Up & Go: the gig booking platform owned by workers

Low-level service workers--disproportionately women of color--face low and stagnant wages, unpredictable schedules, and little opportunity for professional or asset development. Gig workers face greater instability with consumer-focused booking apps which claim burdensome fees, amass an oversupply of competing workers to prioritize client convenience, and disproportionately contract with younger, more highly-educated workers.

Our solution is Up & Go, a ready-to-scale gig work platform owned by the workers themselves. As a worker-owned digital gig platform, Up & Go offers a pathway to an equitable gig economy. We enable marginalized workers to control the technology and marketing tools that connect them to customers, gain autonomy in their working conditions and wages, thrive in a network of workers who share and improve service standards, and receive tailored technical assistance to successfully manage this cooperative enterprise. If scaled globally, Up & Go has the potential to democratize the gig economy for millions of low-income workers.

The Problem: Low-Income Service Workers Face Barriers to Good Jobs and Asset Development 

U.S. cities are seeing their economies radically reimagined with the growth of low-wage service industries dominated by independent work. In domestic work sectors like residential cleaning, workers largely rely on agencies, referral services, or self-promotion to cobble together income through gigs. These workers, most of whom are women, face meager wages, poor conditions, and challenging or inflexible schedules; often independent domestic workers must negotiate terms across language barriers and without contracts. 

Gig workers face even greater instability with tech startups entering service sectors with consumer-focused booking applications, which claim hefty commissions and disproportionately contract with younger workers with higher levels of formal education than those historically working in these service sectors. Additional barriers to participation in these apps may include lack of information and tech literacy. Workers who do gain access to work through these platforms typically have very little say in company policy or app design. 

At the same time, these tech companies face sustainability challenges including worker turnover, high churn rates due to quality control issues, and artificially low prices through subsidized discounts and the undervaluing of workers’ labor.

Up & Go is designed to address the needs of and work in partnership with low-income service industry workers who are predominantly female and foreign-born. Since 2017, 65 workers have received jobs through Up & Go, and six representative-workers meet 3-10 hours per month on Up & Go operations and governance. Among workers on Up & Go, 100% are immigrants and English Language Learners and 91% are women. None of the workers on Up & Go had ever previously accessed work through a digital gig platform. Their barriers to access to the digital gig economy include a lack of access to capital, assets, and information, in addition to everyday challenges of poverty, limited formal education, and discrimination. Up & Go helps low-income workers access the digital gig economy through inclusive practices in all aspects of our work, including: recruitment and technical assistance in organizations with strong community roots, tech development using human-centered design principles, bilingual and worker-centered customer services for Up & Go, and culturally-responsive, tailored technical assistance services using popular education methodologies. Through Up & Go, workers pool resources and democratically decide all pricing, company policies, and strategy, which are reflected in and reinforced by the technology development process.

The Solution: Technology Developed With and Cooperatively Owned By Service Workers

Up & Go, a tech startup owned by domestic workers, innovatively applies booking platform technology to create good jobs and asset development opportunities for low-income, immigrant, and women workers. On this inclusive platform, workers set their own wages and schedules, define service offerings and terms, and develop and approve company policies and strategy.  Up & Go is defined by:

Job Creation and Quality: The average wage for workers using Up & Go is $22/hour, 30% higher than the local industry average and more than double what the typical worker earned previously.

Asset Development, Stability, and Security: Workers own Up & Go’s intellectual property (brand and software).

Early Participation of Workers: Using human-centered design principles, the web-app was developed and is iterated in collaboration with workers to respond to their values, work conditions and expertise, and tech needs.   

Inclusivity: Workers meet monthly on platform operations and business governance, and receive ongoing training/TA to support their work and decision-making. 

Up & Go is supported by the Center for Family Life (CFL), a nationally-recognized leader in the incubation of worker-owned enterprises (“cooperatives”) in low-income and immigrant communities. Since 2006, CFL-supported cooperatives have generated over $13M and stabilized families of over 500 NYC workers. CFL has honed and manualized our package of trainings, toolkits, and technical assistance tailored for low-income, immigrant workers to manage and govern their own equitable enterprises. Building on this proof of concept, Up & Go scales this model for job and asset development by wedding cooperative governance with technology.

