent. The basic labor process is as follows. The app guided a
driver through a flow of tasks. The system would dispatch a ride request to a
certain driver close to the potential passenger. The driver who received the request
had 15 seconds to press an ‘accept’ button on the app. Of course, drivers could also
choose to decline if they did not want to accept the request for any reason, but too
many declines would have adverse effects on their chances of future receipts of ride
calls. The system would keep sending the call to more drivers until someone even-
tually took the offer. The driver who accepted the ride would be offered the option
to communicate with the passenger(s) through a phone call or through instant
messaging to further confirm or alter the pick-up location. After picking up the
passenger(s), the system would recommend the best route for the ride. Once they
arrived at their destination, payment would be completed through the app and the
task of chauffeuring finished.
The platform appeared to grant drivers a high level of work flexibility and
autonomy in several respects of this labor process. First, allowing drivers to take
rides only when they had the time to do so increased work flexibility, and thus
fostered greater feelings of personal freedom in drivers. In addition, these drivers
owned and maintained their own means of production, namely their cars. This
made drivers look and feel like entrepreneurs, as opposed to employees.
Furthermore, even during a ride itself, the labor process was under the control
of Uber only in an obscured sense. It was found that drivers working in this labor
process did not consciously recognize that they were working for a platform. ‘Big
data’ servers had significantly improved the efficiency of supply–demand matching,
and rapidly expanding market demand had made it relatively easy to get a ride for
an Uber driver during 2015–2016 in China.
This work flexibility in the gig economy is merely nominal, however. Digital
platforms reduce the likelihood that workers will participate in collective action
(Finkin, 2016), and workers have to face the arbitrary reductions in pay rates from
platforms (Cockayne, 2016). Therefore, workers will be forced to extend their
working hours, even though they are granted great freedom and flexibility in setting
their own schedules on paper. Moreover, workers will often resort to continuous
and long-time work schedules in order to maintain their rankings on such plat-
forms. There is nothing freeing about the work on these platforms, concludes
Aloisi (2016), and the nominal flexibility of these jobs has simply become a kind
of solace.
In this study, it was found that Uber intentionally used this nominal flexibility to
both attract and incentivize drivers. Uber propagated its business model using the
tag line ‘You are your own boss. You decide when you want to drive, and for how
long’. Uber advertised its platform-based work opportunities as characterized by
freedom, flexibility, and discretion in order to attract more drivers. These findings
indicate that the platform’s intention was to use this so-called flexibility to obscure
590 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

the substantial control they held over the labor processes of their drivers. For these
drivers, such platform-based work may be still seen as attractive though, as it offers
a feeling of self-governance and autonomy, and thus these workers will voluntarily
subject themselves to this new but insidious process of capitalist exploitation
(Ettlinger, 2016).
It was found in interviews that most drivers did indeed maintain a feeling of
working for themselves, and never regarded themselves as Uber employees explicitly.
Many of the drivers did not even regard Uber driving as a formal occupation. They
at least nominally reserved their right to decide when to get online and when to stay
offline. And even during their time online, the otherwise monotonous driving work
becomes a game of sorts, in which one simply ‘touches the screen and pushes the pedal
down’, but forgets that one is still under the control of the platform via its app.
In sum, flexible work arrangements granted such drivers marginal autonomy in
controlling their own schedules, but in return acquired drivers’ consent in the rela-
tions of production in Uber driving. This was how work flexibility began to serve as a
more powerful medium for hegemonic control, to use Burawoy’s (1985) description.
This is demonstrated by the results of the t-test analysis in Tables 2 and 3.
That being said, work motivation had a mediating role here too. Specifically, the
multiple-job drivers would often show their appreciation for the flexibility of Uber
driving, as they could only drive in their spare time. Conversely, the sole-source
drivers did not care for the platform’s work flexibility as much as multiple-job
drivers, as they would typically drive more than 14 hours a day anyway. As a
result, the t-test analysis for the sole-source driver group did not pass the signifi-
cance test at the 0.05 level, as shown in Table 2. These sole-source drivers were
therefore subject to poor working conditions as a result of their inadvertent self-
exploitation.
Not all drivers were satisfied with working for Uber, to be sure. As Uber and its
major competitor Didi had gradually reduced the bonuses they offered since March
2016, drivers had started to complain correspondingly. Some drivers began to
question the rules developed by the platform: ‘The 20% service fee charged by
the platform is too much. This even exceeds the money paid by taxi drivers to their
taxi companies.’ Some drivers also noticed their working hours rising continuously
over time: ‘[The work is] so restraining that I have to keep driving since the early
morning, and cannot get out of my car. . . I cannot earn money if I do not drive.’
Alarmingly, the ride-hailing industry has shown the potential to become a new
epicenter for industrial conflict in China. According to the China Labor Bulletin’s
Strike Map,4 digital platform-based drivers in Guangdong Province alone
launched 16 strikes against arbitrary fare and bonus reductions, among other
issues, from May 2015 to August 2018. Indeed, after a short wave of protests
in late 2016, many drivers eventually decided to quit working in the sector.
Regardless, little on the side of the platforms has changed since, and the drivers
who stayed have ultimately accepted the rules, although many of them still
expected a return to the golden days: ‘On the whole I’m satisfied with it. I just
wish it would offer more bonuses.’
Wu et al. 591

