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Activated.

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Hello everybody. I welcome everybody to this session about Oh, organizing against authoritarian authoritarianism in the platform and on demand economy is maybe I think the fifth or sixth session about platform we are going to meet at this Congress.

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But I hope we have still new insights from the presenters present here in in the room and in the video conference.

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Before starting I would acknowledge the country and the people. In these countries on behalf of everyone gathered I pay respect to the spirit of country here in Naom.

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Where we will get, we are a meeting. I recognize the important contribution at first nations. Thinkers have made to sociology including challenges to our dominant Ways of thinking.

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And I hope we will challenge these ways of thinking. Also in this session. We start with Chris Tilly from Los Angeles and very known research on platform economy and he will talk about digital technology in the US.

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Based retails.

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Okay. Well, to start with I should say that no.

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That the research I'm presenting is not about organizing, it's not about authoritarianism and it's not about the platform-based economy.

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But other than that, I'm a great fit with this session. And I did get at it late in the process, but that's my excuse.

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In any case, here I am and This is where joint work with Frazer, at the University of Massachusetts Boston, we've been looking at retail work around the world, we've been looking at retail work around the world, but particularly in the United States for a period of time.

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So in the discussion of What impact digital technology is gonna have on the workforce? There's 3 main perspectives that are being put out there.

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If you look at the MIT report on work of the future or reports from McKinsey, Brookings, a set of reports that have gotten a lot of publicity.

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The main implication that's predicted as job destruction. There's also a literature that points to what sometimes gets called digital self-determination, so more enriched, empowered, autonomous work, you find this in the European industry, 4.

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Literature, but a number of other literatures. And it's kind of the party line in among US retailers.

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So this is a a leader of the food marketing institute which is an industry a retail industry association in the United States who says retailers are looking for ways to remove redundancies and more menial type tasks from daily activities, from their associates, associates translation for people who are not familiar with the US terminology.

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Associate means worker. So moving these menial tasks from their associates so they could spend more time working directly with the customers.

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So this is this is a digital self-determination story. And then finally, digital tailorism.

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This is as close as this talk comes to talking about authoritarianism, but the idea is surveillance and very detailed direction through digital means.

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And Francois and I sort of a priori based on past research are not convinced by any of these 3.

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So in past work we've made an argument that we should not expect a retail apocalypse disappearance of stores because there's a lot of reasons why both consumers and retailers need stores.

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Digital self-determination. At least in the United States we see this as quite unlikely because US retailers for a long time have basically been following a low road path of trying to cut labor costs, labor costs being the main margin of adjustment.

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So to compete by by reducing labor costs. And then finally in terms of digital tailorism, In some ways this this might seem consistent with driving down labor costs, but the fact is that in stores, customers are the wildcard, which makes it harder to organize work in a tailorized fashion.

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So we're skeptical of that as well. And what I'm presenting today is an empirical investigation of well what does seem to be happening in stores And we're building on earlier work.

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There's a short piece in the industrial labor relations review in 2,022 that summarizes that work a longer report on the University of California Berkeley Labor Center website.

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So in that round we talked to 60 retail executives, technology providers, consultants. Since that time, during the pandemic, a lot of Trade shows went online and adopted a sort of speed dating format where you actually had 15 to 20 min meetings with people.

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So through that format we conducted about 110 mini interviews, very short interviews again with some of these key informants.

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We then leverage that for 18 longer in-depth interviews, usually follow-up interviews with some of the same people and then have more recently conducted a number of worker interviews.

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And I do want to emphasize this, retail is a big sector. We're focusing on grocery stores and the sort of big bucks general merchandisers think of a Walmart or a target or whatever the equivalent might be in your country.

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And we're really focusing just on 3 frontline jobs. Cashiers and the self-checkout technology stalkers and there's a number of technologies reshaping them in the new job of people picking and packing and filling online orders.

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What we're seeing among cashiers is here we are seeing some serious displacement. So overall US retail employment fell only 3% from 2,007 to 2,021 but the number of cashiers in retail fell by more than twice that percentage.

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At the same time, there is a redeployment of cashiers to supervising self-checkout kiosks.

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Now the kiosks are not the only format of self-checkout. There's you know the famous Amazon go but it's the overwhelmingly dominant still form of self-checkout.

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And so, you know, the redeployment, these new jobs involve sort of overseeing these kiosks, assisting customers, but also making sure that they don't steal.

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Given that the focus is either helping consumers solve a problem or accusing them of stealing. These are pretty stressful jobs.

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This is definitely not digital terrorism. In fact, the cashier job itself was much more tailorized.

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It was very scrutinized. People were measured in terms of scan rates and evaluated on that basis.

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So this is a more fluid and predictable situation. What's happening with stocker tasks? Here we summarize it as acceleration and disruption of work rhythms.

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So there's a set of technologies that are sort of nibbling away at aspects of this stocker job.

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Electronic shelf labels so you no longer have to change price labels by hand. There's I set of systems using computer vision, computer vision is basically a camera with software that has image interpretation.

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So a bunch of systems monitoring inventory, Internet of Things for example a thermometer in inventory, Internet of Things, Inventory, Internet of Things, for example, a thermometer in a cooler that sends a message out if the cooler temperature gets out of range.

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There's some places, some use of assistive robots. For example, Walmart uses cleaning robots to clean the floors of their stores and so on.

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So acceleration disruption because basically when the Internet of Things system or the shelf monitored determines there's a problem they immediately start paying the worker to do something about it disrupts the kind of planned work of the worker and again introduces an element of unpredictability.

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Wait a minute. Okay, let me try using this key. Okay, order fulfillment.

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Here we're saying there's tailorism plus troubleshooting. Now, the cashiers were disappearing.

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The category of retail stock clerks and order fillers actually grew by 26%. Now we can't separate out how much of this is the people who are fulfilling online orders but that's a big chunk of that increase has to be from from that and what we discovered in the stores that we looked at is the job

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can be a dedicated job. It can be something that gets added as part of the tasks of an existing job or sometimes somebody just gets pulled in to do something on an as-needed basis.

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So should we view this as digital tailorism? I mean, these workers are using an app that's pacing them and keeping close track of how long they're taking.

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In fact, Walmart, there are 6 or 7 different statistics that they're being measured on, including accuracy as well as speed.

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However, there's also multitasking and that unpredictable element that I've been talking about it.

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14 orders an hour, which is a lot. That makes me feel rushed. If there's one huge order that makes me feel stressed.

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Someone at Walmart saying it never works out that you take your lunch at the time you're supposed to.

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The time of the app isn't accurate. You get stopped by a customer and then Cashiers are also being pulled into it at target cashiers are responsible for running out the curbside orders to the people who've pulled up their car to pick up an online order.

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An added problem which I'm embarrassed to say we did not expect this we were not steeped in the literature on glitches, but as as sort of normal people in modern society, we should have known that the software wouldn't work the way it was supposed to.

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Anyway, so check out everything from its cloud base and suddenly the cloud goes down or the equipment just doesn't work you know so so it's really like a stressful day if the technology missed up, right?

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Stocking, there's this, this sort of scathing quote from actually this is a Walmart store manager about the box unloader which Walmart has been boasting about is one of its big automated technological investments to unload trucks at the loading dock.

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And in order picking, here's an order picker saying the app messes up the best route through the store according to the app is not always the best route.

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Send you from I'll send you from Iis 16 to Isle one. This happens almost every day.

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So. If you think back to the guy from the food barking institute saying we're freeing up people so they can interact with customers.

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Is that happening? Well, no. So I watch people's scanning to see if they're trying to steal.

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Says one self-checkout person. Then here's a cashier saying using device every day is wonderful.

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You have everything at your fingertips but it makes it less social with the customers because we're constantly looking at the device.

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And then this last quote I love, although it's not from from somebody who actually works in retail, it's somebody who's the editor of a trade publication serving the retail sector.

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He said, with self-checkout, the retailer said, we're not going to eliminate labor.

