about how the spread of platform work will affect net job generation in the high-cost Nordic countries and how it will affect pay, working conditions, and employment relations in wider parts of the labour markets. Some might assume that the highly regulated Nordic working lives are especially vulnerable to the liberalizing – or disruptive – effects of the platform companies, while others might assume that the Nordic models with their mostly liberal product market regulations, high levels of education, and strong social partners are well equipped both to reap the innovative potentials and bring the new forms of work in the sharing economy into their institutional folds.
2.1
The size of the Nordic platform labour market
The unclear definitions and boundaries of the sharing economy obviously make it difficult to measure its magnitude. Also, when trying to measure the size of the sharing economy, one can adopt several perspectives, looking at the number of platforms, their economic significance, and the number of platform clients, workers or hours worked. Here we will only briefly refer to platform and consumer figures, and focus on the scant data regarding the number of people working through the platforms. In this area, there is no prior research to draw on from Iceland and Finland (Ólafsdóttir, 2016; Saloniemi, 2016), whereas a few quantitative surveys have been conducted in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. These surveys indicate that the sharing economy still is marginal in the Nordic labour markets. When it comes to the number of platform companies, a mapping conducted in Norway25 suggests that there in November 2016 were about 30 platforms involving labour in Norway (Jesnes et al., 2016a). As the sharing economy is still evolving and platforms are established and disappear rather frequently, the numbers are likely to change fast. Jesnes et al. (2016a) also emphasize that many of the companies discussed under the heading of the sharing economy are start-up companies trying to find their desired business model. Some of these have already changed from hiring freelancers to hiring employees on open-ended contracts with few working hours. Most of the platforms, at least in Norway, are registered as technology companies, but many of the platforms intermediate labour to individuals or companies within cleaning, hotel services, food, transport, or office-based tasks. Other platforms offer many different services. One example is “Finn.no småjobber” set up by a large, longstanding company (Finn.no), where firms or individuals can create a so-called “ploy” on the website, which is a short description of the task they want someone to do – painting, gardening, bartending and “handyman-like” tasks – and then individuals can apply for that ploy. Thereafter the client, the firm or the individual, decides whom to hire for the job. Payment takes place through the website, and after the task is completed the persons involved write a recommendation of each other. Similar
25
Mapping conducted by Fafo and Center for Applied Research (SNF, Norges Handelshøyskole) as part of a project commissioned by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
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Nordic labour markets and the sharing economy