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E-book The Fight Against Platform Capitalism : An Inquiry into the Global Struggles of the Gig Economy

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Penilaian

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This book is about the struggles of platform workers. The ideas for it began in London in June 2016 when I met a Deliveroo rider. I had heard the name Deliveroo before, but did not know much about it. As is often the case with these things, I then started to see riders across the city. I saw them waiting at traffic lights or outside restaurants. The green and silver uniform became a common sight across the city. At the time, I had just finished writing a book about call centres. These Deliveroo riders seemed to be another category of so-called ‘unorganisable’ workers. There were arguments from universities and the labour movement that many workers could not be ‘organisable’. For example, the Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh argued that Deliveroo workers ‘are not in the same workplace and there is not the same unity of cause. There is always somebody who will do it if you don’t want to’ (quoted in Osborne and Butler 2016). In a similar vein, Alex Wood, who studies the gig economy, argued that ‘there’s a high turnover of people and there’s low market bargain-ing power. If they go on strike it’s not going to bring the economy to a halt, unlike coal miners or rail workers’ (quoted in Osborne and Butler 2016). Commentators blamed precarity, youth, the nature of the work, technology, or a combination of these factors. These were all arguments I had come across with high-volume sales call centres in London. This was not the first – and would not be the last – time I would hear that platform workers such as those at Deliveroo could not organise. Then I met Tim and we discussed what it was like working for Deliveroo. In many ways, Tim was typical of the cyclists working for the platform. He was university educated and did not have much work experience. Tim was first attracted by the idea of earning some extra money while riding around the city. Working for Deliveroo fitted around another job in the evenings. He also found that the work gave him a lot of time to think, both while cycling and between deliveries. One of the things he spent time thinking about was organising at work. Tim wanted to start organising with other Deliveroo workers. He had found some people interested in organising, but it was proving hard to get people to commit. So far he had spoken to drivers who worked in the same area of London. What he wanted to do next was meet drivers from other ‘zones’ and start building a network. We met on a sunny afternoon in central London and set off to find the meeting points for other zones. We started off at London Bridge and walked down the south bank of the river Thames. Along this walk there are many clusters of small restaurants. They include independ-ent restaurants and franchised chains such as Nando’s, Wagamama, and Pizza Express. We soon found a meeting point. As Tim explained, Deliveroo origi-nally set these ‘zone centres’ as locations for workers to wait between deliveries. These were supposedly determined by an algorithm to be the best places to wait, keeping delivery times down.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

302.2 WOO t

Penerbit

London : University of Westminster Press., 2021

Deskripsi Fisik

127 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781912656943

Klasifikasi

302.2

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Communication

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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