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We're going to free up workers. We're going to free up workers to react more with customers, but that's not the way it turned out at the end of the day, labor is a cost.

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The stockers really not much change. They weren't interacting a lot with customers before. Just when you ask them where to find something on the shelf and they're still not.

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Order fulfillment, yes or interacted with customers, but if you think back a slider to its experience as a disruption of the work they're really supposed to be doing.

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So our summary is that the work is degraded by this digitization, but it's not tailorized.

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This is a quote, exonify sells sort of frontline worker communications software and they so they survey frontline workers from time to time we uncovered a strong sentiment at the front line level.

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The corporate leadership isn't in touch with the day-to-day chaos frontline workers are faced with on a regular basis.

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So what name should we give this? You know, there's a notion of controlled autonomy, but at least the way that's framed by Albano at all who are using that term, it involves trusting workers to do the right thing, which is not what's happening here.

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We came up, this is a terrible term, but this is the best we could do in time for the presentation.

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Triangular digital physical dual management. Do not come up with a term like this. So it's triangular in the sense of the, you know, both managers and customers sort of managing and directing workers.

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It's digital and physical in the sense that the sort of commands and demands come through both digital and physical channels.

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In both of those channels, again, it's managers and customers. Reaching out with demand and it's dual and we would add contradictory because there's a combination of the sort of standardized tasks with the unexpected problems, the unexpected demands, which is not a new thing in retail, but intensified by by the

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digitization. What can we do about it? And so this is his, I said, that was as close as I got to authoritarianism.

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This is as close as I get to organizing. Certainly, you know, legislation for tech transparency and data privacy is really important.

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Just knowing what the technology is. Having some rules about what data can be collected on workers. Europe is ahead of the US at this point.

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But probably the most important step, certainly in the US and I think in most countries is to strengthen worker voice so that workers can can offer input and bargain so the tech gets used in a way that actually makes jobs better.

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And thinking back to the publisher of the trade publication saying at the end of the day labor's a cost to ensure that retailers do not just treat labor as a cause, it takes it takes work or power.

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That means certainly in the case of the United States, the existing unions and worker centers like United for Respect are gonna really have to expand their reach.

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They only it currently only have a small percentage of workers organized and existing unions are going to be have to bargain a lot more proactively at this point they are mainly reacting to technological changes that happens and they need to be looking ahead.

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So thanks.

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Thank you Chris and I'm also for being. Except in time. We now move from,

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From the store based workers to the food delivery workers in Greece. And, Ask now Yogos to start with his presentation I'm good to share it.

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Thank you. Hi everybody.

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Yep. Yep.

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Good.

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I'm saying my screen, right? Yeah, great. Great, amazing. So, good evening.

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Good morning from Greece. So, our topic on behalf of the university and team. Is the labor precarious that is reproduced to a platform, food delivery.

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And basically, the idea is that all these approaches, all these research that is developed around.

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Mostly sociology of youth I would say because we are trying to investigate how precarious is reproduced for young people.

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So I would say the sociology of youth in in the sociology of youth field what is very dominant is this idea of individualization.

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I think it's, on how, youth around the world becomes like, reflective subjects in individualized subjects that don't shave, they are not spacing embedded.

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So they are like, a cosmopolitan group of people or something like that. And this means that, this, idea of individualization works against collective movements It works against all those spatial features of labor and so on.

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So, through our research we try to see if these, if this is actually the case and if there is, if there are spatial characteristics.

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To all those labor markets, where platforms play crucial role and whether, collective movements are actually in decline or there is something else there.

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Against this individualization thesis. Why is the research important as we all know during the pandemic?

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Platform food delivery became a master And because of that and also because of the rapid advancement of the field.

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The regulations were not so strong the regulatory framework was not so developed at least this was the case in Europe.

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And mostly in South in Europe I would say. So, we think that this is a very topical, topical issue and we really wanted to get into depth to see what is going there in these labor markets.

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Just link the theoretical foundations. What is described as platform capitalism? So In order to explain that we have to draw from things like, technological advancements, how digital labs are developed.

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At the same time, all these things are strongly strongly related to the global economic transformations, how new liberal policies are developed and so on.

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Economic crisis play a huge role in these advancements and so on. So I wanted to highlight that in our analysis and so on.

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So I wanted to highlight that in our analysis and so on. So I wanted to highlight that in our analysis and so on.

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So I wanted to highlight that in our analysis, we, we use a term that is called spatial It comes from Harvey's work.

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So it comes from labor geography, actually. So in order to address this issue, we use this idea of how capital is fixed in different places and how this reproduces the space and so on and how young people interact with these spaces and these capital accumulation.

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So we do we do think and this is something that also the relevant literature highlights that the expansion of digital platforms comes along with the reproduction and the new protection of youth spaces of work with our precarious especially in the less developed areas.

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Of, EU south and other, southern countries. So as I said before, this idea of taking a space out fixes.

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It actually encapsulates. The whole framework. Of how capital moves around the space How it moves around.

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The international markets. And how it's fixed in different places. Try trying to.

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To, the resources and so on and so forth. I don't want to get into detail in the theoretical stuff.

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About, what I want to highlight is that what comes out of those spatial fixes it that we do have persistent underemployment.

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We have a high level of precarious work and these things mostly concerning young people. We know that youth unemployment is less is I mean you've employing it's less resilient so we have higher youth unemployment during crisis and so on and so forth.

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So we focus on how all these things affect youth labor markets. And what are the essence in the beginning?

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What are the spatial characteristics of that? What are the geographical characteristics? Of these labor markets so I wanted to correct that We used, our methodological framework was, ethnography in general and one part of that was virtual photography.

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So we use the triangulation of data using semi-structured interviews with, food, delivery platform workers.

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And at the same time, we we observed 2 online t and this was the, virtual part of the research.

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Okay.

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And this is what, what can be described as virtual photography. Sometimes it is described as What I want to highlight that, moving our research to the virtual room, these, generates more ethical problems at all considerations about how you can do research what constitutes public space what constitutes private

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space a lot of questions that are quite difficult to answer but also quite interesting. From. A methodological point of view.

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I mean, that's a huge issue. I won't go into that, but there are many concerns when, you're doing virtual ethnography or virtual considerations and you have to address many many questions and also we we use documents of workers collective action and so on so forth and As I said in the beginning.

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we use theoretical concepts. Joined from, geographical, labor geography and cultural political economy.

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So try to define what a good space of work is. We have to keep in mind that it can also concern the physical but also in the digital environment.

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And, it tries to describe how people interact. So it I would say that, it has, It is a 2 full concept in the sense that on the one hand it is how the capital is fixed in some places and how it exploits young people but at the same time it also signifies the collective responses of

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youth, the spaces that young people are gathered and they can develop their. So very quickly, let me go to the results of our research.

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So first of all, in terms of, of those use spaces of those labor markets.

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Our research so that Precarious employment is reproduced. First of all, due to the conditions that these people face, high levels of pressure to meet multiple requirements.

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So there is an extended monitoring at rating system of the platforms and these Of course, puts a huge burden in pressure to do a food delivery, for delivery workers.

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And at the same time, there is a huge deficit of personal data. So everything that they, these people say, all, every, route that they follow, all these things are recorded.

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So in a way this is a further this monitoring is a further pressure to them. It puts more anxiety it's a kind of panopticon for all these people and so I have a quote here from an interview guy that said that those who want to scale up rapidly within this rating system maybe working for more than 12 HA day or

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drive like mud. We are always stressed and in a bad mood while driving. On a motorbike and that's sometimes looking at the GPS so this monitoring system attributes burden.

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What they, what I want to highlight here is that, the working arrangements also play a huge role.

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We have many as sub-contractors in these platforms. And this again is quite revealing in terms of how these people are defined how these workers are defined So she mathematically presented it is as if these people are are self employed.

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In the physical space. So they work on their own. On the one hand, but at the same time they are employees like in the digital space.

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So they carry with them all the obligations that they gave us employees. But they have the limited entitlements of a self-employed person.

