Online Workers

The focus shifts in this chapter towards online workers. It first differentiates between microworkers and online freelancers, discussing the role of automation and the technical composition of these kinds of work. The chapter contrasts the challenges of organising in this kind of work with transport platforms, particularly the lack of opportunities to meet face-to-face. It draws attention to the digital networks that form around this work in response to the challenges of the labour process. Recent struggles involving Amazon Mechanical Turk and Rev (transcription) workers show the potential for these workers to coordinate and build shared subjectivities through online communication. This case study is explored as an example with a significantly more challenging technical composition, yet shows how new moments of struggle are still coming to the fore.

Conclusion: Why Struggles Against Platform Capitalism Matter

The conclusion of the book draws together each of the examples of platform work and of its analysis, emphasising and reiterating the key argument of the book: that rather than undermining worker agency, platforms have instead provided the technical basis for the emergence of new global struggles against capitalism.

Transport Platform Workers

‘Transport Platform Workers’ focuses on the struggles of transport workers on platforms. It discusses food delivery workers, starting with the strikes of Deliveroo riders in London in 2016. This draws on the longest-running project that has contributed to the book. The dynamics of these struggles are analysed through the framework of class composition, unpicking the changing technical, social, and political composition of this work. It then moves through examples of subsequent waves of strikes across Europe, as well as the formation of the Transnational Couriers Federation. This analysis is then developed through an increasingly global network of food delivery driver organisations (including both unions and networks), reflecting on the successes and limitations of different models of resistance and organisation that drivers are experimenting with. The chapter then moves on to discuss private hire drivers, highlighting the coordinated strikes and protests in the run-up to Uber’s IPO. These went beyond the coordination of days of action or alignment of strikes, leading to the formation of international networks.

Understanding Platform Resistance

Drawing back from specific examples to consider resistance against platform capitalism this chapter shifts the analytical lens to consider key issues in a wider context, including considering how workers build power in different situations. This involves developing the three parts of the book’s argument: the role of technology and the technical composition of work, the importance of social composition for understanding how workers engage with work and resistance, and the varying forms of struggle that constitute political composition.

Introduction

Platforms are a novel organisational form in the modern global economy. This introduction highlights the book’s focus on one actor in particular: the platform worker, whether Deliveroo riders or online workers, whether on the streets of London or across the world. It starts with a critical analysis of the organisation of platforms and platform work yet also draws attention to moments of solidarity in the struggle against platform capitalism and to the new ways that workers are finding to resist and organise. The aim is to try and better understand the struggles of workers against platforms. The introduction concludes with an outline of the book’s purpose and structure, chapter by chapter.

Digital Workerism, a Framework

This chapter outlines the framework of digital workerism that underpins this book. It sketches in detail the threefold framework of class composition developed by Notes from Below, involving the technical (the organisation of work), social (the organisation of workers into class society), and political (the forms of workers’ resistance and self-organisation) composition of work. Building on this, it outlines an argument about workers’ inquiry in the context of platforms, particularly focusing on new labour processes and the potential for new forms of struggle.