Pseudo Gig Work: Entitlement Claiming and Unjust Epistemic Burdens

Recent research indicates that expanding businesses are increasingly utilizing “pseudo” gig work to avoid providing full benefits to their workers, even when these workers essentially function as regular employees, receiving instructions from the firm and performing routine tasks daily. The existing literature has extensively critiqued this kind of gig work, primarily emphasizing the material deprivations, transfer of risk, and structural inequalities faced by workers. Building on the literature of epistemic injustice, this article introduces an epistemic critique of pseudo gig work, highlighting the unfair knowledge-based challenges workers face when trying to assert their rights and entitlements. This article makes two contributions. First, it introduces an additional normative basis for critiquing pseudo gig work by shedding light on the epistemic burdens borne by workers. Second, it illustrates these challenges and the unfair disadvantages encountered by workers using specific legal cases as examples.