Riders, Rights and Collective Action

*Holm-Detlev Köhler*

## **Abstract**

The aim of this chapter is to develop a conceptual framework for analysing the collective actions and organisational practices of delivery and transportation gig-workers, building on Rosa Luxemburg's colonisation concept and on the power resources theory employed in current trade union analysis. The empirical bases are recent surveys and studies on platform work, the analysis of websites and social media communities for the collective action of platform workers and conversations with platform activists in several European countries. The specific characteristics of platform workers' collective actions and organisational practices are examined with a view to identifying their potential and the opportunities they afford in the light of different trade union power resources.

**Keywords:** sociology of platform work, platform economy, power sources, employment relations

## **1. Introduction**

Not so long ago, the only people who looked for "Gigs" were musicians. For the rest of us, once we outgrew our school dreams of rock stardom, we found "real" jobs that paid us a fixed salary every month, allowed us to take paid holidays and formed the basis for planning a stable future [1].

At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos 2020 [2], several leading platform companies including Uber, Deliveroo and Cabify published the 'Charter of principles for good platform work' as a reaction to the growing public awareness of the problems of their business model regarding social and employment conditions. The emergent platform economy is reshaping business models and employment relations in Europe, challenging conventional social agents and regulatory institutions. The term 'platform economy' or 'gig economy' refers to online platforms that coordinate the demand for specific services with individual service providers using digital algorithms. Digital labour platforms are economic agents providing virtual spaces for matching labour supply and demand via online technologies based on algorithmic management, that is, by automated data and decision making, thereby substantially lowering transactions costs. In the classical economic theory of the firm, transaction costs are the main explanation for the existence of the firm as an organisation in a market economy [3]. The classical entrepreneur was a risk-taker mobilising risk capital. The platform owner, by contrast, shifts nearly all business risks and costs onto others. By eliminating this key reason for the existence of value-creating organisations, "online platforms push the process of decentralization, networking, outsourcing, subcontracting and breaking up work into single performances or 'Gigs' to a new limit in which all that remains of the firm is a profit-making technique" ([4]: 9). "'Algorithmic management' allows these platforms to increasingly track and discipline workers, in many cases circumventing or flouting existing labour and health and safety regulations, to the detriment of platform workers' social protection" ([5]: 5). Digital technologies are thus giving rise to a new business model with anonymous relations among employers, employees/self-employed and customers, thereby challenging the traditional institutional regulation systems. These gig-enterprises externalise all relationships with customers and employees, thus maximising deinstitutionalisation and flexibilising service provision, working time and labour relations. In particular, the gig economy challenges all collective organisation and representation channels built up by workers in the course of the 20th century in their struggle to civilise capitalist economies and de-commodify labour. This chapter looks at emerging attempts of gig-workers in the transport and food delivery sectors to develop collective action capacities and resistance strategies.

The structure of the chapter is as follows. The following section examines the principal characteristics of platform work through the lens of sociological approaches to conceptualise capitalist work organisation. The third section introduces the trade union power resources approach and examines experiences of collective action to analyse the particular structure of labour relations and collective action in the gig economy. The empirical bases are recent surveys and studies on platform work, an analysis of websites and social media communities for collective action of platform workers and conversations with platform activists in Spain, Germany, the UK and Norway. Section four examines the potential and opportunities of platform workers' collective actions in the light of different trade union power resources. The chapter closes with a short conclusive reflection.
