The Strategic Unknowns of Business Models of Digital care work platforms

Informed by the scholarship of strategic ignorance (agnotology), this study presents a critical analysis of digital care work platforms and their business models in sustaining, reinforcing and feeding from the existing structural vulnerability of care workers. Based on extensive, international research on digital labour platforms in the UK and in Germany as part of the Fairwork project, the article makes the argument the unknowns and non-knowns workers experience regarding how pay, work allocation, rating systems, background checks or accountability systems work on the platforms end up sustaining and reinforcing precarity on care work platforms. In addition, not having a clear understanding of key aspects of working conditions inevitably impacts workers’ ability to contest them. The findings of the study can be extended to platform work in other sectors, where precarity continues to be a significant concern.