Tribune. “Applause does not pay the bills”, could we read on the placards of caregivers between two waves of the health crisis. If “work always pays”, as the saying goes, does it always pay enough and what exactly is it paying?
The combination of pay and work seems so exclusive and anchored in time that it is difficult to conceive of one without the other. Whether monetary or symbolic, in the form of salaries, fees, salary, gratuity, tips, bonuses, stock options, remuneration recognizes and rewards a work carried out and, thereby, gives it its outlines.
A minority of superstars
However, this a priori simple relationship raises many questions, asked and discussed by social science researchers in the issue that the journal Different perspectives on the economy devotes to labor compensation. Among them, those specific to the boundaries of what is meant by “work”. Can we think of work without pay? Should we remunerate any productive activity? How to adapt remuneration to changes in work?
Tag photos on [la plate-forme participative] Factory crowd, improvising as a driver for a trip thanks to Blablacar, or even obtaining sponsors for a cooking blog… So many new possibilities to generate income alongside a main job. Digital platforms are changing the relationship between leisure and free time.
However, not all of them hit the jackpot: like the highlighted economist Pierre Rondeau on footballers, the colossal income from a simple Instagram post is only accessible to a minority of superstars, like Cristiano Ronaldo and his million-euro photos . The others are content to exercise their profession of sportsman… in the field. “In other words, beyond even talent and level, the more a player is known, for whatever reason, the more he can benefit from significant market power and claim high remuneration. “
For public policies, new problems arise: how to take account of these inequalities, the dynamics of which are structured and supported by the platforms? But also, how to regulate these unprecedented forms of competition for traditional workers, subject to existing fiscal and legal constraints?
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