Checking the Orders: Understanding Food Delivery Platform Work

Dates: Monday, July 25, 2022 - 09:00 to 17:30
Location: Online

Food delivery platform work has grown rapidly over the last decade. Companies like Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Meituan, and Swiggy have reorganised pre-existing forms of delivery work through apps and digital platforms.

Alongside this growth, there have been widespread protests and strikes by platform workers. It has been six years since the first strike at Deliveroo – which has now gone on to become the most protested platform in the world. Waves of strikes and protests have spread internationally across transportation platforms, along with legal and regulatory challenges over the use of self-employment status.

Against this backdrop, there has been a surge in academic interest in platform work. The literature has grown in many directions, but often takes place in different siloes. Platforms are now entering different sectors, increasingly beyond transportation. Platforms have provided an important testing ground capital, as well as for new forms of organising. Understanding both is vital for understanding the dynamics in wider platform work, as well as the possibilities and directions for collective organising more widely. Food delivery platforms highlight the contested visions for the future of work, with different versions being implemented across national and regional contexts.

This seminar addresses these challenges and questions. Funded by the British Academy, it brings together researchers from Latin America, East Asia, Europe, and the UK to share research and discuss where the debate is - or should be - going.

Programme

9.00-9.30 Welcome

9.30-10.30 Session 1

Kurt Vandaele (with Leonard Geyer and Nicolas Prinz) Riding together? Why food deliver riders join trade unions

Heiner Heiland: Social and Spatial Structures of Workers’ Voice in Food Delivery Gig Work

10.30-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-12.00 Session 2

Kristin Jensen: Food delivery workers in Norway: Freelance work challenges the collective agreement

Caroline Ruiner: Autonomy and new modes of control in food delivery work contexts

12.00-13.00 Session 3

Rafael Grohmann: The Costs of Fairwashing: PR, Surveillance and Disinformation Strategies of a Brazilian Delivery Platform

Mateus Mendonça: Unravelling the mobilisation infrastructure of delivery riders and their organisational solutions: towards a comparison framework from the cases of UK and Brazil

13.00-14.30 Lunch

14.30-15.30 Session 4

Maurizio Atzeni (with Francisca Gutierrez online): From mutualism to workers’ collective organization: insights for comparative analysis in the gig and precarious world

Kevin Lin: Worker Resistance under Three Industrial Relations Systems: A Comparison of Platform Delivery Workers in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China

15.30-16.00 Coffee break

16.00-17.00 Session 5

Jamie Woodcock: Platform worker organising at Deliveroo in the UK: from wildcat strikes to building power

Alex Marshall, IWGB

17.00-17.30 Closing and outlook