Democratizing Platform Work from Below

Journal title STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI
Author/s Paolo Borghi
Publishing Year 2024 Issue 2023/2 Language English
Pages 28 P. 51-78 File size 247 KB
DOI 10.3280/SO2023-002003
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

This article aims at contributing to the debate on democratizing work by looking at platform work and food delivery in particular. Based on an extended multi-sited ethnography, the article analyses two relevant case studies of workers’ organisations, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain in the UK and the grassroots group Deliverance Milano in Italy. First, it shows how efforts to democratise and decommodify platform work, as well as the issue of decarbonisation, take shape collectively from below and through conflict in order to compensate the absence of a robust and effective regulatory system. Therefore, it is primarily an effort to create a dêmos with the right to demand rights. Second, the conflict emerges as a means of improving working conditions, denouncing greenwashing practices, an opportunity for collective learning and experimenting practices of resistance. Due to these reasons, practices of conflict inspire the renewal of collective representation strategies in non-standard working contexts with a workforce scattered and casualised. Finally, the struggles for democratization, decommodification and decarbonisation in food delivery show that the contribution of independent unions and grassroots group plays a fundamental role, complementary to that of well-established trade unions and public institutions.

Keywords: democratizing work, food delivery, grassroots group, independent unions, conflict, collective representation