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And this mix is quite. Quite interesting and obviously it puts massive pressures and master pressure to to the workers.

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It increases the top president obviously reduces their employment rights. Stealing, we also have to, we had to, approach this use spaces in terms of the agency, the collective entity that they reproduce.

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2 things at the code are going to highlight first of all that the access to those platforms for someone that wants to work is quite easy so they gather a lot of people from different backgrounds.

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And what we saw is that there is a huge fragmentation in terms of yeah, of different, age groups, people from different, national backgrounds and so on.

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And these, these generates, sometimes, competition between the workers and it also said, generates a fragmentation to the collective movements for obvious reasons, even for communication, with different languages and so on.

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This is not a new phenomenon, obviously. Even from the fourth hysteria, we know that fragmentation between the workers was a of how the whole, capital system was working.

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And, still, we realized from the interviews that There are some strong collective responses, collective movements.

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And whereas these rise of freelancing, sub-contracting lead leads to fragmentation.

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Still this physical spaces that, these young people gather, They produce, collective movements and and they still hopes for collective responses and our research thinks at some point during 2,021 and this is a timeline of all them.

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The movement that was that started 1,018 till 2,022 with all the at the lows and so on.

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But I wouldn't highlight that. When the research finish there was a national wide movement which was quite successful for those workers they managed to to gain some some rights.

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So the is this critical mass. Around which collective movements are developed. And so to wrap it up if you conclude the remarks first of all that at at First of all, these technospatial fixes as we call them, they do reproduce these precarity in the use space of work.

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For all these things that I mentioned. And most of all, because as I said, we have, we have this, this hybrid situation where people are self-employed in the physical space.

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But, in a sense they are employed in the digital space. So they, there, there's this restriction of the rights to that.

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But at the same time as I, as I said, this use space is also our spaces where people can gather, they can exchange opinions with people can gather, they can exchange opinions, solidarity can be, they can exchange opinions.

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Solidarity can be, expressed and developed. So, there is some obvious optimism for collective action and agency.

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And this national white this national wide movement was was, then the reflection was the expression of these of the solidarity.

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Thank you for that. I know it's quite quick, but for more detail please check our paper.

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And, I think I'm in time so. Thank you very much for that.

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Yeah, thank you for yoga. You were already also just in time and thank you for this new theoretical perspective on the widely discussed topic food delivery.

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Blockenberg. And we continue now in the room

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It is still.

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Next percentage. Okay. Yeah.

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Okay, now you'll restart a term.

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Thank you very much. My name is Nunavut. I'm a researcher with the new University of Lisbon in Portugal.

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I'm a researcher with the new University of Lisbon in Portugal. I want to present a paper that we just finished with with another Portuguese colleague and 2 other Spanish colleagues.

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This is the result of a European project carried out in 2,019. We at the time we had 2 big questions which was Who are these people in this, delivery?

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The delivery workers and the second one is that to what extent can they actually have collective representation. So my argument here will be to say that from our Iberian experiences.

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We conclude that we should look at other organisations that are non-traditional trade unions.

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That will be the argument. So I'm going to skip this very fast because previous present presenters obviously addressed some of these issues.

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This is one of the most recent models. This is one of the most recent models of practices of outsourcing.

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This is one of the most recent models of practices of outsourcing and flexibility.

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Indeed, it limits very much the possibilities of having collective action. But to a certain extent there is a certain revitalisation of unionism to organise.

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Collective resistance. The relevance here is put on the sexual characteristics to explain the abilities. Of unions to mobilise and expand.

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There is a diversity of structural opportunities. But they are very much linked with the different models that each platform provides.

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The influence of the national institutional dynamics. For us. Needs to be taken into account to understand the Union strategies.

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In terms of the characteristics of the work process. So let's talk a little bit about union strategies.

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The literature Basically focus on 2 mainstream approaches. The first one connected with this revitalization strategies that unions can have to get to gain or to regain power in society and the second one which is this power resources approach I will explain a little bit better.

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What they are. The third and that's a bit our proposal is that the role played by the Alternative Association unions movements, this was the best.

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The best expression we could come up with, we didn't agree, we were 5 partners in New York and plus I don't know how many in each research center we couldn't agree on this because it varies from country to country that will just give you 2 countries.

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I will just give you 2 examples, one in another in Portugal and you see how different they are.

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So we should look at this topic with growing interest in our And that's the relationship.

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So revitalization strategies have identified it a new organisation and organisation strategies are comfortable. We negotiation initiatives and political influence.

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Despite the difficulties. Some organizations have been making efforts and even adopted principles of mobilization.

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The main strategy has been litigation for example in Spain. With a view to recognise the employment status of platform workers.

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The coalition strategies with other actors or social movements were also identified such as for example the most known ones are collective bargaining within digital delivery sector in the Nordic countries.

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Where actually workers have achieved status of employee. This is obviously done. Previous to the the lightest, the lightest regulatory framework that was developed in some European countries, particularly in the South.

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Nevertheless, these strategies had little influence in Peninsula in the Diberian Peninsula.

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In Spain, most applications focus on analysing the causes. Of the union disaffection in the context of the great recession.

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By for those who are not familiar with the expression is this connected with the presence of Triika during the economic crisis that we had.

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Between between 2 12, 2,014, more or less. And the commitment to organise and mobilise by some nationalistic oriented unions.

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Particularly in Catalonia and in Basque country as an alternative. To the strategies of the main national confederations.

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In the in in in in Portugal the strategies were analyzed highlighted by the main The main trade union confederations that have been reluctantly.

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Reluctant to cooperate and ally with this new social movements associations or whatever. Wanted to call them.

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Largely largely due to difficulties in maintaining political control over these movements obviously. But also lack of resources, human resources but not just and difficult to maintain representativeness and collective bargaining in this sectors.

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Many unions told us that they were actually losing a lot of rights in the collective agreements if they engage. With this with this platform workers power resources approach.

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I mean, for those who know unions, use this different strategies depending on their ability to mobilize.

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Different power resources they have in society. So for example institutional structural or organizational It is a complementary approach to the previous one.

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We are sectors and different collectors of precarious are frequently included. There is a greater continuity of institutional power resources in Spain when compared to Portugal.

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That can help to explain the greater community commitment of the business associations. To maintain collective bargaining institutions. This didn't happen in Portugal as well as smaller ideological divisions between the main trade unions confederations in Spain as we will see.

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In Portugal. We're processing different platform activities conditions very much the availability of structural power resources.

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And with them the collective action strategies. For example, in load event digital platforms, I, food delivery, for example, cleaning.

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Activities carried out on the localised and offline way. Where is, the ones who are then for example in network?

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Rather than digitally, remotely atomized and so on. So Yeah, it's a different world.

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This is a heterogeneous actors. That have been talking about are conceptualised through different terms as I mentioned, new union movements, association unions.

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An emerging good measure to cover the avoid or emptiness that exists of representation in various precarious collectives throughout the countries in the previous library.

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They are characterized by having less formal and more horizontal and more horizontal organizational structures obviously than traditional structures obviously than traditional trade unionsational structures, obviously than traditional trade unions and structures, obviously then traditional trade unions and have a more specific and oriented agenda for those digital workers.

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Their relationship with traditional unions varies between cooperation and competition. With claims that can have a complementary character to make to give visibility and improve the representation of these precarious collectives.

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In Spain it continuously depends largely on leadership and the resources that traditional unions can contribute to the causes. Many members of this social movements maintain a double affiliation both in these alternative movements as well as in the traditional trade unions.

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To guarantee participation and representation in the company. Or with negotiations with the companies in Portugal. So it's a different kind of organization exists called Precario's Inflexive.

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It's roughly translated to reflexible precarious. And it's a movement that actually aggregates a lot of, It's small, movements coming from the troika times.

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And it has developed different strategies to build a new collective identities based on the notion of precarious.

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Such as connecting very directly with parliamentarians or with some policymakers that they know are going to be influential.

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In the legislative processes and so on. So it is an association that tries to fight against precariousness in the country, whatever the form is.