Changing The World: Pulling Back the Curtain on Technology and Business to Address Inequality 

Up & Go is a functioning and scalable wealth-building engine for workers who previously could only increase earnings by working longer hours into old age. Unique among existing service-sharing platforms, Up & Go profits and ownership interest are shared entirely among worker-owners, not outside investors. Beyond expanding job access, Up & Go will change the world by:

• Creating a platform for workers to establish and lift industry standards, share best practices, and achieve economies of scale in low-margin sectors.

• Pulling back the curtain on essential business and technology tools and knowledge not typically accessible to marginalized workers; and thus

• Ensuring workers share in asset-building, educational, and professional development opportunities through technology.

Up & Go is the first home services booking platform in the U.S. that is owned and controlled by workers. It equips low-income workers with digital marketing and customer management tools to secure and manage gig work and compete with investor-backed tech startups. Before Up & Go, existing NYC worker-owned businesses used inefficient marketing strategies, such as flyering, spending up to $1,000 to obtain a single customer. Now, as one worker-owner put it, “we are still investing our time in marketing our businesses, but we are learning about and doing marketing at a higher level.” Up & Go’s technology development has been shaped by the early participation of workers, using human-centered design principles. Worker-owners collaborate with tech developers so that Up & Go reflects worker-approved service offerings and digital marketing and customer management strategies. This fosters innovation, such as introducing a price range model to allow both predictability and flexibility in pricing, and building trust through a transparent business model and company-wide customer reviews as opposed to individual worker profiles and rating systems that can be invasive and lead to discrimination. Looking forward, worker-owners are innovating their service model with subscription plans, allowing them to focus on repeat customers rather than investing resources in one-off jobs. We are developing new features to streamline and automate scheduling and other back office systems. The technology is designed in line with worker-approved, equitable job assignment policies and systems. Worker-owner participation and training ensures that these tools are accessible and useful.

Up & Go equips workers with digital marketing and customer management tools to compete with investor-backed tech startups. Worker-owned enterprises enable workers to organize and control their work, but they need technology resources and support to secure that work. Before Up & Go, existing NYC worker-owned businesses used inefficient marketing strategies, such as flyering, spending up to $1,000/customer. Up & Go enables worker-owners to secure work at a lower cost, gain market share, and share in the wealth generated by the technology. 

Workers also use Up & Go technology to reduce risk. Accepting credit cards, for instance, enables workers to enforce fees. Workers are also innovating their service model with subscription plans, allowing them to focus on repeat customers rather than unknowingly investing in one-off jobs.

Since its beta launch in December 2016, Up & Go has produced tangible results for the worker owners who utilize the platform.  Highlights include:

Business growth and job creation. Up & Go’s sales grew 275% in 2018 from the previous year. Up & Go matched 2018’s full sales volume in the first six months of 2019.

Increased Wages & Economic Prosperity. The average take-home wage on Up & Go is $22/hour, which is 30% higher than industry average wages and more than double what the typical worker earned before joining. In a spring 2019 CFL survey of the impact of worker-ownership, 62% of worker-owners reported becoming more financially independent, 68% said they could create a better future for their family, and 50% were able to establish savings after joining a cooperative.

Job Safety & Education. Workers receive industry-specific OSHA training, including cleaning products hazards; as owners, workers control which products they use. Cooperatives provide protocols and support networks for safety issues in domestic work settings (e.g. verbal abuse, sexual harassment, or wage theft).

Since beta launch in December 2016, 65 workers have received jobs through Up & Go. In 2019, 40  worker-owners will work through Up & Go. Six representatives (worker-owners) meet 3-10 hours per month on Up & Go operations and governance. All workers receive business training and TA from CFL. Beyond Up & Go, CFL serves 200 worker-owners annually.

Up & Go membership will increase to 150 worker-owners in 5 years. Workers will benefit from: 

• Increased wages (average $22/hour), and at least one job per week (based on historical jobs data).

• Increased literacy in cooperative governance and decision-making, technology (including Up & Go tools as well as basic computer skills), business strategy and impact tracking, marketing strategy, customer service, cleaning hard-skills, and workers’ rights, OSHA, and safe non-toxic cleaning techniques. We routinely offer and evaluate these trainings. 

• Co-ownership of a recognized brand and valuable technology, with company valuation increasing by 50% within 5 years.

Over the next year, Up & Go aims to:

• Double the number of worker-owners participating in the platform, from 25 to 50 in NYC

• Convert 50% of customers to recurring appointments monthly or more often, supported by development of subscription tools, referral engine, and improved worker-facing tools to streamline scheduling. 

