In this article, I argue that indigenous Latin American food delivery workers organize to defy information and knowledge asymmetries by utilizing technology built to mediate online social ...interactions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper investigates transnational modes of community-building and network formation and examines how these networks are instrumental for delivery workers in New York City to exercise agency, forge their narrative, and resist platform control by resisting, pushing, and extending a variety of digital and communication technologies. I analyze how public and private means of communication facilitate and constrain social forms of organization by mapping how delivery workers communicate and engage collectively both in the physical and the digital worlds. My research reveals two platforms that workers use to share information: one that operates inwards (WhatsApp) and another that operates outwards (Facebook). These channels represent opposite sides of the spectrum between public and private and synergize to form a transnational distributed knowledge network to shape and interpret the collective identity of Latin American delivery workers. Overall, this article sheds light on how the flow of information through different spaces and times enables delivery workers to construct a place for subversion and negotiation with roles assigned to them by broader socio-political forces.
PurposeHow to improve continuance commitment for platform workers is still unclear to platforms' managers and academic scholars. This study develops a configurational framework based on the push-pull ...theory and proposes that continuance commitment for platform workers does not depend on a single condition but on interactions between push and pull factors.Design/methodology/approachThe data from the sample of 431 full-time and 184 part-time platform workers in China were analyzed using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA).FindingsThe results found that combining family motivation with the two kinds of pull factors (worker's reputation and algorithmic transparency) can achieve high continuance commitment for full-time platform workers; combining job alternatives with the two kinds of pull factors (worker's reputation and job autonomy) can promote high continuance commitment for part-time platform workers. Particularly, workers' reputations were found to be a core condition reinforcing continuance commitment for both part-time and full-time platform workers.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that platforms should avoid the “one size fits all” strategy. Emphasizing the importance of family and improving worker's reputation and algorithmic transparency are smart retention strategies for full-time platform workers, whereas for part-time platform workers it is equally important to reinforce continuance commitment by enhancing workers' reputations and doing their best to maintain and enhance their job autonomy.Originality/valueThis study expands the analytical context of commitment research and provides new insights for understanding the complex causality between antecedent conditions and continuance commitment for platform workers.
El trabajo en plataformas digitales está siendo ampliamente discutido por su rol en la reorganización del trabajo. En ello cobra especial relevancia el eje de la autonomía formalmente atribuida a los ...trabajadores. En este estudio abordamos la producción de la autonomía en el trabajo de plataformas como estrategia de gobierno de las subjetividades, en el contexto de la precariedad estructural del mercado laboral en América Latina. Enmarcado en un estudio cualitativo y diseño de etnografía digital, se presenta un análisis de las aplicaciones destinadas a los trabajadores en dos plataformas: Uber (transporte) y Pedidos Ya (reparto) en Chile. Los resultados muestran que las aplicaciones, promueven la comprensión de sí como trabajadores libres y autorregulados a través de dos estrategias complementarias: la exaltación de la libertad y voluntad del sujeto, y el solapamiento de los controles de la plataforma. Las formas de adscripción parcial a estas nociones se relacionan intrínsecamente con las condiciones de precariedad que caracterizan el empleo formal en la experiencia de los individuos. Se discuten las implicancias para la agenda de estudio sobre la uberización del trabajo.
Traditional media’s convergence with online media platforms intensifies the already unpaid and unrecognized affective, immaterial and emotional labor expected of women of color and other historically ...marginalized media workers. This article uses the example of Bon Appetit (BA) and the downfall of their popular YouTube channel to argue that understanding this intensification is critical to envisioning possibilities for media workers to address exploitative working conditions. In the wake of Black Lives Matter uprisings in the summer of 2020, Black and Brown women food writers took to social media to point out that while BA profited from portraying a diverse workforce on their YouTube channel, the reality was very different. At the time, popular press and social media discourse largely attributed these issues to entrenched histories of racialized and gendered discrimination in legacy media. However, recent research on online platforms has engaged feminist studies, Black studies, and critical STS epistemologies to demonstrate that intersectional oppressions based on race, gender, class, and sexuality are reinscribed in the labor and technical infrastructures of platforms. Together, theorizations of the racialized and gendered aspects of unpaid and unrecognized labor alongside research on the biases reinscribed into algorithmic and internet platform infrastructures inform my analysis of a variety of texts related to the BA YouTube channel: BA YouTube channel metadata and videos, advertising trades coverage of Conde Nast’s digital media efforts, popular press coverage of the racial reckoning at Conde Nast and BA, and disclosures about BA and Conde Nast workplace cultures shared in public interviews by BA workers. By analyzing these texts together, I argue that the downfall of the BA YouTube channel demonstrates how media convergence and the platformization of legacy media intensifies racialized and gendered inequalities for media workers, but opportunities to publicly disclose these discriminatory workplace dynamics also galvanize worker organizing.
