scholarly journals The intersectional precarity of platform cycle delivery workers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cosmin Popan ◽  
Esther Anaya-Boig
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Food Delivery ◽  
The Road ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Road Space ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Income Instability ◽  
Start Ups ◽  
First Time

In less than a decade, with the emergence of food delivery platforms, cycling has gained increased visibility on city roads across the world. For the first time since the advent of the automobile age, the bicycle is re-emerging globally as a dependable tool to earn a living. Food delivery start-ups such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats or Glovo enroll an increasingly precarious population as self-employed contractors to whom they grant little social protection. Having access to a bicycle and knowing how to use it is a very low entrance requirement for these jobs. Cycle food couriers hold a precarious entitlement to the road space, which makes them constantly vulnerable to bodily harm, and is compounded by a broader ontological precarity. The insecurity resulting from being engaged in an unregulated gig economy where job and income instability is amplified by issues of gender, ethnicity and migration status, further adds to road unsafety. In this chapter, we draw on case studies from the UK, Spain and South America to account for how the precarity of cycling is amplified by the political landscape of neoliberalism of the last three decades, which promotes flexible work, and the legislative setting failing to account for cycle couriers as employees.

scholarly journals With or without U(nions)? Understanding the diversity of gig workers’ organizing practices in Italy and the UK

2021 ◽  
pp. 095968012110525
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Cini ◽  
Vincenzo Maccarrone ◽  
Arianna Tassinari
Keyword(s):  
Food Delivery ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Organizational Forms ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Labour Process ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
The Uk

Since 2016, mobilizations of gig workers across European countries have become increasingly common within location-based services, such as food delivery. Despite remarkable similarities in workers’ mobilization dynamics, their organizational forms have varied considerably, ranging from self-organization, to work councils, to unionization through rank-and-file or longstanding unions. To start making sense of this diversity in organizing practices, we compare two cases of mobilization in the food delivery sector: in Italy, where workers have initially opted for self-organization, and in the UK, where they have organized through rank-and-file unions. Drawing on interview and observational data gathered between 2016 and 2018, we find that the diversity of organizational forms across the two cases derives from the interaction between agential and contextual factors, namely: the capabilities of rank-and-file unions and the political tradition of militant organizing of the environment within which gig workers are embedded. These findings contribute to the emerging debate on labour relations in the gig economy by showing the central role that factors external to the labour process and to the institutional context play in shaping the structuring of labour antagonism in a still lowly institutionalized sector characterized by transnationally homogenous challenges.

scholarly journals Riders on the Storm: Workplace Solidarity among Gig Economy Couriers in Italy and the UK

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Tassinari ◽  
Vincenzo Maccarrone
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Food Delivery ◽  
Process Theory ◽  
Work Organisation ◽  
Labour Process ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Delivery Platform ◽  
Pervasive Monitoring ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Work Contexts

In light of the individualisation, dispersal and pervasive monitoring that characterise work in the ‘gig economy’, the development of solidarity among gig workers could be expected to be unlikely. However, numerous recent episodes of gig workers’ mobilisation require reconsideration of these assumptions. This article contributes to the debate about potentials and obstacles for solidarity in the changing world of work by showing the processes through which workplace solidarity among gig workers developed in two cases of mobilisation of food delivery platform couriers in the UK and Italy. Through the framework of labour process theory, the article identifies the sources of antagonism in the app-mediated model of work organisation and the factors that facilitated and hindered the consolidation of active solidarity and the emergence of collective action among gig workers. The article emphasises the centrality of workers’ agential practices in overcoming constraints to solidarity and collective action, and the diversity of forms through which solidarity can be expressed in hostile work contexts.

Killer acquisitions and PayPal/iZettle

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 162-166
Author(s):  
Stephen Smith ◽  
Matthew Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Phase Ii ◽  
Regulatory Control ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Start Ups ◽  
First Time

In PayPal/iZettle the CMA has, for the first time in a Phase II investigation, directly considered the issue of ‘killer acquisitions’. It assessed whether PayPal's acquisition of iZettle might have been motivated by an intention to prevent future competition from an emerging rival. This article first explores the wider concerns surrounding killer acquisitions, putting the PayPal/iZettle decision in context. It explains the difficulties that some countries face in ensuring that high value acquisitions of innovative start-ups with low revenues are still subject to regulatory control, and the steps that countries like Germany and Austria have taken to resolve this. It then analyses the CMA's decision, highlighting the importance that the CMA placed on the parties’ internal documents for determining the rationale for the transaction and the justification for the amount paid. The article concludes by noting that potential killer acquisitions are likely to remain on the radar of competition regulators (in Europe and the UK) for some time to come.

Assessing social sustainability in the gig economy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muralidharan Loganathan
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Decent Work ◽  
Sustainable Development Goal ◽  
Development Goal ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
The World ◽  
Sustainable Economic Growth

Sustainable Development Goal 8 to “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all” necessitates country level measures across the world. We take forward a comparative analysis of India’s SDG 8 indicator list with both the UN and ILO measurements. We note inadequate measurements on social-protection and rights for non-standard forms of employment including gig work, that are intermediated by ICT platforms. From our analysis we identify some levers to broaden the current indicator measurements to include these non-standard workers as well, to improve social sustainability.

