Aliada and Alia: Contrasting for-profit and non-profit platforms for domestic work in Mexico and the United States

Andrea Santiago Páramo and Carlos Piñeyro Nelson

Chapter 15 in A Modern Guide To Labour and the Platform Economy, 2021, pp 242-257 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter discusses two different approaches to using online platforms for domestic workers and the new hiring schemes that such platforms have induced. The first approach is Mexico's Aliada, an online for-profit service that functions as an intermediary between domestic workers and employers. The USA non-profit online platform Alia encompasses the second approach: it has been created by the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) for the benefit of domestic cleaners. By analysing Aliada, we see how its promises of better working conditions for domestic workers have not happened in reality. Quite the opposite: this for-profit platform reproduces precarity by denying workers' rights under a new narrative. Alia, on the other hand, has the potential to enable benefits for domestic workers in the US, yet it is too soon to analyse its success or failure. However, its implementation opens a real possibility for this workforce to gain de facto benefits.

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance; Innovations and Technology; Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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