Ratings Please? The Glaring Flaws of Star Ratings in the Gig Economy

Star ratings in the gig economy are often used to terminate the workers from the platform when they receive a lower rating

The gig economy stands for initiatives based on contingent work that is transacted on a digital marketplace, as the Journal of the European Union puts it. In other words, the gig economy is the specific trade of short-term services, where there's a high degree of autonomy, payment is done by task and there's a short-term relationship between worker and client. Because your Ubereats delivery is indeed giving someone the chance of making some money.

The platforms or facilitators in the gig economy hold significant control over the workers. These platforms can constantly monitor the performance of a worker using the rating and reviews provided by customers. Instead of passive matchmaking, such rating structures ensure that the worker completely conforms to the firm's policy and customer instructions. These ratings are often used to terminate the workers from the platform when they receive lower ratings.

Discrimination has been one of the first ghosts to re-emerge. Researchers who looked at Uber concluded that while its rating system was outwardly neutral, it could be a vehicle for, say, racial bias. Academics feel the ratings affect them personally. 

Having analyzed how the gig economy shifted the control largely from the hands of the employers to the end customers leading to over-subordination of the gig workers, it is the need of the hour to formulate labor laws that could address the changing needs of the market. In these suggestions, the core of the labor law is taken as the satisfaction and well-being of the vulnerable gig workers in the economy.

Also, companies like Uber do let drivers rate users, who can themselves be kicked off the app if their bad behavior pushes their rating below par. This leads to the mutually assured insincerity of high ratings on both sides and leaves neither customer nor provider much the wiser.