R I S K A N D S O L I D A R I T Y A M O N G D E L I V E R O O R I D E R S I N E D I N B U R G H

D R . K A R E N G R E G O R Y

K . G R E G O R Y @ E D. A C . U K

@ C L A U D I A K I N C A I D

INTEREST IN THE GIG ECONOMY

• Precarious work, under employment, and

unemployment

• Entrepreneurial responses to precarity

• Resilience to crisis: New networks, new opportunities?

• What of solidarity or mutual aid?

RESEARCH CONTEXT

• Sharing or “gig” economy research taking place in London and New York.

• Less known about how sharing economy is adopted in smaller cities in UK

and US. Some research coming from Australia.

• Legal battles & legal challenges tend to dominate the narrative: Uber,

Deliveroo, Airbnb. New worker categories needed?

• Interesting work on new forms of organizing via tech (Woodcock, Irani)

• We don’t see the whole worker, we see “new forms of work”, “future of

work.” Is this correct?

– Healy, J. Nicholson, D. and Pekarek, A. 2017. “Should We Take the Gig Economy Seriously?”

Labour and Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work. 27(3): 232-248.

“NAILING JELLY”

• Use of online platforms for managing work grew exponentially in the decade following the 2007-8 financial crisis.

• Research to date has focused on particular platforms.

• “Crowd work cannot be distinguished precisely from other forms of work but forms part of a continuum of casual, on-call, temporary or other forms of contingent work.”

• Gender: “Crowd workers are relatively evenly balanced between men and women and are more likely to be in younger age-groups, although crowd work can be found in all life stages.”

• Flexibility is prized, but there are numerous risks. Health, overwork, underwork, pay.

– Huws, U., Spencer, N.. Syrdal, D. and Holts, K. 2017 “Work in the European Gig

Economy: Research results from the UK, Sweden, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy.” FEPS.

DELIVEROO IN UK: EDINBURGH?• Deliveroo is estimated to have at least 20,000 drivers and cyclists across

84 cities in 12 countries. In 2016: Deliveroo (Guardian, 2017) claimed to

have “3,000 riders in the UK – a number that is rising weekly.”

• Deliveroo riders have community. Offline meeting space. Riders know one

another. Highly visible in the city

• Online forums, social media, and What’s App foster relationships and

communication

• Cycling experience is common among individuals I have met.

• Students and younger workers, who prize ”fitness” and “flexibility.”

• The app is central to the work experience. Yet, the backend of Deliveroo is

relatively obscured from workers.

• Worker organizing is happening here (and throughout UK: Leeds,

Nottingham, Brighton for example) Media here?

WHY THIS STUDY?

• To take a ”whole worker” (McAlevey 2014) approach to understanding

platform labor.

• To fill in gaps in understanding of who works in the gig economy and

why, as well as the pathways afforded (or delimited) by this work.

• To better understand the nature of risks posed by this work.

• To understand what happens when the work “goes wrong”, particularly

for full-time workers.

RISK & SOLIDARITY

• Defining risk: safety, insecurity, costs, investment, time, data privacy.

• Seeing risk beyond work: health, opportunities, financial security,

time/work balance, education, mobility, data shadows?

• Understanding how risk is differently experienced by part-time and full-

time workers, as well as specific to student workers.

• Understanding how community and relations buffer (if at all) risk. What

is relationship between worker organizing and mutual aid?

• How is solidarity conceptualized among workers?

• If mutual aid projects exist, what are they?

METHODS AND DATA

• Qualitative work:

– Survey deployed via social media and in worker forums (December

2017- January 2018) via Deliveroo contacts.

– In-depth interviews (January 2018-March 2018)

– Embodied Ethnography & participant observation (March 2018-April

2018)

OTHER FORMS OF DATA

• Social media data: Youtube videos made by workers (and Deliveroo);

Twitter stream and hashtags; Facebook posts (ethics here.)

• Worker forums & student forums (ethics and access here)

• Worker Data (during embodied ethnography) & GPS data (how does

Deliveroo understand Edinburgh?; Frank “a living entity of its own.”)

• Worker diaries?

• Media narratives & online accounts (how is media narrative shaping

worker consciousness?)

THE STATUS OF PROPAGANDA?

• Worker experience videos?

• Journalistic accounts, first-person accounts

• Documentaries

• Digital media ecology (brand building, networking)

encouraging reporting on self employment.

”It isn’t the no-hope “McJob” that it’s often portrayed as by its detractors. You can work full-time and earn a living at it, and many do. But, as with many zero-hours contract jobs – which courier work is –there is a downside. I’ll get to that later.

The job gives you a front-row view of Nottingham’s restaurant scene and street life; you see the moods of the city change from morning until night. Personally, I get a thrill out of locking horns with the traffic at afternoon rush hour and still making a quick delivery. Weekend evenings are the worst times; not for deliveries, since these are peak times, but for rowdy crowds and drinkers spilling out of the pubs. You need a thick skin for this job. And anyway, if you can’t ride a bike uphill and down dale with a giant box on your back, in the rain, for several hours a day, what can you do? It’s training for life.”

https://www.leftlion.co.uk/read/2017/december/a-food-courier-in-notts#.WiPEOgci4BM.twitter