Transforming Work: How co-operatively owned digital platforms create jobs

Digital technologies are opening up new possibilities to help people find or build a livelihood in a world where the nature of work is changing fast.

But many of the digital platforms which have become synonymous with the ‘sharing economy’ or the 'on demand' economy are ‘platform monopolies’. These platforms are worth billions, yet the ones who profit most are the platforms' owners and investors, even though their financial value is generated by everyone who uses them.

These platforms cast off the costs of conventional businesses by treating labour as independent contractors rather than employees - meaning gig economy workers do not enjoy benefits like stable work, superannuation, and leave entitlements.

What if the technological heart of these online platforms was cloned into a cooperative model, democratically operated by everyone who has a stake in them?

Platform Co-operatives, an alternative to venture capital funded platforms, are owned and governed by those who use them, sharing the revenue with the people who make them valuable.

Come and hear from Trebor Scholz, a founder of the platform co-operativism movement and one of network culture's toughest critics of the sharing economy. Learn about the benefits of this model, case studies of how it is being taken up around the world, and how platform co-ops are ‘disrupting the disruptors’.

"Silicon Valley loves a good disruption... So let's give them one." Trebor Scholz

Presented by the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, the Don Dunstan Foundation and Green Industries SA

Braggs Lecture Theatre location - see E11 on this map