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And they decided that the digital workers were also deserved of their attention. I won't go through the objective of this.

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It's already been described. Even methodologies just to tell you that in Spain we conducted 17 interviews and semi structured both with workers and representatives of several union actors, so not just traditional unions but other actors in Hove.

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23 in Portugal, we also observe importantly social networks where we gather a lot of information and document analysis and so on.

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So, in terms of results, I'll just go briefly through it, but what it's important to understand in my opinion is that the characteristics of employment have been altered.

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After the entering into force of the rider's law in 2,021 which actually gave recognition of the perception of employment in for the lever delivery workers.

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So this was the first big change actually as far as I can remember in continental Europe. It led to an increase in salary in the salaries of these delivery workers.

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A significant part are not hired directly by the platforms but to sub contracted companies and this is where things get tricky.

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So in Portugal, in Spain, and Uber currently maintain a large flipped fleet of these drivers as self employed.

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As we will see in Portugal, Louvre is the good guy. With new new new order allocating and remunerating systems designed to try to comply with the current legislations.

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Okay.

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They are all these companies are other investigations in Spain as well as in Portugal. So, let me see what I can say with the time I have here.

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So the main the main alternative movement here is these writers for rights are And Di, who initially opposed to cooperate with traditional unions but slowly evolved towards greater integration.

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But particularly at the local level, but then afterwards with the confederation. This is as I mentioned, there's a double affiliation and It emerges a third union actor close to the company unionism and this is also true for Portugal with a collaborative employment model aligned to a large extent with the interests of the

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platforms.

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So the strategy was different from the other country. Here litigation was really important in Spain.

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There was also The coalition with one party that was in government actually with negotiation with the traditional trade unionism as well as the other actors led to this.

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To this law and that's pretty much what I'm going to say about this. There are some small progress in framework agreements resulting from collective bargaining such as just it and in the hospitality area in the bus country.

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Sexual trends are not positive. There is an absence of an from the business side many many don't want to engage in collective bargaining difficult to define the main activity of the companies and this is also true for the Portuguese.

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But Portuguese case in terms of this subcontracting of companies. So.

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I don't have much time but I just like to say that So, these companies are, so we have a new law in 2,023.

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So we had a new law in 2,023, so a few months ago. And it was, they are now under investigation, these delivery companies.

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As well as in Spain. So we don't have the results yet but we already know that Global is the good guy in Portugal, the bad guy in Spain and Uber is trying to see where to go very fastly.

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There is a certain reluctance of the traditional unions to organise and mobilize these workers. Most for several reasons, but mostly because they are governed by commercial contractual relationships.

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Until the law became effective. And and workers are They don't speak, they don't speak Portuguese, they are mostly not even English.

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Coming from Asian countries. And they have a lot of discussion whether they should invest their resources, their scare resources.

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In organising these platform workers. However, there was a Good news, one of the main trade unions in urban transport decided to represent these drivers, they would already represent Uber drivers and they decided that as Uber was opening up into delivery not just right healing they decided okay let's try to organise this ones.

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At the same time there was a huge reframing of the labour codes. And they were able to represent this delivery, these delivery workers and to a certain extent they already have some, ranking, rank and file.

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Going on in in the in the 2 big cities of the part of Portugal, Porto and Lisbon.

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And they are now nominated and sited in the debates as being the representatives of these. Of this ones.

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So try to be very, very fast. So just to say that the main confederations have they had but they still have.

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Little interest in this when they felt that perkari is in flexible, this intermediate association was controllable to a certain extent they decided to move on.

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But, they're still cautious, I would say. So.

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The

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The business strategy have been oriented towards lobbying legislator, legislators instead of engaging in with workers.

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Or even litigation litigation does not work in particular. Whereas in Spain it does. So we are now in this phase.

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So if you just give me one or 2 min to say that Okay.

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Hybrid organizations in greater depth and then where you can actually stay with this presentation and read the rest of it.

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Thank you very much and I apologize for being late.

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Thank you, Nuno.

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This phone coming from here. gong pangs there. Okay, fine. We now move even further to the east.

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Of our presentations. And we have now, Kong Pang, about Chinese freelances. And Can't start now, please.

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Okay. Hello everyone. It's my honor to attend to this academic conference and consume, majoring communication at the Communication University of China.

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This research focused on the pay of forming for Texas or freelancers exploring their power over time as a means of understanding the opportunity, operational logic and the individual autonomy in a platform society.

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It based on my master's he says and comes from my 5 years experience as a part-time for laser which I hope to continue at as a page level.

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Okay.

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And first, I would like to briefly describe the 5 parts of my research. They started mailing applications or framework of the sociology of time and particular corner main through participant observation and in depths interviews with 27 freelancers.

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To study such a question can freedom serves achieve time autonomy in platform society. Here I have developed that comes to power over time which refers to the poverty control time both for the freezers and for paid forms.

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Also, to the average control time, both for the average control time, both for the freezers and for paid forms.

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Also, export a table behavior on plate forms. Also, export a table behavior on plate forms. Also, export a table behavior onplay the forms still exist.

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The table behavior on plateforms still exist. The offence of this study fungi is autonomy of the freelancers is still a significant writing variable that can be partially resistant to the competition for the power of time.

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Sorry to the paper form spring. But this power comes in stages. This diagram shows my research parts. Which consisted mainly of the research question in the middle of the research objectives in the top and the bottom sections and the research funding in the right half.

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Okay, you know, flexible employment in China has a rate to 200 million people, of days of working, 30 million freelancers working in typical areas of the core industries.

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And, 11.45 main influencers work full time on the plate of forms overtaking the traditional culture industries.

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This main side is the plate form has gradually become an important field of culture in that streets. However, working time and power on Chinese platforms are ignored as a topic and it is not a starting point for the study of freedomers.

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A lot with me in terms of my own term experience which problems, which prompted me to start this research.

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Therefore, I contacted in-depth intervals with 27 free dancers from March to October in the 2020 s in the 2,022.

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The interviews were contacted by a witch and correlation chide and typhoon and the lattice to a rage and correlating chide and typhoon and the lettuce ever been chide and typhoon and the lattice to avenge of around one half over 12 min.

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Apprentice to avenge of around 100, 12 min, application nearly 416,000 words.

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Generally for 116,000 words of firsthand and the 16,000 words of firsthand and 16,000 words of firsthand and the 16,000 words of firsthand and the detailed information.

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After the intervals I rated for 116,000 words or firsthand and the detailed information.

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After the intervals I rated the days repeatedly and explored the core topics and the key concepts from the interval date with the help of, well, and, to analyze the phenomena.

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Misery search aim can be summarized in Western terms, which search aim can be summarized in, which is to analyze the possibility of a tipping freedom and a tournament from the perspective of a tipping freedom and a tournament from the perspective of a tripping freedom and a tournament from the perspective of, a tripping freedom and tournament from the perspective

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of, a tripping freedom and a tournament from the perspective of temperature already. Let's look at it's a bigger, subproductate box.

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It's a mainland and the aim of my research by analyzing the plate of forming predicts or for dancers and running them from the conception of power over time.

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We make understands the possibility of a tournament. So first of all, my research objectives can be answered by this 2 right those 8 boxes.

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Firstly, the upper part is the subjectivity of freelancers. And the adjourn's a paradigm of the sociology of time to focus to, focus on own injury, ordinary, every day, at to make her level.

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That means from the perspective of individual freelancers we can comprehend the subjectivity of the plate from predators and the construction of discourse power in social life.

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There's a study topic to as part. 1 8 major children's meeting, to learn the term structure and the creative writing or production.

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The other is a power to understand the issues of power interactions from the regional perspective and social growth.

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Secondly, the following section describes the time control of the data form. I joined the framework of qualifying the time control of the data form.

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I joined the framework of CORN. I joined the framework of CLARKING QUOMEY to explore the issue of Quality Quickly to explore the issue of controlling and redistribution of time from a micro-production of time from a micro perspective and also to identify the logic of the plate

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form. And, also to identify the logic of the plate form. Inevitably.

