The precariousness of work in the gig economy in Croatia

The fundamental goal of the PrekarGigHrv project is to investigate the precariousness of work in the gig economy in Croatia. Gig (Croatian: gaža) economy refers to the economy of short-term jobs in which supply and demand today most often meet on online platforms (e.g. Wolt, UpWork). Gig workers generally earn their living by doing several jobs at the same time short-term jobs and, as a rule, they all have in common precarious working conditions such as existential insecurity and worker disenfranchisement. The already rapid growth of the gig economy recorded in the last few years was additionally strengthened by the corona crisis, i.e. by the combination of the negative impact of the economic crisis on the market of “standard” jobs and the positive impact of the anti-epidemic measures of work/life from home on the demand for gig workers. On the global scene, among the most represented aspects of the analysis of the gig economy is precisely its relationship with precarious work. In the context of Croatia, an empirical study on this topic has not yet been published. Moreover, even individually precarious work and the gig economy have not attracted significant attention from researchers. Therefore, with this project: we conceptualize and operationalize the phenomena of precarious work and the gig economy, identify risk and protective factors of precarious work in the gig economy, empirically investigate the fundamental characteristics of precarious work in the national gig economy, and develop and validate an instrument for comprehensive dimensional assessment of precarious work in the national gig economy. Members of Pilar’s team: Filip Majetić, Dražen Šimleša, Chiara Bassetti and Miroslav Rajter