• Develop geographic expansion plan for 2-3 U.S. cities over 3-5 years

• Study options for use/sharing of IP to serve workers in other industries/geographies, while maintaining asset value

• Develop worker leadership in Up & Go management and governance bodies. Offer workers trainings/TA in marketing strategy, customer service, and new tech.

Within three to five years, Up & Go will have grown to be a recognized brand in NYC, with a growing presence in 2-3 other U.S cities, through which hundreds of worker-owners secure stable work, build assets, collaborate to strengthen their sector, and gain additional professional and business skills. Up & Go will fulfill its mission to bring more quality jobs to more workers throughout NYC and nationally through its:

• Portable and adaptable product, supported by strong and scalable management and governance systems.

• Partnerships with cooperative incubators and other workers organizations.  

• Prioritization of interoperability and component-based development, and opportunities to license/share software;  

• Lean marketing, leveraging unique brand positioning for referral traction, bolstered by new app features.

In the coming year, Up & Go faces market, financial, and technical barriers.  Currently, many service industries, particularly in the gig economy, are exploitative, offering workers meager, unlivable wages. Up & Go promotes fair wages in an industry where prices are kept low by the exploitation of workers and domestic workers’ labor is undervalued.  The resource-intensive work of maintaining and improving the sophisticated technology of Up & Go also presents a challenge.

Over the next five years, Up & Go faces additional technical and administrative barriers.  As Up & Go grows and implements increasingly advanced technology, ensuring workers’ technical proficiency with the tools will be critical. Additionally, with the expansion of Up & Go over the next five years, our current Board of Directors, which provides marketing, business development, and technical expertise to Up & Go, will need to be supplemented to meet growing and more complex needs.

To promote fair wages, Up & Go will build on the workers’ success to date through partnerships with worker advocacy groups as well as smart messaging on the value for quality service and the satisfaction of paying fairly and supporting women-owned business. In addition, as we build scale through the expansion of Up & Go, we will have greater leverage to address wage expectations in the market.  We will also work with the Solve community to find partners to build a joint marketing approach to educate consumers and raise industry standards.

To maintain and adjust the technology behind Up & Go, we will work with the Solve community to connect us to the resources and technical expertise we need to get the platform to sustainability.

To ensure workers’ technical proficiency with Up & Go’s increasingly sophisticated tools, we will develop and deliver additional trainings and ensure that all tech development is driven by workers’ needs.

To address the need for additional expertise on Up & Go’s Board of Directors, we will be cultivating new members representing a wide range of professional domains through current partners, stakeholders, and other interested partners. We would appreciate the Solve community’s support in the ongoing development of the Board.

Up & Go is a project of the Center for Family Life (CFL), a nationally-recognized incubator of worker-owned enterprises (“cooperatives”) in low-income, immigrant communities. Our innovative business development enables low-income workers without capital to launch businesses and create living-wage jobs and opportunity in historically exploitative sectors. Workers establish and enforce contracts and pay themselves a fair wage, allowing them to invest in their businesses and neighborhoods.  Since 2006, CFL-supported cooperatives have generated over $13M and stabilized 500 workers in NYC.

Our solution team is composed of 12 individuals: three full-time staff, five board members (composed of three worker-owners and two external experts), three external experts from CoLab Cooperative, and one external expert from the Robin Hood Foundation.

Up & Go was launched to the public in 2017 by a group of 25 domestic workers in New York City, with support from CFL as technical assistance provider and coordinator, the Robin Hood Foundation and Barclays as seed funders, and CoLab Cooperative as product developer. The founding team of this collaborative effort has remained intact since its early development in 2016. At CFL: Julia Jean-Francois, CFL Co-Director, has led fundraising and partnership development efforts for Up & Go and brings 16 years of workforce and small business development experience to the project; Maru Bautista, Cooperative Program Director, has provided technical assistance to worker cooperatives for over 5 years at CFL, helps coordinate the successful local campaign to secure city government investment in worker cooperatives, and is a leader in the worker cooperative movement nationally; Sylvia Morse serves as Up & Go Product Manager/Project Coordinator, including leading user prototyping (leveraging methodology and training from Google X) and communications including press coverage in Fast Company, WIRED, and NPR and presentations at conferences from NYC to Brazil. CFL meets biweekly with the Robin Hood team, including Program Officer Nancy Park, who maintains a seat on the Up & Go Board of Directors, and Steven Lee, Managing Director of Income Security, both of whom bring years of experience in technology and startup development and have provided critical thought leadership since Up & Go’s infancy. The same team of software engineers and designers at CoLab have built Up & Go since 2016.