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And, also to identify the logic of the plate form, in inevitably, the logic of the plate form.

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In inevitably, they are established, they are established, the fracture about the control of labor and the exploitation of time, about the control of labor and the exploitation of time.

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But more important today, there is a sense of temporal role, the underline, the underlying logic of time as a resource or we change the logic is expressed in the made designation of labor and the meditation of Japan.

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Here's the power of the meeting and the plate form our union. Sounds of funding so far.

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Oh, suggest that I pay term of freelancers is not a freedom side. Economists have made it all to be but very to free the freedom is race stages and this is freedom is related related to the lens of time spent in the profession, the social capital accumulated gender and as a financial assume which together holds a power of

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freelancers time at the same time in the transition from the first to the third stage freelancers have become more and more autonomous fighting against to the time control of the paid form system.

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So based on above analysis, some of the perspectives I have a summary that are showing in the Take care.

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I have a campaign as an individual. The individual, perspective, it's a plate of forms or society to form.

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To form a age for the emissions, such as working time made in time, leisure time, kept the time in so on.

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I have also put on, which I'm displaying in general terms, some of the reasons.

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Yeah, always the research I found that even though there are established the time control and the exploitation of the paid form.

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Our freelancers have different levels of control over their time at the different stages of their work anticipated form and their autonomy is gradually emerging.

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This is a reflection of the competition of platform labor and directions at needs attention in the future. In extension, I have a social force.

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Or perspective we, focus on the balance between the paid form and social public goods. The union of individuals objectives and social force may provide for theancers with more strengths to resist the struggle for power over time with the paid form.

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I think this is also a reflection of the confiscated of the quarter demonstrate. This is at the end of my presentation.

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Thank you for attention.

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Thank you.

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Yeah, thank you very much and of course very fast this presentation. So we are a bit ahead of time, but we can now move via France back to the United States.

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Isabela Costa will guard us on his travel.

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Stefan, do you have my recorded presentation?

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Yes, you should have it

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So I'm very sorry I had to change presentation format, but that should be about 16 min. So it'll be right on time.

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And then I'll be available for, any questions. Later on.

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Hello.

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I'm very sorry I finally could not make it into Melbourne. But I still wanted to say a few words about the topic of platform workers.

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So I'll do a short presentation. And I wish you all a very good discussion for the whole session.

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I will not share my screen.

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So my name is Isabel Dicasa and

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The outline of the presentation I want to do today. Has to do with how employment relations are just to new technology.

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And I'll do that in 2 parts, workplace democracy, the long road to worker voice and representation both in United States and the European Union and then the current and recent legal battles about the employment status of platform workers.

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Again, comparing the United States and European Union. And then a short conclusion. As you all know and I'm not gonna develop this point ever since the Industrial Revolution and up till the days of digitization.

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Technological evolution has been followed by changes in the work organization and also by struggles of workers to adjust to it.

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So we've been through the steam engine and the conveyor belt etc and then obviously terrorism for this and lead production and most recently platform work and digitization.

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And algorithm management. The way in which the workers collectively organize to respond to these changes and to have a voice or some say in decision making about all this and also about their conditions of work was an evolution every time in collective arrangements from craft unions to industrial unions and now we'll see a little bit later on part

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2. But what we've seen in the twentieth century is often precarious forms of work, developing, and questioning or challenging traditional employment relations, the challenges are economical, sociological, legal.

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And the ones I'm going to, deal with here are mostly legal. So not the protests and collective organization that brought about does legal changes.

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But the way in which they are now currently discussed. So what I proposed to show is how the evolution of digital technologies challenges collective bargaining.

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Actors and institutions by comparing developments in the United States and European Union. Regarding the legal status and the right to organize platform workers.

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The issue being mostly, are these workers the employees in which case there's an employment relationship. And and then maybe just a different way to collectively organize or are they independent contractors in which case they're entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs don't have a right to collective bargaining.

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Or to all the fringe benefits, social security, the whole of the welfare system. So.

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I'm timing myself just a little bit. So the group of the geek economy and platform workers that to challenge traditional employment relationships are non-permanent or short-term contracts with fewer no benefits.

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Conditioned work, self-employment, temporary agencies, contingent work, self-employment, temporary agencies, and app based platform work.

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Oh, of course not all platform workers. Are underpay drivers or food delivery writers and this is why some criteria needs to be breadth about and analyzed in order to determine which workers would be independent contractors or employees.

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This is very important because there are some estimates that freelance work in the United States in a couple of years will constitute up to 50% of the working population and yet there is no clear status for this work for these workers.

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As being entrepreneurs or employees. And one of the reasons is because the business model of many of the companies in in platform work.

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Try to avoid having an employment relationship try to avoid paying the cost of the welfare systems so in terms of paid vacation health insurance accident work accidents etc.

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They also through their status try to avoid paying some of the national taxes and you'll see.

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Later away this is important. I'm not going to go, I'm not gonna explain the different theories of in industrial democracy.

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The idea here is that some form of participation. The idea here is that some form of participation. The idea here is that some form of participation, involvement, the idea here, is, that, some form of participation, involvement, workers voice has been, negotiated through industrial relations arrange and that this is

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different. In different countries and the 2 compare the comparison I'm going to do which is between the United States and the European Union.

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The choices were quite different. Just to note that in the United States that has a collective bargaining model, trade union recognition the way in which it's involved with Wagner Act during the New Deal made collective bargaining, adversar between adversarial interests of the managers and the workers.

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The the model and there to belong or not to belong to a union is not an individual choice of the worker.

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It's a collective choice after an election in a bargaining unit. So it's quite legalistic.

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And For instance, part-time workers might not be considered as employees. Any worker that has a little bit of a say in the way in some of the choices that can be considered as management choices and professional workers often have those then they're not considered as.

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As, then they cannot, participate in collective bargaining. I don't have the time to clearly explain this but this is the way the National Labor Relations Board has evolved.

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In its interpretation of the right to collective bargaining in the United States. In the European Union, the difference for worker representation involvement and participation.

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Is in the treaty I'm not gonna do a comparison here between different countries, but rather talk about the transnational EU level.

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And at TRANCe at DECK Transnational level there's trade union recognition for collective bargaining purposes.

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That's in to protect into professional and sector levels, but not at the workplace levels, although there are European Works, but not at the workplace levels, although there are European Works Councils at the multinational enterprise at the multinational enterprise level.

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They do not have collective bargaining rights. They do not have collective bargaining rights, but they do not have collective bargaining rights, they do not have collective bargaining rights, but they have a right to information.

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They do not have collective bargaining rights but they have a right to information in consultation and so then the issue here becomes the coordination and consultation.

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And so then the issue here becomes the coordination of the different levels of collective bargaining. Okay now to the point the legal battles over employment status in the platform economy.

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Basically, I've mentioned already the issue of employees status in the United States and the problems it can pose for gig workers which then if they are they do not have the employees status and they are considered as entrepreneurs.

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They do not have fringe benefits. Nor federal labor standards act federal minimum standard protections such as minimum wage over time seek leave, unemployment and other benefits.

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This started to be challenged after protests by platform workers such as Uber drivers in California in 2,018 assembly bill 5 was passed which put together what is called an ABC test to guide courts and regulation in regularities in determining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor.

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But then Uber and Lyft, spend millions of dollars lobbying in California to try to It's include, their drivers.

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From this legislation and they managed to get Proposition 22 voted by the voters of California which gave over drivers an exemption.

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From this legislation and then they kept fighting this across the United States as different states tried to pass similar legislation that would consider these workers as employees in instead of independent contractors.

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Interesting development, so this is still on litigation but interestingly enough at the federal level Biden government tried a different road and this road is taxation and it goes through the IRS.

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Let me just. And so this is the ABC test. Which contains A, B and C. It's a 3 criteria to determine whether these people are workers or independent contractors.

