Exactly a year ago, we embarked on a journey with Rest of World to report and write stories about tech labor from our respective corners of the world: Kimberly in Africa, Laís in Latin America, Lam in Southeast Asia, and Zuha in South Asia.
As we started working on our first stories, we quickly realized we were on to something unprecedented. Each time we approached a gig worker — whether it was a driver for Uber, inDrive, or Careem, or a food delivery worker for iFood, ShopeeFood, or Uber Eats — we would face questions like “Why?” or “What are you getting from it?”
These workers, who power the new tech economy, didn’t understand why a journalist was interested in their story. They had never been asked about their lives. They were waiting to tell their stories, and we became their voice.
Over the past year, each of us spent countless hours speaking to gig workers on street corners and engaging with them through social media. These conversations resulted in stories that had been overlooked thus far: their hazardous working environments, struggles to find basic amenities during long workdays, and what a day in their life looks like.
As the year went on, we also got to tell stories about other workers in the global tech industry: people who assemble phones at factories, work as content moderators, participate in the outsourcing industry, and make money as domestic workers, on-demand beauticians, drop-shippers, copywriters, chip engineers, and clickworkers.
In total, we reported over 80 stories about tech workers from 15 countries over the course of the year.
Our stories have been cited in multiple research papers, including by Fairwork, one of the leading organizations researching global gig work. We have also driven impact in the real world. For instance, in Vietnam, ShopeeFood removed a non-compete clause from its contract with gig workers after Lam reported about the issue. In South Africa, Uber quietly rolled out a new feature that allowed its drivers to report power and navigation issues within the app after Kimberly wrote about the challenges being caused by the country’s power crisis.
The biggest takeaway from this fellowship is that the intersection of tech and labor is multilayered, multifaceted, complex, sometimes fun, and often appalling. Also, despite the geographical and social differences, issues and pain points among tech labor are pretty much the same — and often, equally overlooked. For instance, in Karachi and São Paulo alike, gig workers are becoming easy targets for criminals. And in Jakarta and across African countries, unionizing is a struggle for these workers.
After the conclusion of the fellowship and a short break, Lam will rejoin Rest of World as a Southeast Asia reporter. Zuha and Kimberly will go back to freelancing. Laís will start a new role at The Intercept Brazil later this month, where she will continue to report on tech labor.
Working at Rest of World has also given us a close peek into how a global newsroom operates, and how to engage with multiple members across editorial, visual, product, and audience teams to deliver stellar projects. We owe special gratitude to the editors at Rest of World who guided and mentored us and made our work shine. We hope to continue working with them. We also want to thank the Ford Foundation for funding the fellowship.
Read all Rest of World’s Tech x Labor fellowship stories here.
