Exploring the Antecedents of Working Conditions and their Implications for Collective Action in Digital Labour Platforms

Against the background of current debates on working conditions on labour platforms, this thesis explores the antecedents of working conditions and their implications for collective action. Research on platform work argues that platforms produce degrading working conditions through their use of technology while disrupting regulatory frameworks. We contribute to these broad debates by scrutinising the production of working conditions, including unpaid labour, at the intersection between platforms’ technological rules and the institutional arrangements they relate to. Indeed, whereas most studies point to the disruptive force of platforms on socio-economic institutions, we unpack the institutional variable to see whether and how it relates to the production of working condition outcomes and its implications for labour collective action. This allows us to contribute to the literature by offering more nuanced and detailed views on the extent and nature of the disruption acted by platforms and the working conditions they produce while appreciating the role of institutional environments, which we study following scholarly accounts on neoliberal trajectories towards dis-embeddedness and the degradation of working conditions these imply (e.g. Kalleberg, 2009; Silver, 2003; Webster et al., 2008).

This thesis is based on four empirical studies, of which three explore the processes and mechanisms that fashion working conditions on platforms, focusing on one platform sector at a time and across two or more European countries (Chapters 2, 3, 4, respectively on professional freelancing platforms, domestic care service platforms and food delivery service platforms). In the final empirical Chapter (5), we offer an illustration of what implications the working conditions and their antecedents in the food delivery platform sector can have for the dynamics of labour’s collective action. Throughout the study, we adopt an interpretive qualitative approach primarily based on narrative interviews with workers, which allows us to explore the phenomenon in its complexity, capturing the richness of human experiences and allowing us to gain a deeper understanding of the context, processes, and meanings that shape the phenomenon under scrutiny (Creswell, 2012).

Three main conclusions can be drawn based on the empirical evidence presented and analysed throughout the chapters: Firstly, working conditions on platforms are substantially affected by platforms’ strategies and practices which pertain both to the way they use technology to organise the competition among workers and arrange match-making between workers and other parties on the platforms, and to the way they position themselves vis-à-vis markets and the regulatory systems in which they operate. Secondly, diversity among platforms in terms of strategies and practices produces diversity in working conditions outcomes. Differences relate both their use of technologies to organise work and to their differential embeddedness within institutional frameworks. Thirdly, the role of institutions can be ambivalent: on the one hand, liberalised regulations can enable the production of degrading working conditions, while, on the other, they can represent a resource for platform workers and collective labour actors when platform work is brought back into the realm of institutionalised employment.

This thesis is based on four empirical studies, of which three explore the processes and mechanisms that fashion working conditions on platforms, focusing on one platform sector at a time and across two or more European countries (Chapters 2, 3, 4). In the final empirical Chapter (5), we offer an illustration of what implications the working conditions and their antecedents in the food delivery platform sector can have for the dynamics of labour’s collective action. Throughout the study, we adopt an interpretive qualitative approach primarily based on narrative interviews with workers, which allows us to explore the phenomenon in its complexity, capturing the richness of human experiences and allowing us to gain a deeper understanding of the context, processes, and meanings that shape the phenomenon under scrutiny (Creswell, 2012).

Three main conclusions can be drawn based on the empirical evidence presented and analysed throughout the chapters: Firstly, working conditions on platforms are substantially affected by platforms’ strategies and practices which pertain both to the way they use technology to organise the competition among workers and arrange match-making between workers and other parties on the platforms, and to the way they position themselves vis-à-vis markets and the regulatory systems in which they operate. Secondly, diversity among platforms in terms of strategies and practices produces diversity in working conditions outcomes. Thirdly, the role of institutions can be ambivalent: on the one hand, liberalised regulations can enable the production of degrading working conditions, while, on the other, they can represent a resource for platform workers and collective labour actors when platform work is brought back into the realm of institutionalised employment.