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So I'm not gonna read it. You can see it. A little bit about the Department of Labor addressing the misclassification of employees in independent contractors and the way they do this and to see if they can come under the fair labor standards Act is through tax returns.

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And workers taxes and contributions are directly taken now out by their employers of their wage bulletins. Whereas if they're entrepreneurs or independent contractors, they need to file and the kind of taxes they pay is not quite the same.

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So I again I don't have the time to explain. The details of this but this looks a bit promising it's a different road to address these issues it's still all of this is still ongoing so very quickly for the European Union There is a 2 things.

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One is a directive that's that's being negotiated on improving working conditions in platform work and that includes working conditions in platform work and that includes a series of working conditions in platform work and that includes a series of criteria.

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That includes a series of criteria. But since it was voted on on the European Parliament, and that includes a series of criteria.

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But since it was voted on on the European Parliament, since, it was, voted on on the European Parliament, article 4 gives a legal assumption that there is an employment relationship and therefore the people working in the platform should, 4 gives a legal assumption that there is an employment relationship and therefore the people working in the platform should have the same rights as workers so that

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they So there's a legal assumption. This is not enacted yet. There's a series of steps missing.

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But this is where it is right now. Of course there's some criteria also. And I'll show you in a little bit.

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There's also another route that European Commission has taken in September the 22 which are the guidelines for the application of the European competition law to collective agreements regarding working conditions of solo self-employed people.

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And this is because if you instead of being workers, these people are, are contractors, then of course if they get together to increase the price of their services that can come on both in the United States and the European Union that can come under the antitrust loss.

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So when they are solo one person only employed And then, there is this guidelines that say that the European Union will not apply its antitrust loss.

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So this is where I'm running out of time so I'm sorry I'm not there to answer the questions.

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This is still working progress. You can see here where it's at. And this would then protect, give worker rights and the fringe benefits.

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And all the other protections to the workers in platform if they are considered as workers and again not all workers in platforms are workers sometimes they are truly independent contractors.

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So to the conclusion, representation and participation are key issues for workplace democracy from an employment in labor relations perspective.

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And yet this is not just an industrial relations or employment relations matter because it entails economic political and legal actors and struggles and beyond the employment relationship it it it goes on to the welfare system.

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Not just of those workers but the welfare system the national welfare systems for that have been bargained in the past century and if there's more and more and more freelancers and these types of workers and if nobody contributes into the system then pretty soon the systems are going to be in danger.

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Also there's fiscal taxation issues. Which I didn't have the time to develop but at any rate the future outcomes at stake here are the rules of rights and protections for the digital workers of the 20 first century.

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That can be labeled that platform economy era. I wish you all. A very good discussion and thank you very much.

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That is 7.

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Yeah, thank you. It's available for your presentation and for your comparison of the United States and the European Union.

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We have now roughly half an hour for discussion for questions and comments. And I ask first of all the people in the Room here if there are any questions comments.

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Please, and please, Present yourself before asking the questions. Hello, my name's Tom Barrett.

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I'm from the University of Western Australia and my questions for Nuno.

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It's. So I'm interested in your sort of deployment of the new forms of trade unions in response to the new forms of trade unions in response to the deployment of the new forms of trade unions in response to the deployment of the new forms of trade unions in response to the opportunity structure available to these workers of trade unions in response to the opportunity structure available to these workers.

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I was just wondering how much the strategies of organising in Portugal. Quasi unions or new forms of worker action were in response to the strategies of the platforms themselves.

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Please come here.

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Well, I would say that,

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Each platform works in a different way in different countries. So strategies have to reflect somehow. That and that's actually what we found out in the 5 countries we observed.

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So. For example, if you have, it was not the case, but Uber is very strong in Portugal.

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But it's very weak in Spain. The resistance was made through taxes in Spain, whereas in Portugal was made.

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Against Uber and then at the other camps came. So I guess the It's very idiosyncratic or so it's very each country Each company has different ways or different business models in different countries does.

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The organisation of these movements needs to be different. Of course then the industrial relations system then plays a definitive role in turning the landscape but It's very important to analyze the business model.

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Yeah, the next question.

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Thanks. Chris, I have a question for you. A presenter. Sorry.

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My name is Bridget Kenny. I'm at the University of Bridget Kenny.

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I'm at the University of Vitt Botter's Rand, I'm at the University of the Vitt Botters Rand in Johannesburg.

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I have a question about one of the last points you were raising about the collection of data from workers over these systems.

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Is there any research on what's actually collected beyond, I mean we know sort of about the digital tailorism and what the sort of immediate ways in which workers are being inserted into work processes but have you seen any actual research on the data collected and what it's been used for?

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Did you pick up that from any of the interviews with managers at all?

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Okay, I had a question for Chris. And this was suggesting. And say, yeah, Ben Scilly also from, Vits University in Johannesburg.

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And this is just another question of Johannesburg. And this is just another question for Chris.

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I just wondered is there you didn't talk about unions I don't know even though I come from the US I don't know even though I come from the US I don't know the context of how even though I come from the US I don't know the context of how organized or not these places are but I don't know the context of how organized or not these places are but I imagine that retail unions

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have not these places are. But I imagine that retail unions have little history everywhere of engaging with retail unions have little history everywhere of engaging with technological change although I imagine that retail unions have little history everywhere of engaging with technological change although other types of unions in Ottawa or whatever that's like with technological change, although other types of unions in Ottawa or whatever, that's like a big part of trade

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union, other types of unions, you know, in Otto or whatever, that's like a big part of trade union engagement.

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So I wondered, is there any thought Can I quickly ask a question to another so I don't have to take the mic back?

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The Greek presenter, it also applies to Isabel. Yeah, so the question about the, you know, definition of employees or the misclassification of employees.

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Like the Greek presenter mentioned in South Africa, a significant portion of drivers are direct employees because there's somebody who gets the line or whatever and then they hire someone to be the driver.

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So I wonder, in those cases, these debates like Isabel's pointing to, there's no ambiguity.

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These people are clearly employees under the national labor law but in South Africa we don't see much organization of people trying to claim.

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But in South Africa we don't see much organization of people trying to claim those labor rights even though we don't see much organization of people trying to claim those labor rights even though it would be legally easy, people trying to claim those labor rights, even though it would be legally easy because it would be legally easy because they are easier because

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their goal would be legally easy because they are easier because their goal is themselves to become an employer because their goal is themselves to become an employer of drivers and rather than to become an employer of drivers and rather than to become a more formalized a subcontracted employee of anyway so I went in in in Greece if there are any kind of

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organization or recognition around people who are employed as drivers in Uber.

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Okay.

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Well, yeah, I don't know of any systematic data on the collection of data on workers.

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You know, when we were in the field, along with European colleagues around 2,005, there was a lot of emphasis on collection of data in cashiers.

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When we were in the field most recently, basically cashiers were saying, oh, we never get feedback on scan rates.

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The only people who were getting feedback were the sort of pickers and packers, the online order fillers.

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And I, so in some ways it seems like they're probably collecting a lot of data, but the place where they're bearing down is the kind of new areas where they're trying to get norms going.

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That's that's our impression and again it's really just based on on a small number of interviews.

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In terms of unions engaging on technological change, the United States there's basically one retail you knew the United Food and Commercial Workers that has some substantial density in grocery stores at almost nowhere else.

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And I mean, they have announced their intention to bargain on technology. What we've heard about so far has been backward looking.

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What we've heard about so far has been backward looking. What we've heard about so far has been backward looking.

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What we've heard about so far has been backward looking. It's things like that. Fairly transported other jobs.

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I mean I will say the last conference I presented at at the Labor and Employment Relations Association, there was a sort of someone from the United Food of Commercial Workers National Office and we sort of grabbed each other afterwards and said we have to talk so I hope to have more to say about that soon.

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So if I may reply.

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But maybe to ask Knuk, yours is no more than if no. Oh, okay. Oh, I see the other prisoner's not there.

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Shiller.

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No.

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Did. But it seemed like Isabel was going to speak to.

