Labour geographies of the platform economy: Understanding collective organizing strategies in the context of digitally mediated work

Johnston, Hannah

doi:10.1111/ilr.12154

Cited by 47 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Microworkers, however, may have the capacity to appeal to the public and challenge the platform’s reputation. The online community forum ‘We Are Dynamo’ was initially designed to facilitate collective action by MTurk microworkers and attracted positive publicity (Johnston and Land-Kazlauskas, 2018). The forum allowed microworkers to connect and plan for collective action and encouraged a climate of trust and collective identity, resembling situated identification (Rousseau, 1998), with workers referring to themselves as ‘Turkers’.…”

Section: Why Does Microworker Attachment Emerge?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Press releases about the campaign provided additional background information. Even though the overall effectiveness of the campaign was inconclusive (Johnston and Land-Kazlauskas, 2018), the data provide a unique source for understanding microworkers’ perceptions. Also, the focus on a single platform allowed us to map attachment for a particular population of platform-based workers (Turkers).…”

Section: Research Design and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘If He Just Knew Who We Were’: Microworkers’ Emerging Bonds of Attachment in a Fragmented Employment Relationship

Panteli

Rapti

Scholarios

2020

Work, Employment and Society

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Using the lens of attachment, we explore microworkers’ views of their employment relationship. Microwork comprises short-term, task-focused exchanges with large numbers of end-users (requesters), implying transitory and transactional relationships. Other key parties, however, include the platform which digitally meditates worker–requester relationships and the online microworker community. We explore the nature of attachment with these parties and the implications for microworkers’ employment experiences. Using data from a workers’ campaign directed at Amazon Mechanical Turk and CEO Jeff Bezos, we demonstrate multiple, dynamic bonds – primarily acquiescence and instrumental bonds – towards requesters and the platform, and identification with the online community. Microworkers also expressed dedication towards the platform. We consider how attachment buffers the exploitative employment relationship and how community bonds mobilise collective worker voice.

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Section: Why Does Microworker Attachment Emerge?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research Design and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘If He Just Knew Who We Were’: Microworkers’ Emerging Bonds of Attachment in a Fragmented Employment Relationship

Panteli

Rapti

Scholarios

2020

Work, Employment and Society

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“…For example, the extension of last‐mile delivery has included the rise of big warehouses on the periphery of cities and a web of small delivery hubs distributed throughout urban space. Be it place‐based work or crowd‐work (undertaken online), platformized work involves high levels of worker competitiveness, isolation, and lack of a common workplace (Johnston, 2020). It has challenged workers' agency and has led labor unions to redefine their spatial practices and political strategies (Fabo et al, 2017).…”

Section: The Recognition Of Agency Multiscalarity and The Various DImentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial perspectives on labor and social movements: Multidisciplinary dialogues and dilemmas

Martínez

Parra

2020

Sociology Compass

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This article provides an overview of the study of the spatiality of labor and social movements. It describes how the dialogue between social movement research and critical labor studies has enriched our understanding of the spatiality of social conflict. It begins with a description of the theoretical approaches and research interests that arose in the 1980s as a reaction against Marxist and structuralist perspectives; specifically, New Social Movement theory, drawing on constructivist and poststructuralist approaches and the local and community turn in labor studies. In the second part, the article reviews several works that in recent years have developed new approaches to the spatiality of labor and social movements that pay attention to agency, multiscalarity, and the manifold dimensions of space. The article explores how important developments in social movement research and labor studies have nourished from the intersections of both fields of inquiry.

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“…The strikes were first initiated by San Jose’s Gig Workers Rising, Los Angeles’s Rideshare Drivers United, and New York City’s Taxi Worker Alliance, but they far exceeded those geographical constraints. Technology in the form of Facebook advertisements, Twitter posts, text messages, and emails allowed immense, last-minute coordination from places as varied as Toledo and New Zealand (Dolber, 2019; Johnston, 2020). In D.C., organizers decided in a WhatsApp group to participate just five days prior to the driver day of action.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Just-in-Place” labor: Driver organizing in the Uber workplace

2020

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This paper examines the socio-spatial dynamics of worker agency in the platform economy in the Washington, D.C. region. Drawing on the field of labor geography, we document the collective and inherently spatial conditions of laboring under and through new technologies for three years prior to, and six months after, a strike by Uber drivers in May 2019. In doing so, we explore what Uber’s platform means for the production, accumulation, and contestation of power. We argue that the big innovation of this platform is the creation of a “just-in-place” worker. Akin to those materials for assembly lines that arrived just-in-time for production, so too do drivers end up in just the right place for Uber’s services to be offered. We also argue that Uber’s attempts to keep its workers “just-in-place,” which generally isolate and disempower drivers, can actually enable new modes of organization. At a D.C. airport, drivers who were emplaced in a parking lot overcame one of the fundamental conditions of the Uber workplace: socio-spatial atomization. The airport became a space in which the “just-in-place” worker could, at least for a time, challenge such emplacement and exercise a form of collective worker agency by re-working Uber’s dynamic pricing system.

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Labour geographies of the platform economy: Understanding collective organizing strategies in the context of digitally mediated work

Cited by 47 publications

References 35 publications

‘If He Just Knew Who We Were’: Microworkers’ Emerging Bonds of Attachment in a Fragmented Employment Relationship

‘If He Just Knew Who We Were’: Microworkers’ Emerging Bonds of Attachment in a Fragmented Employment Relationship

Spatial perspectives on labor and social movements: Multidisciplinary dialogues and dilemmas

“Just-in-Place” labor: Driver organizing in the Uber workplace

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