There have been numerous legal battles in Western countries concerning employment relations between platform-based food delivery firms and their riders; however, no such legal battles have occurred ...in Taiwan. This qualitative case study applies the theory of institutional logics to examine the reason such legal action is absent in Taiwan, focusing on how different stakeholders apply different logics to employment relations in Taiwan’s platform-based food-delivery sector. Through this investigation, this article shows that most stakeholders in this sector quickly came to a consensus that the ‘quasi-employee’ hybrid logic should be applied to riders, and that this was due to a convergence of worker and capitalist theories of profit, motivation to maintain the profitability of these platform firms (who are regulatory entrepreneurs performing symbolic compliance) and the techno-developmentalism of the Taiwanese government.
The article describes the protection against unemployment for self-employed persons and platform workers under Austrian law. The aim is to provide an overview of the respective protection systems. ...Interpretation issues regarding individual provisions are not discussed in detail, as they are unlikely to yield insights for a comparative study. The article concludes with a brief summary of the current policy debate in Austria.
This article analyses unemployment protection for platform workers and the self-employed in Belgium. In Belgium, the self-employed were traditionally not covered for unemployment, but since the ...1990s, several steps have been taken to provide some protection. The scheme in place, now called the ‘bridging right’, has been regularly revised and extended, with the most recent reforms in 2022 and 2023. The Belgian legislator also took some initiatives to regulate platform work, by adopting, for example, legislation on the labour status of platform workers (2022). Platform workers are not treated as a separate category in Belgium with regard to unemployment, and they fall either under the scheme for employees or for the self-employed. In this paper, we will highlight the difficulties faced by platform workers in accessing unemployment protection, both under the scheme for employees and under the self-employed scheme. The analysis in this article shows that although important steps have been taken, several coverage gaps remain, in particular for platform workers, the solo (economically dependent) self-employed and persons who work in self-employment as a side activity.
Background
Previous studies indicated that offshore workers have a high level of work-related stress on an everyday basis. This study aims to assess the prevalence and determinants of mental health ...conditions in offshore oil platform workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods
Workers of three oil and gas platforms were assessed in this cross-sectional study. Their mental status was evaluated by the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD-8) questionnaire, and Depression Anxiety, Stress Scales (DASS) questionnaires. Furthermore, we assessed satisfaction with life (SWL) with a single question. Finally, multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the association of demographic and work-related variables with mental health outcomes.
Results
Overall, 278 (Males:197, Females: 81) out of 315 invited workers with a mean age of 35.6 (SD: 7.2) years were included in this study using a random sampling method (participation rate: 88.2%). PTSD symptoms and Insomnia were observed in 9 (3.2%) and 138 (49.6%) of the participants, respectively. The prevalence of stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms were 72 (25.9%), 70 (24.6%), and 85 (30.5%), respectively. Based on multivariable (adjusted) logistic regression analysis, women had significantly higher odds of stress and anxiety than men; those with an academic education were significantly more dissatisfied with their lives than those without an academic education.
Conclusion
Our findings revealed a high prevalence of anxiety, depressive symptoms, and stress among offshore oil platformers during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in women. Indicating that women and those with a higher education level in the oil platform work settings are more susceptible to stressors.
For some time now, the European Commission has stressed the need to address the ongoing misclassification of employment status in platform work and has thus considered introducing a rebuttable ...presumption of employment status or a reversal of the burden of proof. This contribution focuses on the benefits and limitations of introducing a rebuttable legal presumption in EU labour law as an evidentiary means to improve the working conditions of platform workers. In doing so, some general remarks on rebuttable legal presumptions will be made, while also offering some comparative legal insights, before exploring their potential benefits and limitations in the context of EU labour law in general and platform work in particular. This contribution will finish with an analysis of how such a presumption could be integrated in the current EU social acquis.
Because of its relatively well-developed, highly urbanised economy and high penetration of mobile internet access, the platform economy took off quickly in South Africa, with international players ...vying for market share and local platforms pursuing more innovative approaches. Digital labour platforms have offered new earning opportunities to many in the country, but concerns have been raised about the quality of jobs created, and whether they meet standards of decent work. South Africa was one of the pilot countries for the Fairwork Project. This article describes the specific conditions which supported the take-off of location-based digital labour platforms in South Africa, explains the methodology used for pursuing the Fairwork research, discusses ratings outcomes based on the empirical research and summarizes the action research component of the project—with particular attention paid to outcomes for workers. We also list some of the lessons that were learnt and give a critical reflection on the project in the hope of assisting other researchers investigating the fourth industrial revolution, the gig economy, and decent work standards, especially in the Global South.
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