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I'm still here too so I can I can answer that.

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Oh! Like this. I see. Okay.

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Did you hear the question addressed to you?

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Yeah, sure, sure. Sorry, I don't get my camera on. I have exams right now.

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The thing is that, So the system is quite mixing. We do have, self-employed.

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We have freelancers. We have sub-contractors and we also have like full time employee BP.

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So it's quite, quite mixed. The national wide mobilization gave some extra rights to those people so they are they were considered.

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Full-time employers at that point. But again, The whole movement has started losing ground.

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So we are turning again back to the previous state. So the whole regulatory framework in the system is pushing towards self employment.

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So we have the option, but you know the whole system pushes towards. Self employment in many aspects.

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If that answers the question.

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Okay, Ben. Oh, sure. Hi, I'm Julia Tomaceti at Swinburne University School of Law here in Melbourne.

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Only recently I had what's hopefully a quick question for Nuna and a sort of a question comment for for Isabel.

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I was just wondering Nuna, you said that the unions, the major unions federations weren't that particularly interested in organizing platform workers in Spain and Portugal.

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So I was wondering where the legislative impetus mostly came for then for passing these statutes that established the presumption that they were employees.

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Was it from the precarious organization or? Other other kinds of independent contractors. And then I was also, this might be a double question, but it was given that one of the reasons people argue that there's so much competition in these sort of on-demand offline platform works is that there's low capital

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costs in entering them. How come there is subcontracting. Is that because there's still the cost of getting the motorcycle or the motorbike or does it have to do with migrant status of workers?

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So I was just curious, I know both you and George said that they were subcontracting the H.

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And then, sorry, a real quick comment for Isabel. Okay, I was, Isabel was kind of wondering how if I was kind of wondering how if your main focus is on how the legal disputes shape the prospects for collective organization and unionisation in the EB.

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I was kind of wondering how if your main focus is on how the legal disputes sort of shaped the prospects for collective organization and unionization in the US.

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How the prospects for collective organization and unionization in the EU and US. How the prospects for collective organization and the prospects for collective organization and unionization in the EU and US. How the California disputes fit in there.

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Since AB 5 and so yeah, that was it. Okay, new view and set first

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Yeah. Okay, thank you very much for the questions. In terms of regulations and I would say that It was a mix of First of all, political parties who had an interest in passing this law after the pandemic mostly.

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I guess there was a debate in society. Also these hybrid organizations were there and were participating in public debate and last but not necessarily the least depending on the country.

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The main confederations of trade unions were We're we're forced to take a position on technological change and specifically on platform.

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Economy. I say this because in Spain was not as difficult as it was in Portugal. It was much easier for the confederations to engage.

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However, with the conversation. We've got coalition government and the Ministry of Labour, whereas in Portugal it was much more difficult to get.

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Trade Union Confederation. To have a position and to have one individual dedicated to technological change. I mean overall it was a combination of several things, a trend that was going on in the European Union, a lot of debate and this would have to be resolved.

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The second question concerning subcontracting and I'm not like a legal expert, but I should say that previously and bit awkward, the Labour law in Portugal introduced the figure of a mediator company.

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I said this strangely because in the address of the world as far as I know it didn't exist.

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So they were forced to have a company in order to work for Uber. And in the last revision, 2,023 and also in Spain in 2,021 they allowed space to have companies.

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So what happened is that in Spain immediately the big delivery companies started to use this figure of a company to avoid contracting more than they wanted to.

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So they only contracted to a certain level that they knew wouldn't fluctuate throughout the year and all the rest they used these companies.

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And that's something similar is happening in Portugal.

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Okay, thank you. And then now, Isabel, will you answer the question?

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Yes, I'll start with the question about taxi drivers in Joanna Brook. That was the system before in France also, for example, and it went along with a Kota of taxis numbers so that to buy a license for a taxi was very expensive.

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What Uber did was to totally do away with that taxi system that you described that is people bought their own taxes and then they became taxi drivers.

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The difference is that Uber and other companies, they control their drivers to app apps to an application that then determines the price of the ride and also the kind of client you're going to take etc and that is what goes into the fact of determined whether the drivers are employees or employers.

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The difference between legislation in federal legislation for collective bargaining normally applies to all the states in the United States.

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The California law came after a big huge movement by Uber drivers. Big organizing movement. And it was a reply to that movement.

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And it was also a test because in the United States, once you get some sort of legislation in one.

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In one state you can then apply. You can then copy it eventually. If people want to, to other states and this was the case with a slot.

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So other states like Massachusetts, etc. Started also thinking about this kind of legislation. And so. The the whole procedure in California then had an impact at the national level through through this I hope II hope I' it's not easy to explain legality is in 5 min but it it goes together with big movements by

466
01:33:44.000 --> 01:33:57.000
the workers involved and also millions of dollars in lobbying by Uber and other companies. With the legislation both at the EU Parliament, etc.

467
01:33:57.000 --> 01:34:07.000
And in California, Massachusetts, etc, so that these laws do not pass that give these rights to these workers.

468
01:34:07.000 --> 01:34:16.000
Thank you, Savel. And we have another question from the room. Please go ahead. Thank you Laura Good from the University of Sydney.

469
01:34:16.000 --> 01:34:21.000
I have a question for you Chris building on Ben's question. I have a question for you, Chris, building on Ben's question.

470
01:34:21.000 --> 01:34:41.000
So thinking beyond retail unions, so thinking beyond retail unions, what evidence did you see of informal? So thinking beyond retail unions, what evidence did you see of informal unions what evidence did you see of informal unions what evidence did you see of informal employer resistance to these digital systems.

471
01:34:41.000 --> 01:34:51.000
We have not seen much of that. I mean, certainly, I mean, outside of unions there is one important sort of worker center that Your battery is running low.

472
01:34:51.000 --> 01:35:00.000
That's not supposed to happen. Because that's not this one, right? That's not this one, right?

473
01:35:00.000 --> 01:35:04.000
That's that's this 10, it's not this one, right? That's that's this.

474
01:35:04.000 --> 01:35:17.000
Oh, it's the laptop. Oh, it's a laptop. In any case, yeah, so there's an important worker center United for a respect that's mainly based in Walmart that, so there's an important worker centre United for a respect that's mainly based in Walmart.

475
01:35:17.000 --> 01:35:29.000
In any case, yeah, so there's an important worker center United for respect that's mainly based in Walmart that actually interestingly has organized nationally through an app and particularly during COVID it became this clearing house for Walmart workers around the country to say, what is your Walmart doing in terms of providing

476
01:35:29.000 --> 01:35:37.000
PPE in terms of alerting people when there's a case and so on and actually became quite powerful.

477
01:35:37.000 --> 01:35:52.000
But I mean, aside from that, they also, it's essentially mutual support and advising it's I mean does it does get used for mobilization and the you know the sort of symbolic strikes, minority strikes that happen, but a lot of it is just.

478
01:35:52.000 --> 01:36:00.000
You know, sort of a network in which workers can say, I've encountered this situation, what have you done that works.

479
01:36:00.000 --> 01:36:10.000
It's not very visible, but it's out there. It involves thousands of workers. And I think that's probably the most thousands of workers and I think that's probably the most important thing outside of the United Food and commercial workers.

480
01:36:10.000 --> 01:36:19.000
In terms of individual resistance. You know, we heard about things that ranged from, you know, when you sort of saw the glitches.

481
01:36:19.000 --> 01:36:26.000
You know, the gal who said, you know, the app tells me to go from Isle one to Isle 16.

482
01:36:26.000 --> 01:36:32.000
She said, so I basically just fill the order in the order I know is best instead of following the app.

483
01:36:32.000 --> 01:36:52.000
So I mean there's that kind of just using your own knowledge to work around the technology. There's there's also you know, another example that's a little more collective but not very collective is that there's there's a chain where Dordash is picking up deliveries.

484
01:36:52.000 --> 01:37:00.000
So Dordash is not one of the sort of Uber or Instacart type of delivery services.

