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5 - Labour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2023

Cheryll Ruth Soriano  and
Earvin Charles Cabalquinto
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Summary

Abstract

This chapter offers a critical insight on digital and flexible labour and the role of YouTube in brokering labour relations and economic aspirations in the digital economy. It focuses its attention on the “skill-making” content and practices of Filipino platform labour influencers on YouTube, where they showcase their capabilities to obtain a captive market and attain celebrity status as “global knowledge workers.” Using YouTube provides an opportunity for platform labour influencers to deliver training and support to aspiring platform workers who seek to earn dollars while working at home, while also crafting imaginaries and ideals of success in the platform economy. The chapter shows that YouTubers, through the brokerage of skills and promotion of the viability of platform labour, perform the role of matchmaker between aspiring workers and digital labour platforms while simultaneously advancing the broader visions of digital capitalism.

Keywords: platform labour, digital labour brokerage, skill-making, aspirational labour, gig economy, cloudwork

On a YouTube video, Carlo beams with pride as he announces to his thousands of subscribers a new milestone: he has made his second million as an online freelancer. Displaying his monthly dollar earnings, a new car, as well as a modern workstation, Carlo is ecstatic to proclaim that he has made the best decision to leave his full-time call centre job for platform work, challenging his subscribers that they could achieve the same success with the right recipe of hard work, persistence, and entrepreneurialism. He has worked hard to achieve his current state, starting as a book chapter writer for a small client clinched from a labour platform way back in 2011 and now a digital marketing “guru,” working with a number of clients from the popular labour platform Upwork, and recognised as the “coach” for hundreds of Filipino platform workers and aspirants. In 2016, Carlo started to organise training sessions for friends who wanted to learn how to start with online freelancing after noticing and being inspired by a substantial growth in his earnings. Realising that training is a possible mechanism to help aspiring Filipino platform workers and at the same time a potential source of additional income, he began to organise these sessions regularly, initially with a few aspirants.

Type
Chapter
Information
Philippine Digital Cultures
Brokerage Dynamics on YouTube
 , pp. 139 - 162
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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