Discussion
While there is growing scholarly interest in the work and employment issues that
have emerged with the gig economy, most scholarly debates have centered on
whether the work relationship in online, platform-based gig economy work
ought to be formally considered an employment relationship (Aloisi, 2016;
Cherry and Aloisi, 2017; Cunningham-Parmeter, 2016; Finkin, 2016; Harris and
Krueger, 2015; Scott and Brown, 2017; Stewart and Stanford, 2017). Scholars in
this debate seem to agree that although the expansion of digital platform businesses
has facilitated a global trend toward work informalization, capital has reformu-
lated (rather than relinquished) its control over the labor process. This is consistent
with classic Marxist dialectics. Wherever there is surplus value extraction, there is
labor control.
A key challenge for any online platform business is how to secure sufficient labor
supply and manipulate workers’ time online at low cost to themselves. This has
become a particularly tricky challenge in the emergent gig economy, as the idea of
independent contracting has limited the tools capital has traditionally utilized for
labor control (e.g. various human resource management tactics, unions and col-
lective bargaining agreements, and employment contracts). This study therefore
sought to systemically examine the alternative strategies that have been devised
by platforms to achieve labor control regardless, and even more importantly, the
effects of these new tactics over labor.
Through qualitative research, the authors identified three important strategies
that Uber, once an important digital platform business in China, had employed to
attract, manage, and retain its drivers, while at the same time realizing labor con-
trol. With its incentive pay system, customer evaluation system, and flexible work
arrangements, Uber was well-equipped to successfully extend its drivers’ working
time.
These findings contribute to our understanding of the inner workings of the gig
economy in several ways. The literature on service work, following emotional labor
theory (Hochschild, 1983), provides insights into how the tangible presence of
consumers has been introduced into workplaces as a labor control tool, which
can have a significant impact over work relations in service industries. According
to ethnographers engaged in various research settings, customer needs and prefer-
ences are taken into account in the design of service work processes in order to
guarantee quality and sometimes personalized service (England, 2005;
Mirchandani, 2012; Otis, 2012). In this study, it was found that a similar customer
evaluation system and an intertwined incentive pay system had been institutiona-
lized in the labor processes of Uber drivers. Here, customer evaluation was desig-
nated as a crucial labor control strategy, not only to encourage quality service, but
also to extend and manipulate the working time of the platform’s drivers.
In the human resource studies literature, work flexibility is a well-developed
construct. Scholars have examined various forms of work flexibility, such as ‘flex-
time’ (scheduling flexibility) and ‘flexplace’ (telecommuting) in organizational
592 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

settings (Rau and Hyland, 2002). Some researchers regard such modern work
arrangements as benevolent human resource management tactics for tackling con-
flicts in the work–family balance (Allen et al., 2013). Arguably, work flexibility is
positively associated with employee satisfaction and work commitment (Azar et al.,
2018), thereby functioning as a form of labor control strategy. Other scholars,
however, have argued that work flexibility is a business strategy utilized to generate
an informal sector, outside of formal organizational settings, as well as nonstan-
dard employment relations, subsequently developing a precarious workforce
(Kalleberg, 2003). All in all however, it has been concluded that informal work
does objectively grant workers more autonomy (Millar, 2008). Moreover, workers
have been found to sometimes value this flexibility, and to be willing to pay the
price for it (Mas and Pallais, 2017). This study has found that in the informal
sector, specifically the gig economy, online platform companies have been inten-
tionally propagating and capitalizing on this desire for labor autonomy in order to
attract and control their workers.
In practice, however, workers ended up hardly autonomous at all, and their work
became less flexible over time. This was especially the case if Uber driving was the
driver’s only source of income. Drivers had to commit to extremely long periods
online, both in waiting for and taking on rides, in order to receive a realistic income.
The huge gaps that existed between Uber fares and traditional cab fares would force
drivers to ‘voluntarily’ subject themselves to the platform’s manipulation of their
time and scheduling through the company’s use of incentive payments. The surpris-
ingly large proportion that bonuses took up in a sole-source Uber driver’s total
income illustrated the success that this strategy had achieved for the platform.
Therefore, instead of granting autonomy, such flexibility had become at best a strat-
egy for obscuring the employment relationship and extracting surplus value.
That being said, these different labor control strategies may not have equal
effects in practice, and this study’s primary contribution to the field is its discovery
of how considerable variation is exhibited across workers with different motiv-
ations for working in the gig economy. Past research has already deciphered
Uber’s business model, and has by and large noticed how such online platforms
use different tactics to control their workers (Aloisi, 2016; De Stefano, 2016;
Rosenblat and Stark, 2016). Through examining their effects, however, it was
found in this study that these labor control strategies are likely to demonstrate
significant effects only when we consider the different motivations of such drivers.
Here, it is suggested that there exists an important link between work motivation
and worker behavior in response to the labor control practices of these platforms.
In particular, work flexibility was found to be crucial for drivers with multiple jobs
and sources of income who only drove for Uber in their spare time. This second
category of drivers tended to offer more rides if they appreciated the time flexibility
that Uber driving presented them. In contrast, sole-source drivers exhibited income
dependence on Uber, and were thus more likely to be motivated by the so-called
rules of the game. These drivers were likely to work more if they appreciated the
platform’s incentive pay and customer evaluation system.
Wu et al. 593

