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Dynamics of unionism in the platform economy: the case of the food delivery sector in Bologna (Italy) KU Leuven
It is a characteristic of platform capitalism that struggles to re-embed digital platform work within institutionalized forms of employment have been set in motion by new labour actors (i.e. self-organized, grassroots unions). Contrary to the view that these new actors signify the decades-long decline of traditional unions, evidence increasingly highlights their continued relevance to the labour-capital relations of platform capitalism. We argue ...
How state influence on project work organization both drives and mitigates gendered precarity in cultural and creative industries KU Leuven
This article develops understanding of gendered precarity in project work by considering how transfer of risk from employer to worker is shaped by the contextual pressures of state policy and organization of the industrial field. The focus is the organization of project work as a condition underpinning the shifting of this risk in a mature field of precarious employment, the cultural and creative industries (CCIs). Our empirical exploration in ...
Informal employment on domestic care platforms: a study on the individualisation of risk and unpaid labour in mature market contexts KU Leuven
The article explains how digitally mediated domestic care service provisions endure the invisibility and informality of domestic care work by the individualization of risk, which we operationalize by one of its dimensions, i.e. unpaid labour. We understand unpaid labour as the cost of a risk that workers bear individually, at the intersection of the social (inter-personal) and economic (monetary) interactions. The study draws from the ...
Workers’ contentions over unpaid labour time in food delivery and domestic work platforms in Belgium KU Leuven
This paper examines how platform workers providing food delivery and domestic services in Belgium engage in contentions over unpaid labour time. Drawing on theories of organisational misbehaviour around the ‘wage-effort’ bargain, we explore how workers reclaim some control over their income by contesting their exposure to unpaid labour time. Based on a qualitative analysis of two labour platforms, the article illustrates how platforms’ systems ...
Control and Consent Regime Dynamics within Labour Platforms KU Leuven
Much is known about how labour platforms use ‘algorithmic management’ to implement rules which govern labour by matching workers (or service providers) with clients (or users). But little is known about whether and how platform workers engage with these rules by manipulating them to their own advantage, and how this accounts for wider ‘regime dynamics’ across (and within) different types of platforms (e.g. on-location and online). Based on a ...
Labour Control and Commodification Strategies within a Food Delivery Platform in Belgium KU Leuven
This qualitative study illustrates how the commodification strategies of a food delivery platform in Belgium contribute to labour control and subordination by simultaneously supporting and constraining both users and workers. We label these strategies ‘empowerment’ and ‘disempowerment’ cycles, which connect individual clients, restaurants and workers and expose them to market relations of competition. Thus, we explain how the platform deploys ...
Unpaid labour in online freelancing platforms: between marketization strategies and selfemployment regulation KU Leuven
Sociology scholars have shown that unpaid labour is widespread in digital labour platform work, yet no study has shed light on the mechanisms generating unpaid work in the digital platform sector. This paper aims to fill this gap and points to the mechanisms produced at the interface between platforms’ marketization strategies and the regulation of self-employment in national contexts to explain the way in which unpaid labour unfolds in online ...
The Social Foundations of Precarious Work: the role of unpaid labour in the family. KU Leuven
This chapter argues for a perspective on the study of precarious work which draws from earlier critical labour studies and feminist analyses of the role of domestic labour in the reproduction of capitalism in order to focus on the (micro-)social foundations of the (macro-) structural changes in the collective institutions, operations and outcomes of labour markets under neoliberalism. Especially, we point to the challenges that the fading away ...