Challenging Goliath. Informal Unionism and Digital Platforms in the Food Delivery Sector. The Case of Riders Union Bologna

• Autores: Matteo Marenco, Vladi Finotto
• Localización: Partecipazione e conflitto, ISSN-e 2035-6609, Vol. 12, Nº. 3, 2019 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Special Issue on: Working as a platform: Labour needs, activation and representativeness in the era of digital transformation), págs. 691-716
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • The growth of digital platforms in many industries attracted the attention of scholars and activists alike. A number of studies, in disciplines such as management, emphasized the role of digital technology in transforming market logics and described platforms as the harbingers of a more democratic organization of economic activities. The more platforms became relevant in intermediating between clients and providers of services and goods, the more conflicts related to working conditions rose, calling for a critical approach to the so-called platform economy. The most recent debate focused on the connection between the rise of platforms and the effects of neoliberalism in relaxing employment regulations and in pushing an increasing number of individuals towards "gig" types of jobs. We deal with these tensions and consider the emerging forms of organization and strategies of workers' movements. We focus on the food delivery sector and on the most popular informal workers' movement in Italy: Riders Union Bologna (Rub). The aim of the paper is to investigate the factors that stimulated the rise of informal unionism in food delivery, and to pinpoint the reasons motivating specific struggling and organizing strategies among platform workers

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • Agarwala, R. (2013). Informal labor, formal politics, and dignified discontent in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Ajunwa, I., and Greene, D. (2019). Platforms at Work: Automated Hiring PLatforms and Other New Intermediaries in the Organization of Work....
  • Aloisi, A. (2015). Commoditized workers: Case study research on labor law issues arising from a set of on-demand/gig economy platforms. Comp....
  • Arcidiacono, D., Gandini, A., and Pais, I. (2018). Unboxing the sharing economy. Opportunities and risks of the era of collaboration. Thousands...
  • Baldwin, R. (2016). The great convergence. Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press.
  • Ballarino, G. (2005). Strumenti nuovi per un lavoro vecchio. Il sindacato italiano e la rappresentanza dei lavoratori atipici. Sociologia...
  • Bettini, M. (2004). Riqualificazione dei porti italiani, lotte sociali e ruolo dello Stato (1945-1965). Studi Storici(3), 785-836.
  • Borghi, V., Dorigatti, L., and Greco, L. (2017). Il lavoro e le catene globali del valore. Bologna: Ediesse.
  • Breman, J., and van der Linden, M. (2014). Informalizing the Economy: The Return of the Soaicl Question at a Global Level. Development and...
  • Brynjolfsson, E., and McAfee, A. (2014). The second machine age: Work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies. WW Norton...
  • Bughin, J., and Van Zeebroeck, N. (2017). The best response to digital disruption. MIT Sloan Management Review, 58(4), 80-86.
  • Buhrmester, M. D., Talaifar, S., and Gosling, S. D. (2018). An evaluation of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, its rapid rise, and its effective use....
  • Cant, C. (2017, August 3). Precarious couriers are leading the struggle against platform capitalism. Retrieved from Krytyka Polityczna and...
  • Chen, M. (2006). Rethinking the informal Economy: Linkages with the Formal Economy and the Formal Regulatory Envirnment. In B. Guha-Kasnobi,...
  • Choudary, S. P. (2018). The Architecture of Digital Labour Platforms: Policy Recommendations on Platform Design for Worker Well-Being. ILO...
  • Cockayne, D. G. (2016). Sharing and neoliberal discourse: The economic function of sharing in the digital on-demand economy. Geoforum(77),...
  • Codagnone, C., and Mertens, B. (2016). Scoping the Sharing Economy: Origins, Definitions, Impact and Regulatory Issues. Retrieved Aprile 12,...
  • Coe, N., and Yeung, H.-C. (2015). Global production networks: Theorizing economic development in an interconnected world. Oxford: Oxford University...
  • Corbin, J. M. (1990). Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons and Evaluative Criteria. Qualitative Sociology, 13(1), 3-21.
  • Dardot, P., and Laval, C. (2014). The new way of the world: On neoliberal society. London: Verso Books.
  • De Stefano, V. (2015). The Rise of the Just-in-Time Workforce: On-Demand Work, Crowdwork, and Labor Protection in the Gig-Economy. Comparative...