With the expansion of the gig economy on a global scale, debates among scholars,
research institutes, as well as labor law practitioners have emerged regarding how
to conceptualize the various forms of work relationships in a gig economy.
Increasingly, research reports have recommended factoring in the theme of labor
control when analyzing the nature of the work relations that are based on digital
platforms (Cunningham-Parmeter, 2016; Harris and Krueger, 2015). The courts in
many of the world’s nations will very often follow a similar rationale. This study
indicates that, even though platforms will use the same set of control tactics to
manage all its workers, the effects of these strategies may vary across workers with
different motivations for working with said platform. Different people simply expect
different things from engaging in gig economy work, such that policymaking and
judicial decisions should not only draw on how platforms choose to control their
workers, but also draw on how workers will react to these control mechanisms.

Conclusion
Drawing on qualitative field research supplemented by quantitative data, this study
probed the labor process of digital platform-based cab drivers. Three labor control
strategies that Uber in China employed in order to secure and obscure surplus
value were identified as a result. Specifically, they were an incentive pay system,
a customer evaluation system, and flexible work arrangements. The different effects
that these strategies have on Uber drivers who are solely employed by the platform,
and those with other regular forms of income as well, were also discussed. It was
argued that multiple-job drivers’ appreciation of the platform’s work flexibility
prompts them to spend more hours online, while sole-source drivers are motivated
better by the platform’s incentive pay and customer evaluation systems.
Although Uber can be taken as an important case for investigating labor control
in a gig economy, it is by no means a representative case for the entire digital
platform-based sector. Future research should extend this study’s examination of
these labor processes to other firms and industries in the gig economy, which may
elicit variable situations regarding labor control. Quantitative analysis is also
needed to examine the effects of such labor control strategies using data of
better quality than that in this study. Finally, although this article has indicated
that drivers’ complaints are by and large directed towards the passengers that give
them bad ratings, and that these drivers seldom question the rules established by
their work platform, labor conflict is by no means completely avoided through such
scapegoating, as noted earlier. While this research was not geared towards captur-
ing those moments of conflict specifically, future studies ought to examine more
closely instances of the labor–capital conflict in the gig economy that are bound to
form as the industry grows further.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
594 Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4)

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article.

ORCID iD
Hao Zhang https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0232-5565

Notes
1. With a notable and more recent exception (Veen et al., 2019).
2. See: https://zj.zjol.com.cn/news/86289.html (accessed 19 April 2019).
3. See: https://www.todayonline.com/world/post-didi-uber-deal-chinese-commuters-and-
drivers-say-they-have-come-worse (accessed 19 April 2019).
4. See: https://maps.clb.org.hk/strikes (accessed 19 April 2019).

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Biographical notes
Qingjun Wu is Associate Professor of Labor Relations at Renmin University of
China’s School of Labor and Human Resources. His primary areas of expertise are
the sociology of work and industrial relations. And his current research examines
the impact of the digital economy over work and labor.

Hao Zhang is Assistant Professor of Labor Relations at Renmin University of

China’s School of Labor and Human Resources. His research interests focus on
the areas of employment relations, informal work, and skills development, with
special attention to China.

Zhen Li received her Master of Labor Relations from Renmin University of

China’s School of Labor and Human Resources in 2017 and is now the
Compensation & Benefits Manager at China Central Television.

Kai Liu is Associate Professor of Social Security at Renmin University of China’s

School of Labor and Human Resources. His primary areas of expertise are health
policy and social policy in developing countries. And his ongoing project examines
the effects of the digital economy on workers’ wellbeing, in particular their social
insurance enrollment in China.