Flexibility and freedom for whom? Precarity, freedom and flexibility in on-demand food delivery

Q2 Business, Management and Accounting

Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation Pub Date : 2021-01-01 DOI:10.13169/workorgalaboglob.15.1.0046

Cano, Espelt, Morell

引用次数: 25

Abstract

On-demand delivery platforms appropriate 'freedom' and 'flexibility' discourses with claims such as 'be your own boss' and 'work as much as you want to'. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Deliveroo updated its courier platform application with a 'free login system' in Barcelona whereby platform couriers could connect to the platform whenever, wherever, and as often as they wanted to. In this paper, we ask why the introduction of a 'free login' system generated even more precarious forms of work, by comparing workforce management systems both before and during the COVID-19 period. We argue that the reason it becomes problematic is rooted in Deliveroo's business model, which is characterised by hiring on-demand, using a piece-rate payment and exercising hard workforce control through algorithmic management.

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为谁提供灵活性和自由?按需食品配送的不稳定性、自由度和灵活性

按需外卖平台将“自由”和“灵活”的说法与“做自己的老板”和“想做多少工作就做多少”等说法相契合。在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间，Deliveroo在巴塞罗那更新了其快递平台应用程序，提供了一个“免费登录系统”，平台快递员可以随时随地、按需登录平台。在本文中，我们通过比较2019冠状病毒病之前和期间的劳动力管理系统，探讨为什么引入“免费登录”系统会产生更加不稳定的工作形式。我们认为，问题的根源在于Deliveroo的商业模式，该模式的特点是按需招聘，采用计件工资，并通过算法管理对劳动力进行严格控制。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation Business, Management and Accounting-Industrial Relations

CiteScore

3.70

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation aims to: -Provide a single home for articles which specifically address issues relating to the changing international division of labour and the restructuring of work in a global knowledge-based economy. -Bring together the results of empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative, with theoretical analyses in order to inform the development of new interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the restructuring of work, organisational structures and labour in a global context. -Be global in scope, with a particular emphasis on attracting contributions from developing countries as well as from Europe, North America and other developed regions. -Encourage a dialogue between university-based researchers and their counterparts in international and national government agencies, independent research institutes, trade unions and civil society as well as other policy makers. Subject to the requirements of scholarly peer review, it is open to submissions from contributors working outside the academic sphere and encourages an accessible style of writing in order to facilitate this goal. -Complement, rather than compete with, existing discipline-based journals. -Bring to the attention of English-speaking readers relevant articles originally published in other languages.