Up & Go is the result of close and innovative collaboration with: 

• Robin Hood and Barclays, which have provided grant resources; in-kind tech development and marketing support; guidance and oversight on impact tracking, vision and strategy.  

• CoLab, a worker-owned digital agency that has built the web app, provides CFL with training on design thinking and user prototyping, and advises on tech strategy. 

• The New York City Council has invested more than $12.2M cumulatively ($1.9M in CFL) in funding for cooperative development across New York City to date.

Up & Go harnesses the technology powering today’s digital “gig” economy and places it in the hands of traditionally-excluded low-income immigrant service workers. Up & Go is the first home services booking platform in the U.S. that is owned and controlled by workers, ensuring workers have fair work and share in the wealth generated by technology. On Up & Go (www.upandgo.coop), customers book quality, on-demand home cleaning services from local small businesses that are owned by the home cleaners themselves. The average wage for workers utilizing the platform is $22/hour, 30% higher than the local industry average and more than double what the typical worker earned previously. Amidst hand-wringing over technology’s transformation of the future of work and legal battles over tech companies’ treatment of workers, we offer an action-oriented  solution that both embraces technological development and advances worker power. Worker-owners in low-income communities can now compete with tech companies that have upended service industries with advanced booking and payment systems.

Up & Go’s current revenue model includes:

• 5% earnings on all sales (increasing to 8% in late 2019); 

• Annual worker-owner membership fees; and 

• Grant funding 

Additional potential revenue streams to explore include licensing, mark-ups on cleaning products, and speaking engagements.

Projecting revenues only from the 5% referral fee, Up & Go would be self-sustaining after roughly 23,000 jobs. Up & Go has several advantages over competitor booking applications in achieving sustainability:

• As co-owners of Up & Go, workers are incentivized to sustain the company by keeping jobs on the platform, rather than using it for lead-generation. 

• Joint marketing and economies of scale. Before Up & Go, worker-owners organizing cooperative enterprises each had to bootstrap their own boutique businesses and marketing plans. Individually, they lacked the capital and capacity for digital marketing, but can now pool their resources to reach new markets. Additionally, workers may use joint purchasing of supplies and equipment to reduce costs.

• Social impact story and service quality gives Up & Go unique traction for growth through customer referrals and customer loyalty.  

• Worker-owners are incentivized to recruit new members, thus increasing revenues from member fees, because: 1) worker-owners benefit from the platform’s financial success and growth, and 2) training and governance structures imbue Up & Go and its worker-owners with social mission to expand the platform’s benefits to more workers.

Up & Go is already the most sophisticated implementation of the “platform cooperative” concept, or democratic governance and worker-ownership of technology, providing a model that has garnered broad interest in replication.

Up & Go is CFL’s first tech venture. While we have significant expertise from CoLab and Robin Hood, we need to build partnerships and gain insights from others immersed in the tech field -- ensuring not only that we understand the latest trends in tech development and have connections to talent and resources, but also that we can help educate tech sector partners in our innovative model.

Solve’s approach of forging partnerships in order to challenge the current bias in technological development and advance workers rights is highly aligned with Up & Go’s mission and collaborative approach to work.

There is a gap between the literacy skills of our tech staff and the platform owners of Up & Go that is currently filled by non-profit staff. We would like to partner with AnnieCannons to learn from their approach on how to raise the tech literacy skills of Up & Go’s worker-owners. They may be interested to learn from our experience developing coops and training members in business literacy, sales, goal setting, etc.  We would like to facilitate a connection between the women participants of both initiatives to exchange experiences of their introduction to tech.  

TruTrade is addressing a similar issue of raising industry standards through technology. We would love to learn more about their strategy and approach.

Up & Go, the U.S.’s first booking app owned by domestic workers, is designed to increase workers’ wages and assets. Among workers on Up & Go, 100% are immigrants and English Language Learners, and 91% are women. None had previously found work through a digital gig platform.  Workers utilizing Up & Go earn an average of $22/hour, approximately double what they earned previously. Up & Go would use the GM Prize on Community-Driven Innovation to support the development of new scheduling and communication features for Up & Go in response to workers’ needs and preferences and to provide technical training for workers to ensure their proficiency in the new tech systems. Up & Go has extensive experience in utilizing popular education methodologies to deliver trainings to worker-owners in an engaging, accessible manner.