Dynamics of Mobilizing and Unionizing Mobility Platform Workers. A Cross-Country, Cross-Industry Analysis

Over the past decade, many services have been greatly transformed by the rise of digital platforms, innovative actors who deploy disruptive digital technologies through market-conquest strategies. The global expansion of these "lean platforms" is rooted in an economic model characterized by the “hyper-externalization” (Srnicek, 2016) of physical capital and labor, the use of officially self-employed workers and the ability to bypass work and employment regulations that have traditionally been based on the triple unity of place, time and collective organization (Brugière, 2020; Degryse, 2020). To study these trends, we focus, in this special issue, on location-based mobility workers in urban settings i.e., app drivers and home meal couriers. They have become prominent in the public space and eye due to their market visibility, through their protests and the controversies they have engendered. They embody new workforce figures who are emerging in institutional, social and territorial grey areas (Carelli et al. 2022; Azaïs, 2019). Digital platforms have evolved along a timeline of labour market transformations in a broader context of economic and social crisis. The platforms took advantage of a pool of un- and under-employed workers looking for jobs or extra income in the wake of the 2008 “Great Recession.” Growth has been especially strong in two different markets: passenger transport, where digital platforms are in competition with taxis; and meal delivery, where they have created a new market. During the COVID-19 crisis, meal delivery platforms took advantage of lock-down restrictions and experienced meteoric expansion that caused a surge in demand for labour. Meanwhile, as demand plummeted for passenger drivers, with personal mobility sharply declining in urban areas, many drivers experienced worsening economic insecurity. Depending on the national context, this segmentation of experiences between the various occupational groups due to differences in working conditions and legislative protection led to disparities in grievances and forms protest. Delivery workers demanded greater protections for deteriorating working conditions, whereas passenger drivers often called for enhanced market regulation and relief from social assistance. The articles in this special issue attempt to account for these emerging dynamics of workers struggle in platform capitalism through a comparative analysis of the relations that impel autonomous groupings and other protest initiatives towards more structured collective representation and unionization. The labour movement initially faced a host of obstacles that hindered its ability to represent and defend the interests of platform workers. Among them we find the use of self-employment to bypass labour law, established grievance procedures and collective bargaining, the perpetual and accelerating changes in the industries and the nimble adaptiveness of digital platform strategies. The platforms have largely managed to exploit lengthy judicial procedures by adjusting their business models accordingly. At the same time they have aggressively lobbied and interfered with public authorities, which at times have proved to be complacent or even facilitating, as shown by the recent "Uber Files" scandal in France (Simonnet, 2023). Yet other challenges include the rapid turnover of the workers and their myriad profiles: students; low-skilled full-time workers; higher skilled workers seeking regular or occasional additional income; and legal or illegal migrants. Most platform workers have subsequently become indifferent to, if not mistrustful of, unions. In many countries, transportation employer’s associations have teamed up with unlikely allies, like the taxi drivers they employ, to deploy resources and mobilize public opinion and decisions-makers in defense of their vested interests. This organizational diversity, embedded in national experience, defies any reductive paradigms pitting grassroots collectives against traditional unions and institutions. (Cini et al., 2021) On the contrary, players in these two intricately entwined spheres have often cooperated in a meaningful, increasingly frequent, and more or less sustained …