The “Good Work Code”

Readers of New Labor Forum are familiar with the depleted state of America’s unions, workers’ depressed living standards, as well as of the emergence of responsive ideas, strategies, and struggles. The current ferment will surely lead to successes, but in the process, a number of counterproductive strategies are emerging. ¹

Although led by smart, empathetic activists, one of the oddest and most problematic of the new efforts is the Good Work Code (GWC or the Code) for the on-demand or “gig” economy, formulated by the National Domestic Workers Association (NDWA). ² While the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), in particular, are engaged in unionizing strategies in the tech sector, and enterprising wage and hour lawyers are confronting the sector’s wage theft, the NDWA, working with a number of corporate partners such as the Uber-like delivery company DoorDash, has created an aspirational code for tech-sector employers.

An analysis of the GWC is a lesson in the problematic nature of a number of trends in the Philanthropic Labor Movement (PLM). Unfor-tunately, within the non-profits in the foundation-funded PLM, worker agency, power, and democracy, the bedrocks of a strong movement, are often hard to find. ³

The Code was unveiled last fall with a splashy website and media campaign, after the well-respected NDWA canvassed “on-demand” employers. ⁴ Signatory companies committed to endorse general “values” for their workforces—safety, stability and flexibility, transparency, shared prosperity, a living wage, inclusion and input, support and connection, and growth and development—and to make public a few sentences about what “progress” they will make in relation to two of the eight values. ⁵ Nothing more was required. In exchange, they received a kind of “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” to trumpet on promotional materials, backed by the progressive reputation of the NDWA.

An analysis of the Good Work Code is a lesson in the problematic nature of a number of trends in the Philanthropic Labor Movement .

Codes that inure to the benefit of workers are sometimes developed for areas in which worker power is lacking and protection at work sorely needed. But like codes for organic food or product safety, many are simply corporate greed-washing. As the trajectory of the Fair Labor Association has shown in the garment supply chain, “many companies adopt codes to assist with their reputational risks over questionable labor practices,” says Ben Hensler, deputy director of the Workers Rights Consortium. ⁶

Good codes exist, but to work, Hensler continues, they “need several attributes including legal enforceability, independent and transparent monitoring of compliance, and meaningful involvement of worker representatives.” One successful code is the Accord on Fire and Building Safety (the Accord) in Bangladesh negotiated between international trade unions at such companies as Fruit of the Loom and Benetton. Coming on the heels of the Rana Plaza building collapse in which, scandalously, more than one thousand people were killed, the Accord is a legally binding agreement covering more than two million workers. To ensure a safe working environment, the Accord includes inspection programs, public disclosure of reports, a democratically elected factory-based health and safety committee, and a right to refuse unsafe work. Fruitful codes are present in the United States as well. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, through a strategy of farmworker organizing, consumer education, and boycotts, has forced a number of retail companies, including Walmart, to sign onto its Fair Food Code of Conduct, which contains labor protections. Moreover, the NDWA’s original Caregiver’s Bill of Rights is a solid type of code, whose use has advanced efforts to protect in-home labor.

National Domestic Workers Association’s anointing of DoorDash as a company that provides good work gives the company a powerful weapon when questioned about the compensation of its drivers .

It is easy to see why tech companies would like the GWC. NDWA’s anointing of DoorDash as a company that provides good work gives the company a powerful weapon when questioned about the compensation of its drivers. ⁷ Moreover, for a troubled public company like Care.com, the reputational boost from its NDWA seal of approval is valuable. ⁸ But why would the NDWA, a very well-respected organization, leverage its prestige with this mealy-mouthed GWC, even as an experiment? ⁹

First, the sparkly potential of the “on-demand” economy glimmers for many schooled in social entrepreneurship and is seducing too many labor advocates. ¹⁰ The GWC is based on the Silicon Valley utopian vision featured in TED talks with breathless paeans to “innovation” and “disruption.” In this Garden of Eden, it is claimed, wonderful “new opportunities” exist for workers featuring “flexibility” and “freedom.” ¹¹

. . . [F]or a troubled public company like Care.com . . . why would the NDWA . . . leverage its prestige with this mealy-mouthed Good Work Code, even as an experiment?

Furthermore, the GWC is a manifestation of the Good Capitalism movement. Here, the “rich can save the world,” and “capitalism itself can be philanthropic, working for the good of mankind . . . by [innovating] to benefit everyone, sooner or later.” ¹² In what the writer Anand Giridharadas has called the “Aspen Consensus,” generosity becomes a substitute for justice. Companies are exhorted to “Do More Good,” but never, “Do Less Harm.” ¹³ Moreover, in Good Capitalism, “the business approach is the only thing that can change the world.” ¹⁴

Worker power is Lilliputian in Good Capitalism, and worker “betterment” is mediated by well-meaning politicians, foundation program officers, and PLM leaders. Ideas of confrontational unions, with their worker solidarity and messy democracy, are shunned. Describing the GWC, Ai-jen Poo of the NDWA told Forbes, “Our goal is to create a new story—a new narrative—that’s not about abusive employers and downtrodden workers, but rather that brings companies front and center into the conversation about the future of good work.” ¹⁵ Given the realities of life for Silicon Valley workers, this brings to mind Barbara Ehrenreich’s writing on the perils of positivity as “an apology for the crueler aspects of the market economy”; lower rung “gig” workers are simply “modern” day laborers.” ¹⁶ Even one of the signatories of the GWC admitted that in the “new economy,” “the basics remain much of the same . . . a time clock used to be something that was mounted on the wall of a factory; now it’s a mobile app.” ¹⁷

For those who would say that criticizing the Code is just “old labor” negativity, consider Poo’s statement to Forbes that “we see a moment of opportunity right now because the gig/online economy is relatively new and its values and principles regarding work are still forming.” ¹⁸ There is much to chew on here, but it is farcical to claim that the “values and principles of these Silicon Valley creations are still forming.” Silicon Valley has a well-formed negative ethical code—raw profit-seeking individualism. Their leaders are constantly in the news for some kind of unethical actions, whether in their personal lives—cheating a sex slave or closing public access to beaches for their private use—or in their business—cheating workers out of their wages. ¹⁹ As to the “evolving ethics” for employees, advocates and discharged workers know that many business models are based on “exploiting workers and disregarding employment laws.” ²⁰ The bigger on-demand companies such as Uber and Instacart have recently cut pay to their drivers. Moreover, an “occupational segregation” exists in the Silicon Valley as full-time jobs are replaced with low-wage subcontracting work staffed by predominantly black and Latino workers. ²¹ A recent report found that the average blue-collar subcontracted worker has an annual income of $19,900. A living wage for a single mother with one child in this area, for example, is at least twice this amount. ²²

New ideas for worker justice and power are needed and certainly a thousand flowers should bloom, but the GWC is a bad strategy even though advanced by good people.