Documents Cant, Callum 4 results

"What is life like for workers in the gig economy? Is it a paradise of flexibility and individual freedom? Or is it a world of exploitation and conflict? Callum Cant took a job with one of the most prominent platforms, Deliveroo, to find out.

His vivid account of the reality is grim. Workers are being tyrannised by algorithms and exploited for the profit of the few – but they are not taking it lying down. Cant reveals a transnational network of encrypted chats and informal groups which have given birth to a wave of strikes and protests. Far from being atomised individuals helpless in the face of massive tech companies, workers are tearing up the rulebook and taking back control. New developments in the workplace are combining to produce an explosive subterranean class struggle – where the stakes are high, and the risks are higher."

"This article discusses the Fast Food Shutdown, a strike on 4 October 2018 that involved Wetherspoon, McDonald's, TGI Fridays and UberEats workers in the United Kingdom. It compares the different strategies of the Bakers Food and Allied Workers' Union at Wetherspoon and Industrial Workers of the World at UberEats. The two case studies, drawing on the authors' ongoing ethnographic research, provide important examples of successful precarious worker organising. In particular, the argument focuses on the role of action in organising, as well as the relationship between the rank-and-file and the union. While these could point the way to the recomposition of the workers movement – both in greenfield sectors and within existing unions – there remain important questions about how these experiences can be generalised."

"It has been five years since the first strikes of Deliveroo workers in London in 2016. Since then, workers have continued to organise. The campaigns have involved five different aspects: first, wildcat strike action; second, networks and internationalisation; third, union organising with the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (iwgb); fourth, legal campaigning; and fifth, wider leverage campaigns. What is less understood so far is the different strengths and weaknesses of these aspects, and how they have contributed to the build of workers' self-organisation and power at Deliveroo. This article explores the different aspects and considers the effectiveness of each. It concludes by considering what can be learned from these struggles for the understanding of platform work and trade union organising today."

"For migrant workers who do not have access to other means of income, the platform economy offers a viable yet exploitative alternative to the conventional labour market. Migrant workers are used as a source of cheap labour by platforms – and yet, they are not disempowered. They are at the heart of a growing platform worker movement. Across different international contexts, migrants have played a key role in leading strikes and other forms of collective action. This article traces the struggles of migrant platform workers in Berlin and London to explore how working conditions, work experiences, and strategies for collective action are shaped at the intersection of multiple precarities along lines of employment and migration status. Combining data collected through research by the Fairwork project with participant observation and ethnography, the article argues that migrant workers are more than an exploitable resource: they are harbingers of change."