  • De Stefano, V. (2016). Introduction: Crowdsourcing, the Gig-Economy and the Law. Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, 37(3), 461-470.
  • Evans, D. S., and Schmalensee, R. (2013, Febraury). The Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platform Businesses. NBER Working Paper No. 18783.
  • Evans, P. C., and Gawer, A. (2016). The Rise of the Platform Enterprise. New York: The Center for Global Enterprise.
  • Fieseler, C., Bucher, E., and Hoffmann, C. P. (2019). Unfairness by Desing? The Perceived Fairness of Digital Labor on Crowdworking Platforms....
  • Fine, J. (2006). Workers Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream. New York: Cornell University Press.
  • Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 219-245.
  • Gereffi, G., and Korzeniwicz, M. (1994). Commodity chains and global capitalism. London: Praeger.
  • Gillespie, T. (2010). The politic of platforms. New media and society, 12(3), 347-364.
  • Graham, M., Hjorth, I., and Lehdonvirta, V. (2017). Digital labour and development: impacts of global digital labour platforms and the gig...
  • Honneth, A. (2007). Redistribuzione come riconoscimento. Una replica a Nancy Fraser. In N. Faser, and A. Honneth, Redistribuzione o riconoscimento?...
  • Huws, U. (2014). Labor in the global digital economy: The cybertariat comes of age. New York: New York University Press.
  • Lakhani, T., and Tapia, M. (2014). Organizing the Fragmented Unorganized: An examination and history of the fast food movement. Perspectives...
  • Lampinen, A., Lutz, C., Newlands, G., Light, A., and Immorlica, N. (2018). Power Struggles in the Digital Economy: Platforms, Workers and...
  • Martelloni, F. (2018). ndividuale e collettivo: quando i diritti dei lavoratori digitali corrono su due ruote. Labour and Law Issues, 4(1),...
  • Martin, C. J., Upham, P., and Klapper, R. (2017). Democratising platform governance in the sharing economy: Ananalytical framework and initial...
  • McKinsey andCompany. (2016, Ottobre). Independent work: Choice, necessity, and the gig economy. Retrieved Gennaio 20, 2018, from https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/independent-work-choice-necessity-and-the-gig-economy
  • Olin Wright, E. (2015). Understanding Class. New York: Verso Books.
  • Pais, I., and Provasi, G. (2015). Sharing economy: A step towards the re-embeddedness of the economy? Stato e mercato, 35(3), 347-378.
  • Peruffo , E., Contreras, R. R., Molinuevo, D., and Schmidlechner, L. (2017). Digitsation of processes. Eurofound working paper.
  • Peruffo , E., Schmidlechner, L., Contreras, R. R., and Molinuevo,
  • D. (2017). Automation of Work. Eurofound working paper.
  • Rao, H. (2008). Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations. Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press.
  • Routh, S., and Borghi, V. (2016). Introduction. In S. Routh, and V. Borghi, Workers and the Global Informal Economy: Interdisciplinary perspectives....
  • Schmidlechner, L., Peruffo, E., Contreras, R., and Molinuevo , D. (2017). Coordinatio by platforms. Literature Review. Eurofond Working Paper.
  • Scholz, T. (2017). Uberworked and underpaid: How workers are disrupting the digital economy. John Wiley and Sons.
  • Schor, J. (2016). Debatig Sharing Economy. Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 4(3), 7-22.
  • Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform Capitalism. Londra: Polity Press.
  • Staffing Industry Analysts (2018). The Gig economy and the human cloud landscape: 2018 update. https://www2.staffingindustry.com/site/Research/Research-Reports/Americas/The-Human-Cloud-Landscape-2018-Update
  • Täuscher, K., and Laudien, S. (2018). Understanding platform business models: A mixed methods study of marketplaces. European Management Journal,...
  • Tapia, M., and Turner, L. (2013). Union Campaigns as Countermovements: Mobilizing Immigrant Workers in France and the United Kingdom. British...
  • Tapia, M., and Turner, L. (2018). Renewed Activism for the Labor Movement: The Urgency of Young Worker Engagement. Work and Occupations, 45(4),...
  • Tassinari, A., and Maccarone, V. (2017). The mobilisation of gig economy couriers in Italy: some lessons for the trade union movement. Transfer:...
  • Valenduc, G., and Vendramin, P. (2016). Work in the digital economy: sorting the old from the new. ETUI Working papers No. 2016.03.