On-demand and marketplace platforms: gig care work conditions on two digital labour platform care models

With worker shortages and the need for care workers projected to grow, personal care work through digital labour platforms (DLPs) is important to understand. This paper considers DLPs used by gig care workers providing personal care in Ontario, Canada. We recruited 20 women gig care workers for interviews. We examined socio-technical processes such as signing up on platforms, creating profiles, and searching for jobs. We draw on Institutional Ethnography to study the actual work on the following two DLP models: marketplace and on-demand. Marcusean theory provides a lens for the critical examination of DLP care work. We found job inequity between DLPs operating in the homecare sector, compared to DPs used in institutional settings. Jobs had disparate quality between the two platform types. Workers on both DLP types remained vulnerable to fluctuations in demand and had limited social security protections, and both models of DLP institutionalised precarity.