Beginning in 2018, the University of California Press has published a series of books under the general title of “Labor in a Time of Crisis”. They examine employment and related issues of those who engage with Uber, TaskRabbit, Kitchensurfing and Airbnb; food workers; prisoners, workfare workers (welfare recipients), college athletes, science graduate students; and ambulance crews. A press release promoting these books said they “explore…contemporary challenges embedded in the [American] labor system.” Uber, formed in San Francisco in 2009, utilises smart phone apps in providing driver services (ridesharing or ridehailing) for consumers. It grew quickly and by 2018 operated in over 630 cities world-wide, with three million drivers on its books. Alex Rosenblat reported in 2015, it was estimated that 15.8 per cent of the American workforce were gig workers. (Rosenblat, 25). Alexandrea Ravenelle reports that, in 2016, nearly a quarter of American adults had earned income in the ‘platform economy’ over the last year (Ravenelle, 7). While Uber will lease cars to drivers, its business model rests on drivers providing their own vehicles. Alex Rosenblat, an ethnographer who also works as a journalist, says Uber identifies ‘drivers as “partners” with messages like “be your own boss” and “get paid in fares for driving on your own schedule”’ (Rosenblat, 31). Uber also holds out the allure of entrepreneurship to drivers. “The idea is that anyone can make it in America, and if they do, its because of their own hard work. Uber’s employment narrative builds on this cultural consensus and says that anyone can be an entrepreneur if they partner with Uber.” (Rosenblat, 75-6). In Uberland Rosenblat demonstrates this is nothing more than a myth with Uber exercising overarching and unaccountable control over the work and income of drivers. Rosenblat conducted research on Uber; and to a lesser extent fellow ridesharing/roadhailing company Lyft, from 2014 to 2018. Her research combined interviews with 125 drivers, ‘field’ observations riding along with 400 drivers in 25 cities across the USA and Canada, and spending “hours every single day for years reading the text of drivers” forum posts about their anxieties and advice to warnings against passenger scams’ (Rosenblat, 13). She distinguishes between three types of drivers—hobbyists, part-time and full-time. Hall and Kruger found that 53 per cent of Uber drivers drive 1 to 15 hours a week, 30 per cent 16 to 34 hours, 12 per cent 35 to 49 hours, and 5 per cent over 50 hours. Those who work 1 to 15 hours are Rosenblat’s hobbyists who are either retired or “professionals in other fields” who drive to either supplement their income or for something to do. Part-timers pick up Uber work because of the need to generate income during career transition, they value flexibility or because it is better than other ‘bad’ jobs. There is a high turnover rate of gig workers with the majority of Uber driving being performed by full-timers. Rosenblat maintains that Uber pits the full-timers against the part-timers and hobbyists. She says: Rosenblat includes a photo taken from a video on a driver’s dashcam where he confronts then Uber CEO Travis Kalanick over Uber “constantly changing his conditions and degrading his take home pay”. The exchange became heated and the video went viral. Kalanick resigned several months later in the midst of a series of problems experienced by Uber (Rosenblat, 104-105). The significance of this is that an Uber driver actually had a face to face meeting with a boss, with someone who determined his income and welfare. This is not the lot of Uber drivers. Their ability to obtain work, and subsequent pay, is determined …