Identity Politics and Migration

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Vytis Čiubrinskas
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Current ◽  
Respective Host

The Centre of Social Anthropology (CSA) at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Kaunas has coordinated projects on this, including a current project on 'Retention of Lithuanian Identity under Conditions of Europeanisation and Globalisation: Patterns of Lithuanian-ness in Response to Identity Politics in Ireland, Norway, Spain, the UK and the US'. This has been designed as a multidisciplinary project. The actual expressions of identity politics of migrant, 'diasporic' or displaced identity of Lithuanian immigrants in their respective host country are being examined alongside with the national identity politics of those countries.

Disability as a social phenomenon

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Natalia Guseva ◽  
Vitaliy Berdutin
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Stage Model ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Rehabilitation Programs ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Consistent Solution ◽  
First Time

At present, the problem of establishing disability is a point at issue in Russia. Despite the fact that medical criteria for disability are being developed very actively, high-quality methods for assessing social hallmarks are still lacking. Since disability is a phenomenon inherent in any society, each state forms a social and economic policy for people with disabilities in accordance with its level of development, priorities and opportunities. We have proposed a three-stage model, which includes a system for the consistent solution of the main tasks aimed at studying the causes and consequences of the problems encountered today in the social protection of citizens with health problems. The article shows why the existing approaches to the determination of disability and rehabilitation programs do not correspond to the current state of Russian society and why a decrease in the rate of persons recognized as disabled for the first time does not indicate an improvement in the health of the population. The authors proposed a number of measures with a view to correcting the situation according to the results of the study.

scholarly journals Welfare chauvinism across benefits and services

2021 ◽  
pp. 095892872110230
Author(s):  
Gianna Maria Eick ◽  
Christian Albrekt Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Cash Benefits ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
The Uk

The article theorises how covering social risks through cash transfers and in-kind services shapes public attitudes towards including/excluding immigrants from these programmes in Western European destination countries. The argument is that public attitudes are more restrictive of granting immigrants access to benefits than to services. This hypothesis is tested across ten social protection programmes using original survey data collected in Denmark, Germany and the UK in 2019. Across the three countries, representing respectively a social democratic, conservative and liberal welfare regime context, the article finds that the public does indeed have a preference for easier access for in-kind services than for cash benefits. The article also finds these results to be stable across programmes covering the same social risks; the examples are child benefits and childcare. The results are even stable across left-wing, mainstream and radical right-wing voters; with the partial exception of radical right-wing voters in the UK. Finally, the article finds only a moderate association between individual characteristics and attitudinal variation across cash benefits and in-kind services.

To bee or not to beet with neonicotinoids

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-109
Author(s):  
Lynda M. Warren
Keyword(s):  
Sugar Beet ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Environmental Standards ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Precautionary Approach ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Commercial Sugar ◽  
The Uk ◽  
First Time

In January 2021 the UK government granted an application for authorisation to use thiamethoxam, a neonicotinoid pesticide, to protect commercial sugar beet crops from attack by viruses transmitted by aphids. This was the first time such an authorisation had been granted in the United Kingdom (UK) and there were concerns that it signalled a weakening of environmental standards now that the UK was no longer part of the European Union. In fact, similar authorisations had been granted by several European Member States in the last 2 years, despite the ban on the use of neonicotinoids introduced in 2018. Nevertheless, the reasons for granting the authorisation do suggest that the balance between adopting a precautionary approach to environmental protection and taking emergency action to protect economic interests may have shifted. It was acknowledged that the proposed mitigation to safeguard bees and other wildlife was not entirely satisfactory. In the end, due to unforeseen weather conditions it meant that the pesticide is not necessary, which in itself demonstrates that short-term emergency measures are unsuitable for dealing with the problem. If the sugar beet industry is to continue to prosper in the UK, it will need to be managed in a way that provides resistance to virus infection without the use of controversial chemicals.

Dealing with austerity and migration in the northern European cleaning sector: Social partner strategies to strengthen wage floors

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sissel Trygstad ◽  
Trine P Larsen ◽  
Kristine Nergaard
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
Social Partner ◽  
National Differences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wage Regulation ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Industrial Cleaning ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Exerted Pressure

Industrial cleaning shares some common features across countries. Institutions for collective wage regulation are fragile, the market is highly price-sensitive and skewed competition has exerted pressure on wages and conditions. Increased cross-border mobility of labour and enterprises after EU enlargement brought new sources of competitive pressure, which was amplified by the subsequent economic crisis. We study changes in collective regulation in industrial cleaning in Denmark, Germany, Norway and the UK since the turn of the century, and find that the social partners have responded differently to the challenges. We discuss these responses in the light of national differences in industrial relations regimes and the regulatory tools available for the organized actors.

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