Did Somebody Say Just Work?
The Gig Economy, Platform Capitalism, and the Battle for Worker Rights
Take One Action is a Scottish organisation that helps connect the power of film with collective action. They put on film festivals with the aim that you, should you feel moved by what you see, Take One Action afterwards.
Last September, I went to their Dismantling Tech Futures event which interrogated the false promises of AI. They screened three short films (I highly recommend seeking out Their Eyes) and a panel discussion. The panel featured Tom Hegarty of Foxglove, and Karen Gregory of the Worker's Observatory. They discussed employment in the digital economy, platform labour, precarious gig work, and the pitfalls of being a Delivery Rider.
The conversation lit a fire under me. Ever since researching and producing my comic about the Luddites, I've been wanting to make more comics about worker exploitation and the fight for worker rights. Attacks on labour are becoming more pronounced and shameless in the age of AI, with any attempts at organising facing aggressive union-busting and legal skulduggeries. With the advent of platform capitalism, companies can now treat their employees as freelancers and thereby skirt any employment rights or responsibilities on their end.
I'm not sure I'm good at many things, but I think I'm decent at getting angry about something and communicating that anger in comic form. So I decided I'd try and make a comic about delivery riders, platform capitalism, and how their fight for worker rights is a fight that concerns ALL of us.
And almost a year later, it is finally ready to share!
Just Work, my all new 24 page comic, is now available to buy/read/download.
I wanted to make sure it was a FREE resource - easy to access, read and share. So:
- You can read the entirety of it online, entirely for free, in a responsive mobile/desktop/tablet friendly form at tomhumberstone.com/just-work.
- You can download a free PDF of it from my itch.io here or my own online shop here. With the itch.io version, you can add a pay-what-you-want tip.
- If you would like to support me + have a physical copy to keep/share around, there's a beautifully printed two colour riso version of it available to buy from my online shop here.
If you like the comic and find it useful at all, please share it around!
This comic wouldn't have been possible without the help of Rachel Hamada at Take One Action, Joe Durbridge and Ellie Butcher at the IWGB, Karen Gregory, Xabier Villares, Cailean Gallagher, and Boyan Karabaliev at the Worker's Observatory, plus Emiliano Mellino, Jamie Woodcock, and Sarah Jaffe. All of whom offered valuable advice, insights and guidance.
I'm also hugely indebted to all of the riders who took the time to sit with me and discuss their experiences.
Non-fiction comics like this can only work if you understand the subject well enough to be able to condense it down into concise, digestible, bite-size chunks. Which is part of the reason it's taken me this long. But it would have taken even longer without all of these people helping me along the way.
I was lucky enough to secure some funding from Creative Scotland to work on the art when the script was finished. This allowed me to prioritise the comic in a way I couldn't have been able to justify without it. No-one commissioned me, and without publications like The Nib funding this sort of comic reportage, there are very few (if any) places that pay for it these days.
I'm extremely happy with how this comic came together and hope you like it too. If you do, please share it with friends, enemies, co-workers, and on social media. This won't have the reach that it would have if it was commissioned and published by a large media outlet so it needs as much word-of-mouth as possible!
If you would like to support more work like this, you can either get a paid subscription to this newsletter or buy me a coffee using this link.
I'll be tabling at Sequential Scotland in Glasgow this Saturday (August 8th) where Just Work will be making its debut. So if you're planning on attending, you can pick up a copy there!
I'll be posting any online orders the following Monday (August 10th).
Any purchase (online or in person) will get a FREE sticker too! I couldn't possibly condone putting them in workplaces and such.
There are so many more worker stories I'd like to tell. I'd like to delve into the disgraceful union-busting efforts of Amazon in Coventry, or Rockstar here in Edinburgh. I'd like to look at the way British farms are run on exploitation, or the abuse of the VISA system in care work... And I know there are countless other stories I'm not even aware of.
If you're a worker with a story to tell, a journalist writing stories about workers that could use images, or a union/organisation that could use comic storytelling to help advocate for workers: email me. I'd love to chat.
Also, if you're an editor of a publication that would like to commission comic journalism like this, get in touch!
In the meantime, I'm going to keep making non-fiction comics like Just Work even if I have to commission myself. To help me keep that sustainable, consider a paid subscription to this newsletter or making a one-off donation. I appreciate we're all in a perpetual cost-of-living crisis so don't worry if you can't. My newsletter will always remain free and nothing will be behind a paywall. The only benefit for getting a year-long paid subscription (beyond my eternal gratitude and the warm, fuzzy satisfaction that you're supporting the arts) is that you'll get a free copy of any physical zine I publish that year (more on this soon!)
I read Huw Lemmey's newsletter about wanting to avoid the feeling of having to produce work at a consistent churn in order to make a patreon/subscription feel worthwhile. Aside from this comic, I've only written and illustrated one essay for the newsletter this year. But it was one I'm incredibly proud of. If I felt pressure to make something every month, I don't think I'd be doing my best work. As Lemmey says: "An essay a week? I’m not that interesting." Instead, I see any subscription money as no-strings patronage. A small donation to help me keep drawing and writing things, without any specific expectations. I hope you do too!
Finally, if you're interested in finding out more about delivery riders, gig work and the ideas discussed in Just Work, here's a short reading list:
FURTHER READING
- The Fight Against Platform Capitalism by Jamie Woodcock
- Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe
- Riding For Deliveroo: Resistance In The New Economy by Callum Cant
- Lost in Work by Amelia Horgan
- Work Without the Worker: Labour in the Age of Platform Capitalism by Phil Jones
- Unpaid: The Past, Present and Future of Wage Theft by Matthew Cole
Thanks for reading! x