485
01:37:00.000 --> 01:37:08.000
So Doordash arrives and Basically what we heard from a manager is that the workers in the stores often just ignore the doordash orders.

486
01:37:08.000 --> 01:37:18.000
I mean, they're trying to fill the in-house orders and they'll just let the doordash orders sit which of course is not the company policy.

487
01:37:18.000 --> 01:37:31.000
It is feels like the tip of the iceberg, but there's enough there to say workers are not just complying.

488
01:37:31.000 --> 01:37:39.000
So are there any other questions or comments from Chris? There's a question.

489
01:37:39.000 --> 01:38:02.000
Oh yeah, I have a question for I, Nuno and Jurgis particularly and it's unfair to ask you to answer all this but there was also a panel on Monday at organizing platform workers where we heard about successful organizing in China, in Brazil, in the United Kingdom, which is not subject to EU directives since

490
01:38:02.000 --> 01:38:18.000
Brexit and Argentina and Chile. So I'm sort of coming away from ISA feeling like, oh my god, you know, we've gone from How can these workers organize to they're organising everywhere?

491
01:38:18.000 --> 01:38:35.000
And I wanted to ask is is what is what's happening that People are sort of so amazed that organizing is happening that they're sort of saying, wow, organizing is happening and yet it's not like really huge amounts of success.

492
01:38:35.000 --> 01:38:52.000
Or are we actually seeing that this sector that we thought was going to be very difficult to organize and atomized is actually organizing itself in a way that even sectors where there are well-defined employees have not succeeded in doing in a lot of these countries.

493
01:38:52.000 --> 01:39:04.000
And so I'm wondering how to view your presentations, where on that spectrum does it actually fall?

494
01:39:04.000 --> 01:39:11.000
Yeah, I think this is a question addressed to a lot of your presenters. So who wants to answer first?

495
01:39:11.000 --> 01:39:14.000
Okay.

496
01:39:14.000 --> 01:39:18.000
Okay,

497
01:39:18.000 --> 01:39:37.000
Look, Chris, thank you very much for the challenging question. I mean after our study that took us 3 to 4 years We come up with some forms of organization obviously.

498
01:39:37.000 --> 01:39:48.000
But that against the landscape. That's not, relevant. It could have, it could be relevant in the future to understand it.

499
01:39:48.000 --> 01:39:57.000
That's why, that is actually gonna bring some ideas and sharing them. But, no, immunization rates.

500
01:39:57.000 --> 01:40:03.000
Going down, rank and file, very difficult.

501
01:40:03.000 --> 01:40:14.000
In many countries the trade unions are trying to be more political instead of Well, it's a bit of a depressing story.

502
01:40:14.000 --> 01:40:23.000
But, but I want to say, okay, there's a huge, there's at least transformation in the world of work happening.

503
01:40:23.000 --> 01:40:31.000
And it seems to be bigger than we actually thought in 2,019. And there are some responses already.

504
01:40:31.000 --> 01:40:53.000
And the the first one actually was Iggy Metal who hired someone from your state. And I started started this campaign to see how could this His work has been Yeah, you know be mobilized and so on and things are growing but yeah let's keep it real.

505
01:40:53.000 --> 01:41:00.000
Let's. Jo.

506
01:41:00.000 --> 01:41:09.000
Yours, are you like to answer?

507
01:41:09.000 --> 01:41:18.000
Maybe, despite I'm the chair, I can add an answer to, at least with regard to the delivery riders.

508
01:41:18.000 --> 01:41:31.000
He has one strategy of the company that's very difficult to combat and that it's is a particular delivery has retreated from all the European countries where they have found workers resistance.

509
01:41:31.000 --> 01:41:53.000
For instance, Belgium and Germany. So it's something like this is a scheme for the brokers because they receive new companies or in Germany the other large company, Fedora, has been sold to And the Dutch company That's also.

510
01:41:53.000 --> 01:42:22.000
Well, it's now called Lefarando. They are the riders I'm proud, but they have to restart new organising these riders and to set up Brooks Councils and now they a fight into get a reproductive bargaining for these riders.

511
01:42:22.000 --> 01:42:24.000
The light reply.

512
01:42:24.000 --> 01:42:26.000
Yeah, please.

513
01:42:26.000 --> 01:42:37.000
Okay, well, Chris, thank you for your question. It's really, I was very legalistic here, but I started studying this topic by starting to study all the protests that were taking place and all the workers resistance.

514
01:42:37.000 --> 01:42:52.000
All over and during this panel we mentioned the Nordic countries that managed for some companies to establish sectoral level collective bargaining.

515
01:42:52.000 --> 01:43:04.000
Somebody mentioned Amsterdam. Stefan just mentioned works Council in Germany. So these are 3 of the things going on.

516
01:43:04.000 --> 01:43:09.000
The writers law that was had an enormous impact at the EU level also came after a huge protest and organization.

517
01:43:09.000 --> 01:43:27.000
By, in Catalonia not notably. And I really appreciated new Nuno Nuno's interpretation about this association trade union type of strategies that we see emerging.

518
01:43:27.000 --> 01:43:41.000
We see a different a different organization of the workers taking place. At the national level and the legal systems just react to it.

519
01:43:41.000 --> 01:43:54.000
And the reaction has been very different. Some of these companies have been convicted in France notably before the law changed etc.

520
01:43:54.000 --> 01:44:03.000
For misclassifying their workers so at some point we're gonna see a new maybe as soon as.

521
01:44:03.000 --> 01:44:18.000
So at some point we're gonna see a new maybe as no associative model emerging. I previously worked on professional workers.

522
01:44:18.000 --> 01:44:32.000
Different but somewhat similar problems and issues about collective identities and organization, etc. But anyway, I, to your question.

523
01:44:32.000 --> 01:44:46.000
Yeah, thank you, Zabel. We have 5 min left so Don't hesitate to comment or ask a question.

524
01:44:46.000 --> 01:44:54.000
Okay. All right. And lastly we just want to leave early. I did a question for Chris.

525
01:44:54.000 --> 01:45:02.000
Given of the interviewees who said there was lots of tech glitches and these things aren't necessarily working that well.

526
01:45:02.000 --> 01:45:20.000
I mean, are they actually? Cost effective for the companies or they and if not are they just keeping them in place because they think they eventually will be or because they help keep workers in their place or do you think they're going to, anyway, how, in other words, how, How many glitches are there?

527
01:45:20.000 --> 01:45:32.000
Is the technology still overall working enough? The companies are going to keep using it. Or not

528
01:45:32.000 --> 01:45:48.000
Well, the first thing to say is And so, John loses money in every delivery. I mean, well, that's not really true because the alternative for Amazon is not buying from his store but store base retailers lose money on every delivery.

529
01:45:48.000 --> 01:45:54.000
And you know, what you hear in the trade shows is this is table stakes. Consumers expect it.

530
01:45:54.000 --> 01:45:59.000
We have to provide it. We're losing money doing it. We're trying to figure out how to actually make.

531
01:45:59.000 --> 01:46:07.000
So aside from glitches, even the to actually make. So aside from glitches, even the technology working as it's expected to is a money loser.

532
01:46:07.000 --> 01:46:22.000
But So the question whether that is cost effective is in some ways the glitches are the least of it but beyond that I think the answer I'd have to say is I don't know.

533
01:46:22.000 --> 01:46:32.000
We're trying to figure that out.

534
01:46:32.000 --> 01:46:59.000
So there seems to be no other Answer the open or no no no I think everybody for this very intense and inviting discussion and for all the presentations that were focused and I think in this session we had really Oh, read a really common topic.

535
01:46:59.000 --> 01:47:09.000
It's science platform economy and So I'm happy that we have set up this session at that we have so good.

536
01:47:09.000 --> 01:47:22.000
Proposals for the sessions and I wish everybody a nice evening and hope to see some of you at the firewall party, yeah.

537
01:47:22.000 --> 01:47:26.000
Okay.

538
01:47:26.000 --> 01:47:28.000
Maybe