  1. Atzeni, M., Ghigliani, P. (2007). Labour process and decision-making in factories under workers' self-management: empirical evidence from Argentina, Work, Employment and Society, 21, 4: 653-671.
  2. Azzellini, D., Greer, I., Umney, C. (2022). Why platform capitalism is not the future of work, Work in the Global Economy, 2,2: 272-289.
  3. Baglioni, G. (2001), Lavoro e decisioni nell’impresa, Bologna, Il Mulino.
  4. Benassi, C., Dorigatti, L., Pannini, E. (2019). Explaining divergent bargaining outcomes for agency workers: The role of labour divides and labour market reforms, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 25(2): 163-179.
  5. Bertolini, A., Dukes, R. (2021). Trade Unions and Platform Workers in the UK: Worker Representation in the Shadow of the Law, Industrial Law Journal, 50(4): 662-688.
  6. Bologna, S. (2014a). Workerism beyond Fordism: On the lineage of Italian workerism, Viewpoint Magazine 15.
  7. Bologna, S. (2014b). Workerism: An inside view. From the mass-worker to self-employed labour. In: van der Linden, M. and Roth, K.H. (eds), Beyond Marx, pp. 121-143), Leiden, NL, Brill.
  8. Borghi, P., Murgia, A., Mondon-Navazo, M., Mezihorak, P. (2021). Mind the gap between discourses and practices: Platform workers’ representation in France and Italy. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 27(4), 425-443.
  9. Boyatzis, R.E. (1998). Transforming Qualitative Information: Thematic Analysis and Code Development, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
  10. Bunders, D. J., Arets, M., Frenken, K., De Moor, T. (2022). The feasibility of platform cooperatives in the gig economy, Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management, 10(1): 100167.
  11. Butera, F. (2020). Sociotechnical systems design revisited at the end of the 20th century: STS 2.0, Studi Organizzativi, Special Issue 1: 102-125.
  12. Carrieri, M., Nerozzi, P., Treu, T. (2015). La partecipazione incisiva. Idee e proposte per la democrazia possibile nelle imprese, ASTRID, Bologna: Il Mulino.
  13. Cassiers, I., Maréchal, K., Méda, D. (eds.) (2017). Post-growth economics and society: Exploring the paths of a social and ecological transition, Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge.
  14. Cattero, B. (2016). Partecipazione, lavoro, impresa: (ri)partendo da Gallino, Studi organizzativi, XVIII, 2: 96-112.
  15. Cini, L., Goldmann B. (2020). The worker capabilities approach: Insights from worker mobilizations in Italian logistics and food delivery, Work, Employment and Society, 35, 5, 948-967.
  16. Cini, L., Maccarrone, V., Tassinari, A. (2022). With or without U (nions)? Understanding the diversity of gig workers’ organizing practices in Italy and the UK, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 28, 3, 341-362.
  17. Crampton, A. (2021). The lie of pandemic pivot and essential work, Qualitative Social Work, 20, 1–2: 193–199.
  18. Culpepper, P. D., Thelen, K. (2020). Are we all Amazon primed? Consumers and the politics of platform power, Comparative Political Studies, 53(2), 288-318.
  19. Crouch, C. (2019). Will the gig economy prevail? Hoboken, US: John Wiley & Sons.
  20. Dieuaide, P., Azaïs, C. (2020). Platforms of work, labour, and employment relationship: the grey zones of a digital governance, Frontiers in sociology, 5, 2.
  21. Durazzi, N. (2017). “Inclusive unions in a dualized labour market? The challenge of organizing labour market policy and social protection for labour market outsiders”, Social Policy & Administration, 51, 2: 265-285.
  22. Eberwein, W., Tholen, J., Schuster, J. (2018). The Europeanisation of Industrial Relations: National and European Processes in Germany, UK, Italy and France: National and European Processes in Germany, UK, Italy and France. Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge.
  23. Feltrin, L., Sacchetto, D. (2021). The work-technology nexus and working-class environmentalism: Workerism versus capitalist noxiousness in Italy’s Long 1968. Theory and Society, 50,5: 815-835.
  24. Ferreras, I. (2017). Firms as Political Entities. Saving Democracy through Economic Bicameralism, Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press.
  25. Ferreras, I., Battilana, J., Méda, D. (Eds.). (2020). Le Manifeste travail: Démocratiser, démarchandiser, dépolluer. Paris, France: Éditions du Seuil.
  26. Forsyth, A. (2022). The Future of Unions and Worker Representation: The Digital Picket Line, London: Bloomsbury.
  27. Fullin, G. (2002). The unions for atypical workers in Italy. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 8, 3: 531-535.
  28. Grandori, A. (2022). Constitutionalizing the corporation, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 78: 57-76.
  29. Gumbrell-McCormick R and Hyman R (2018[2013]), Trade Unions in Western Europe: Hard Times, Hard Choices, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  30. Hannerz, U (2003). “Being there . . . and there . . . and there!”, Ethnography, 4, 2: 201–216.
  31. Herzog, L. (2022). Equal Dignity for All Citizens Means Equal Voice at Work. In Ferreras, I., Méda, D., Battillana, J. (eds.) Democratize Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  32. Howell, C. (2007). The British variety of capitalism: Institutional change, industrial relations and British politics, British Politics, 2,2: 239-263.
  33. Kilhoffer, Z., Lenaerts, K., Beblavý, M. (2017). The Platform Economy and Industrial Relations. Center for European Policy Science. CEPS Research Report 12/2017.
  34. Johnston, H., Land-Kazlauskas, C. (2018). Organizing on-demand: Representation, voice, and collective bargaining in the gig economy, Geneva: ILO.
  35. Jossa, B. (2005). Marx, Marxism and the cooperative movement, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 29, 1: 3-18.
  36. Lafuente, S. (2022). Dual Majorities for Firm Governments. In: Ferreras, I., Méda, D., Battillana J. (eds.) Democratize Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  37. Landemore, H. (2022), Democratize Firms... Why, and How?. In: Ferreras, I., Méda, D., Battillana, J. (eds.) Democratize Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  38. Piasna, A., Zwysen, W. (2022), New wine in old bottles: organizing and collective bargaining in the platform economy, International Journal of Labour Research, 11, 1-2.
  39. Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography, Annual review of anthropology, 95-117.
  40. Marrone, M. (2021). Rights Against the Machines!: Il lavoro digitale e le lotte dei rider, Milan: Mimesis.
  41. Méda, D. (2019). Three scenarios for the future of work, International Labour Review, 158, 4: 627-652.
  42. Méda, D. (2022). Working Against an End: Shifting Gears for a New Beginning. In: Ferreras, I., Méda, D., Battillana, J. (eds.). Democratize Work. Chicaco: University of Chicago Press.
  43. Monteagudo, G. (2008). The clean walls of a recovered factory: New subjectivities in Argentina's recovered factories, Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 175-210.
  44. Piletić, A. (2023). Continuity or change? Platforms and the hybridization of neoliberal institutional contexts, Review of International Political Economy, 1-25.
  45. Polanyi, K. (2001 [1944]). The Great Transformation – The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston: Beacon Press.
  46. Quondamatteo, N. (2021). Eppur si muove. Il difficile cammino della contrattazione collettiva nel settore del food delivery, Labour & Law Issues, 7, 1: 92-R.
  47. Regalia, I. (2012). Italian trade unions: Still shifting between consolidated organizations and social movements?, Management revue: 386-407.
  48. Rhodes, C., Munro, I., Thanem, T., Pullen, A. (2020). Dissensus! Radical democracy and business ethics, Journal of Business Ethics, 164, 4: 627- 632.
  49. Sacconi, L., Denozza, F., Stabilini, A. (2019). Democratizzare l'economia, promuovere l'autonomia dei lavoratori e l'uguale cittadinanza nel governo dell'impresa: una proposta, Studi Organizzativi, 1: 149-178.
  50. Scholz, T. (2016). Platform cooperativism. Challenging the corporate sharing economy, New York, NY: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
  51. Schwartz-Shea, P., Yanow, D. (2013). Interpretive research design: Concepts and processes, Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge.
  52. Stevano, S., Ali, R., Jamieson, M. (2021). Essential for what? A global social reproduction view on the re-organisation of work during the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 42, 1-2: 178-199.
  53. Tassinari, A., Maccarrone, V. (2020). Riders on the storm: Workplace solidarity among Gig economy couriers in Italy and the UK, Work, Employment and Society, 34, 1: 35–54.
  54. Tcherneva, P. (2022), Decommodifying Work. The Power of a Job Guarantee. In: Ferreras, I., Méda, D., Battillana, J. (eds.) Democratize Work, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  55. The Lancet (2020). The plight of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lancet, 395,10237: 1587.
  56. Trentin, B. (1997). La città del lavoro: Sinistra e crisi del fordismo, Milan: Feltrinelli.
  57. Tronti, M. (2010). Workerism and politics, Historical Materialism, 18, 3: 186-189.
  58. Turchetto, M. (2008). From ‘mass worker’ to ‘empire’: The disconcerting trajectory of Italian operaismo. In: Kouvélakis, E. (ed.), Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism. Leiden, NL, Brill.
  59. Webb, S., Webb, B. (2010 [1897]). Industrial democracy, Charleston (US), Nabu Press.
  60. Williams, R. C. (2016). The cooperative movement: Globalization from below. Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge.
  61. Woodcock, J., Cant, C. (2022). Platform Worker Organising at Deliveroo in the UK: From Wildcat Strikes to Building Power, Journal of Labor and Society, 1(aop): 1-17.
  62. Wright, E. O. (2000). Working-class power, capitalist-class interests, and class compromise, American Journal of Sociology, 105, 4: 957-1002.

Paolo Borghi, Democratizing Platform Work from Below in "STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI " 2/2023, pp 51-78, DOI: 10.3280/SO2023-002003