ABSTRACT
The pandemic has made some gig work even more precarious, pushing workers to supplement their incomes with work in multiple sectors, and has hit San Francisco gig workers particularly hard. Precarious labor is contract-based, contingent, freelance, part-time, or short-term work—including farm labor, home-based work, piecework, and sex work. Workers, not employers, take on risks associated with the work at hand, and such positions rarely offer benefits or protections. Such developments and conflicts parallel cross-campus organizing efforts at universities today, where food service workers, clerical staff, adjunct professors, and graduate students all fight for union recognition. In 2018, University of California service workers went on strike. A disproportionate number of contingent faculty are Black and Latinx, well over half are women, and many adjuncts live in poverty. Critiques distinguishing between the vaunted coder class and gig economy workers miss their crucial overlap.
