The effects of the pandemic on gig economy couriers in Argentina and Chile: Precarity, algorithmic control and mobilization

Abstract

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.Original title: "Entre la precarización, el control algorítmico y la movilización. El efecto de la pandemia en las y los repartidores de plataformas en Argentina y Chile", Revista Internacional del Trabajo 141 (3). Translation by Susan Mutti, revised by the ILR editorial team. This article is also available in French, in Revue internationale du Travail 161 (3).

Socio‐technical issues in the platform‐mediated gig economy: A systematic literature review: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

“…The previous three kinds of control and surveillance all are shaped, to a great extent, by policies and regulations (B14) , rules and standards which are embedded in algorithmic management. The policy and regulation regimes shape the digital workplace in ways that benefit the company (van Doorn & Badger, 2020), sometimes benefit the gig worker (Yao, 2020), and sometimes place them as a distinct disadvantage (Gutiérrez Crocco & Atzeni, 2022; Mendonça et al, 2023). For example, freelancers on Upwork are constrained as they curate their online identities, which are critical to their finding work, because of “identity presentation restrictions due to the platform standards, policies, and identity surveillance mechanisms” (Munoz et al, 2022, p. 11).…”

“…Gig economy platforms use sophisticated metrics to evaluate and rank (B22) workers, including but not limited to ratings, reviews, everyday interaction logs, and data collected from other sources (Chan, 2022; Gutiérrez Crocco & Atzeni, 2022). The evaluation metrics also take a gig worker's portfolio completion and online activity into consideration (Shevchuk et al, 2021).…”

“…Our analysis has shown that gig economy research has become very international. Even though the majority of the research continues to be done in the United States and Asia (Fleitoukh & Toyama, 2020), current research is beginning to focus on the global South (Gutiérrez Crocco & Atzeni, 2022) and Europe (Newlands, 2022), where different socio‐technical issues might arise. It is also important to point out that gig economy research has become very multidisciplinary, as scholars from information science, computer science, to labor studies (Foong et al, 2018) and sociology (Kwan, 2022) all have been contributing to this body of knowledge.…”

Locating labour conflict and its organising forms in contemporary times: between class and the reproduction of capitalism

“…Challenging the union-centric tradition of IR, recent research has investigated forms of worker self-organisation based on networks of solidarity that have emerged parallel to or beyond formal unions. Such research has examined changes emerging in the platform economy (Chan, 2021;Gutierrez Crocco and Atzeni, 2022;Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020), in the South of the world (Anner, 2018;Marinaro, 2018;Rizzo, 2017), and among migrants (Alberti and Però 2018;Chan, 2023;Perrotta and Sacchetto, 2014;Benvegnù et al, 2018). Along with these empirical studies, other publications have addressed theoretical issues, inviting researchers to abandon the Eurocentrism of industrial relations and explore the role that community and space play in shaping collective action (Nowak, 2021), to rethink forms of organisation by going beyond fetishizing the trade union form (Atzeni, 2021), and to reflect on the need to more explicitly set class domination as the normative dimension and theoretical starting point for labour studies, henceforth orienting labour scholars who are aiming to produce knowledge "on the side of workers" (Gallas, 2022).…”

Mutualism, class composition, and the reshaping of worker organisation in platform work and the gig economy

“…The problem addressed in this paper is how to understand the widespread, rapid, and unexpected development of worker organisation and resistance in platform work. Despite concerns that platform workers might prove unorganisable (Vandaele, 2021), critical research at the nexus of labour process and class composition has documented impressive levels of organisation and contestation (Anwar and Graham, 2020;Chen, 2018;Chesta et al, 2019;Chinguno, 2019;Cini and Goldman, 2018;Gutierrez Crocco and Atzeni 2022;Ford and Honan, 2019;Iazzolino, 2023;Kwan, 2022;Liu and Friedman, 2021). Strikingly, non-unionised workers account for the great majority of platform labour unrest, especially in the Global South (Bessa et al, 2022).…”