[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][show-team ids=’17557′ url=’active_new’ layout=’grid’ style=’img-square,img-white-border,text-left,img-left,normal-float,card-theme’ display=’photo,freehtml,location,name’][/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
One world disappears…. another is created. For a long time (counting in centuries), our societies have been organized in pyramidal forms with a power that grows as one climbs the building. A verticality that is found in both companies and merchant relationships between humans. Indeed, the professional, the merchant, by his expertise, the exclusivity of a product offered or a monopoly, dominates his customer. It is customary to say that the latter is always right, but this is not enough to make this power struggle disappear even in a service economy. So far everything was going well and this verticality, sometimes reassuring because it was ordered, sometimes overwhelming because it was not contested, was going to experience a shaking to its deepest foundations.
A Digital earthquake or «Digital Upheaval»
An old world inherited from the first 2 industrial revolutions, and based on production on one side and consumption on the other, has begun to falter. Successive economic crises have undermined this very standardized model in its production and consumption standards. Here the human is a worker and a consumer. The 2008 crisis, the effects of which are still being felt, almost finished this world by revealing the difficulty for humans to maintain regular consumption with a decrease in their income and an increase in their debts. From then on, they would seek to earn a little more money and consume differently thanks to digital technology.
The importance of digital
The advent of social networks and platforms such as Priceminister or Ebay has made it possible to interconnect individuals to exchange information but also to sell and buy, to share goods by freeing themselves from the limits of place and time. Amazon had led the way by making it possible to order the book seen in a literary program and have it delivered 24 hours later thanks to a simple digital maneuver on their smartphone. The objects sold are the same but the uses change because the time is no longer for constraint but for fluidity by freeing oneself from established summits. Humans no longer want to submit but to choose.
Competition, fluidity and sharing
These three points have become the counterparts of the new world. Increased competition offers a growing choice. Similarly, the fluidity of uses and services gives this feeling of being freer and no longer depending on the single expert professional defined at the beginning. Sharing, a highly noble human value, finds its full meaning in the digital and collaborative economy. It is by these terms, in a context of crisis and low job creation, that the new players in the digital economy will make a loud noise. To such an extent that we will now talk about the Uberisation of the economy.
«Uberisation» the word is out! Used for the first time by Maurice Levy (CEO of Publicis) in an interview with the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/377f7054-81ef-11e4-b9d0-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3zxxI3Nr0), it has today entered everyday language. It describes the phenomenon by which a monopoly or a well-established market will be disrupted by a digital economy player. We also speak of disrupting when it comes to a breakthrough. As a reminder, Uber, a Californian startup today valued at 51 billion dollars as an alternative/competitor to taxis, has disrupted the economic landscape well beyond the simple transport of people. Uber, an intermediation platform between private drivers and people across the world, has succeeded not only in taking considerable market share from taxi companies in 37 countries and 376 cities, but also in getting people to take taxis who didn’t usually take them (passenger transport is a real problem in the face of saturated public transport and taxis that are sometimes difficult to find). And this by owning neither vehicle nor driver. Airbnb for its part has managed to offer more beds (1.5 million) than hotels without owning any real estate, any hotel, and thus respond to the growing increase in the number of tourists as well as the desire to visit a country in an immersive way (increase of 4% in 2015 http://media.unwto.org/press-release/2016-01-18/international-tourist-arrivals-4-reach-record-12-billion-2015).
A large number of fields are today concerned, including liberal professions such as lawyers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n031ImsMGRc), doctors and notaries. Thus the verticality of human relationships in services and companies is questioned by a desire for horizontality. Humans want to live differently.
Towards a platformization of employment?
At a time when the permanent contract (CDI) is no longer the holy grail and entrepreneurship is increasing (http://www.insee.fr/fr/themes/info-rapide.asp?id=41), we are witnessing an employee volatility (a very strong behavior among younger people) and a desire to adapt activities to digital. Jobs related to IT and creativity struggle to find their place in companies. They tend to increase with the needs of a new world that has not finished expanding. Rigid management and the absence of professional recognition push these people to want to be free.
«Neither boss nor Master?»
This summarizes the situation of the sharing and GIG economy and perfectly illustrates the growing number of freelancers. At Uber, the contracts that bind the drivers to the platform are service contracts, so a person wishing to become a VTC driver sees their procedures simplified compared to a taxi (here are the 4 steps: http://www.chauffeur-uber.fr/devenir-chauffeur-prive-en-4-etapes/). In exchange, they must pay Uber a 20-25% commission (25% for the sedan range) for intermediation. However, Uber was condemned on June 17, 2015, by the California Labor Commission following a complaint from one of their drivers. For this body, Uber is not just a platform and there is indeed a link of subordination between Uber and its drivers because the managers “are involved in every aspect of the operations” and have power of sanction over the driver (a low rating and the driver can be refused access to the application). A price drop to respond to competition in France had provoked the anger of some drivers because it led to a loss of income. Another condemnation of 7.6 million dollars hit the Californian firm (http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/le-net/1171034-uber-une-amende-de-7-6-millions-de-dollars-en-californie/). Let’s recall that the firm avoids corporate tax (tax optimization) and its business model allows it not to contribute to the social charges of its drivers. A dark neo-salarization that does not dare say its name? Especially since the desire of the Uber CEO is to buy all autonomous Tesla cars in order to do without drivers.
A human left behind in favor of profit? A question that leads to reflection on the model desired in the new world.
What future for salaried employment?
The suffocating old world cannot respond to the aspirations of salaried employees and free workers or freelancers because they are plural and the proposed social model is uniform. The choice of self-entrepreneurship cannot be the only answer to a category of people ranging from the web designer to the architect through to the person who grows organic products to sell them in short circuits. This is the whole question because the number of these people will increase with technological progress and a 4th industrial revolution that is emerging and moving very fast. To such an extent that the robotization of recruitment processes is a reality and allows for a considerable gain in time and efficiency according to this study: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/studies/time-to-hire-study/. Here the algorithm replaces the human. These free workers who use platforms recover little of the value created. Indeed, through data, large platforms recover user data allowing them to adjust their service and recover a large part of the value created.
The German union IG Metal brought a beginning of an answer to task workers like those of Mechanical Turk. The union created the platform http://www.faircrowdwork.org/en/watch allowing task workers to rate the platforms on working conditions and remuneration in turn. They can also ask the union for advice and exchange ideas. The new unionism has arrived….especially in Germany. In France, unions have not yet switched to digitalization.
In France, free workers wishing to work for themselves without creating companies can find an answer within a CAE, Activity and Employment Cooperative. These are very specific SCOPs like Coopaname.
Here you are an entrepreneur/employee: You sign a permanent contract (CDI) within the structure and remain autonomous while having social security coverage. We can therefore test and develop our activity in a new legal framework while minimizing risks. We are certainly in the presence of one of the structures of the new world, redesigned and adapted to changing humans.
Will the CDI die? Is everyone ready to change? Will robots take power? (subsidiary question: who will destroy Skynet?)
So many questions that I invite you to answer!
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
