How, where and why do platform workers protest?
Platform work, exemplified by firms like Uber and Deliveroo, attracts seemingly endless discussion; journalistic, political, and sociological. Policy debates generally associate platforms with the so-called “gig economy” which is sometimes claimed to be reshaping labour markets worldwide. Views on it are often polarised. Some celebrate these firms as paragons of flexibility and entrepreneurialism. Others see them as hyper-casualised bogus self-employment, which “disrupts” more secure jobs, and masks new forms of domination under the rhetoric of independence.

Yet the tone of these debates can be misleading, especially when set in international and historical context. Viewed from many countries, especially in the Global South, criticising platform jobs as a new form of casualised work makes little sense, since the informal economy has long been dominant anyway. In addition, even where they are (controversially) classified as self-employed, platform workers make use of the same methods workers always have to improve their situation: namely, through collective protest.

There are by now numerous studies examining platform labour protest in many different countries. Indeed, the emergence of small insurgent unions, and other grassroots campaigning groups which represent platform workers, is one of the most important industrial relations stories of recent years, with genuinely global significance.

But this scholarly research also has important limitations. Much of it is based on small-scale qualitative case studies, examining specific campaigns or specific communities of platform workers. These studies offer important lessons: they show how platform worker protest is emerging more or less wherever platform firms operate, even in authoritarian societies; how platform workers are developing their own innovative organizing tactics; and how this poses a complex challenge for established trade unions who must negotiate new relationships both with platform firms and insurgent platform worker unions. Yet they don’t enable us to identify systematic patterns in how platform worker protest differs across industries and countries. This is where our work comes in.

The Leeds Index of Platform Labour Protest
Our research is unique because it examines the current wave of platform labour unrest in global, quantitative, perspective. Through the Leeds Index of Platform Labour Protest, a database which maps over 2000 instances of platform labour protest from across the world, we have been able to discern emerging global patterns.

Our work shows how, as protest has surged rapidly across all regions of the world, two major and distinct models of platform labour unrest can be identified. We want to describe and analyse these models. We draw on Beverley Silver’s distinction between “Marx-type” and “Polanyi-type” labour unrest. For Silver, “Marx-type” labour unrest describes the emergence of new solidarities among newly-formed working classes, emerging as industries develop in new places. “Polanyi-type” labour unrest describes the struggles of existing working classes in response to their “unmaking” by global competition, as existing regulations and social institutions are “disrupted”.

We apply this distinction to the global wave of platform labour unrest. We also add new variables, showing how each model is associated with different types of grievance, different types of organisations, and different organising strategies. We argue that, in the platform context, “Marx-type” protest resembles what we call “distributive protest”, and “Polanyi-type” protest resembles what we call “regulatory protest”.

In regulatory protest, platform workers seek to resist the decline of protective social institutions. For example, platform workers might demand the rights associated with employee status (such as paid leave and protections against dismissal or discrimination). These kinds of protest more often involve established trade unions, and more legalistic methods like launching court cases. These protests are more common in countries where such protective systems are more firmly-established, notably Europe and North America.

In distributive protests, platform workers seek to get more of the value they create. Normally, this means protesting for higher pay, but may also involve pay-related issues (like who has to pay for equipment and repair costs). These kinds of protests more often involve grassroots unions, often more politically radical but with fewer resources, or even informal groups of workers without any union involvement at all. It is also more likely to involve strike action and street protest.

The nature of the job also makes a difference. Protest by ride hailing workers is more likely to be “regulatory” than protest by grocery delivery workers. This may be because the latter has emerged as a “new” occupation while the former has entered markets as a “disruption” of the existing taxi firm business model.

Generally, distributive protest is more common globally than regulatory protest, and pay is by far the most common motivation for protest in every region. Media reporting which portrays platform worker protest through the lens of legal wrangling over employment status therefore misses this much bigger picture.

Our research also reflects on the sizeable number of mixed cases which do not fit these profiles: it may be that as we track these trends over time, we see new models coalescing. For example, one important aspect has been, particularly in Latin America, prominent platform workers’ movements demanding improved safety for platform workers in the face of street crime and (especially during lockdowns) Covid exposure. The Leeds Index hopes to capture these evolutions in real time.

Ultimately, in developing the Index and writing about its findings, we want to improve sociological understandings of how, where and why platform workers protest. What are the drivers of, and barriers to, solidarity, and how are platform workers’ movements remaking the world of work? But more practically, we also hope the Leeds Index will become a resource for trade unionists who seek to grapple with platform companies.

Charles Umney, Mark Stuart, Ioulia Bessa, Simon Joyce, Denis Neumann and Vera Trappmann (University of Leeds) are the winners of this year’s SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence (Work, Employment & Society journal) for their paper, Platform Labour Unrest in a Global Perspective: How, Where and Why Do Platform Workers Protest?