Gig Economy & Business School: A Boiling Point?

Concerns Mount Over Gig Economy Practices and Academic Ties

fullscreen

The Last Mile.”” sizes=”(min-width: 1300px) 662px, (min-width: 1180px) 50vw, (min-width: 768px) 65vw, 100vw” loading=”eager” fetchpriority=”high” src=”aspect-ratio:1900 / 1267″/>

”The Last Mile” by Julia Lindblom

At 8:30 PM I receive a text message from someone named “Ahmed” with a picture of my book package. He’s carefully hidden it behind a flowerpot on the porch. I’m astonished. For 29 kronor, he drove a long way into the countryside during inconvenient hours. It just doesn’t add up.

In Julia Lindblom’s “The Last Mile,” we learn who bears the brunt when the math doesn’t work. You guessed it: it’s not Instabees CEO Alexis Priftis. E-commerce in Sweden has more than doubled since 2017, and the delivery industry has grown explosively. On the surface, these companies appear as modern tech firms, but their roots are buried in a dark past where workers toiled to the point of collapse.

A delivery driver often has to work a half-day without a break, delivering a package every five minutes. Pay is around 15,000 kronor per month, and sick leave, overtime pay, and insurance are not included. As I read the book, I’m outraged: some of these gig companies were invented in a “lab” at the Stockholm School of Economics. Keep that in mind the next time you read a pompous article in a newspaper by Rector Lars Strannegård condemning the “polarization” of our times. His school is helping to foster the part of the labor market where some of the most toxic flowers grow.

Lindblom, a former reporter for Arbetaren, has become something of an expert on the dark side of e-commerce. In her previous book, “Amazon: Behind the Success,” she examined the factory floor where packages are packed. That book, unfortunately, was clumsily written, and I missed the passion that was apparent. In “The Last Mile,” where she investigates the package’s journey to the consumer, she has matured as a reporter and embellishes the text with fine details that create a sense of presence.

Lindblom is also part of a group of young labor market reporters who have expanded their important work into book format as daily newspapers have reduced coverage: Elinor Torp, Anders Teglund, Liza Alexandrova-Zorina, Emil Boss, Pelle Sunvisson. I think about the non-fiction book crisis. Few people probably imagine that a report on the construction industry or cleaning companies is something to relax with. This should be reevaluated: good non-fiction should illuminate the world, and these authors’ books shed light on a much larger part of society than they appear to.

As Lindblom shows, the transformation of the delivery industry has major consequences for the rest of society. For example, the algorithms that push delivery drivers have spread to Postnord. With fixed routes in an app and “service rating.” Sorry, but why on earth should I give stars to my state postal carrier? In the past, these postal carriers would probably have blamed the “lumpenproletariat” for the deterioration – a word that, thankfully, we no longer use. But when we completely reject it, we miss the systemic danger that the concept addresses. Poor working conditions tend to spread upwards – like rotten boards at the bottom of the building.

And it doesn’t end there. Because just as Blå Tåget sang, one hand knows exactly what the other is doing. The state worsens conditions for those at the bottom, and Capital reaps the rewards. Julia Lindblom highlights this through immigration policy: the more difficult it becomes to obtain a residence permit, the greater the de facto servitude. In 2011, Sweden implemented a fee reform that meant students from outside the EU had to pay high tuition fees. The result: an explosion of cycling Indian engineering students with other people’s grocery bags. It is in this context that the Tidö government’s increased income requirements for work permits, which will take effect on June 1, 2026, should be seen. In practice, this will mean that low-skilled immigrants will need to take another job – or fall through the cracks: and guess which app companies will benefit from that? The initiative should be renamed “labor market measure for a larger gig economy.”

Lindblom’s book is a timely reminder of all the venture capitalists who are rubbing their hands together. Soon, a new season will begin to sow giant hogweed in that part of the labor market that arose from the right-wing government’s “strict immigration policy.”

Epstein was an iPad baby with Swedish connections + other embarrassing discoveries in the new emails

57:34

Naked traumas with red threads

1:08:36