Uberization in the world of work poses challenges to the left – 10/08/2023 – Power

The disruption in the world of work caused by the so-called uberization of the economy increases the challenge for the left to gain followers and block the advance of the right.

Traditionally a driving force for parties like the PT, the collective mobilization of workers comes up against the characteristics inherent to platform work — dispersed, mediated by algorithms and combined with social networks, a field in which the right has an advantage.

The change also further weakens unions, the basis of traditional left-wing parties, and calls into question, for some workers, support for the distribution of social benefits.

The phenomenon has been the target of recent academic research that maps the political implications of the topic.

One of them is coordinated by Brazilian anthropologist Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, director of the digital economy and political extremism laboratory at University College Dublin, in Ireland.

She had funding approved last year by the European Research Council to analyze the link between authoritarianism in politics and job insecurity in Brazil, India and the Philippines.

The hypothesis is that, in these countries, characteristics inherent to the platforms, such as isolation and competition, favor individualism and identification with the right.

The pilot phase of the research already points in this direction, says the professor. Her group analyzes the profile of people who started online businesses in Brazil. According to her, the tendency is that, as they start following influencers, these people end up falling into Bolsonarista networks.

Other work has already demonstrated that social media algorithms, where these entrepreneurs spend hours of the day, drive far-right publications.

The political implications of the so-called Uberization of the economy are a topic of research in other countries as well.

Two factors that make identification as a class difficult for the collective mobilization of application workers are listed by researchers Giedo Jansen, from the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and Paul Jonker-Hoffrén, from the University of Tampere, in Finland, in the book “Platform Economy Puzzles” (platform economy puzzles, in Portuguese), from 2021.

The first is the competition induced by the game logic, or gamification, on part of the platforms. It would be the competition for the stars given by passengers or the privilege for those who accept more rides, for example.

The second would be the spatial dispersion of workers, which would make it difficult to form a bond of solidarity and support for left-wing collectivist policies.

They also point out the difficulty for social democratic parties, identified with the left in much of Europe, to deal with these precarious workers without abandoning their base of formal workers who seek the protection of employment and existing labor rights.

The issue is raised in Brazil, where formal registration is not a consensual demand among application workers.

“It’s not that they don’t want the CLT, they don’t want bad jobs”, says the anthropologist.

A member of the Entregadors Unidos pela Base movement, Renato Assad, 31, follows the same line. Delivery drivers who defend autonomy, he says, don’t want to earn a low minimum wage to spend eight hours at their boss’s disposal.

If the minimum were higher, there wouldn’t be this dilemma, he says. Without this, “the worker prefers to exploit himself to earn more.”

Graduated from USP in geography, he alternates deliveries on a motorcycle with private classes. Having been traveling around the city for four years, he states that the only politician who has ever approached the category was Guilherme Boulos (PSOL), during the campaign for mayor in 2020.

But he says he is disappointed with the psolist’s decision to hire as a marketer the agency advertiser who worked to demobilize the strike of application workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report by Agência Pública.

The platformization of work is also a focus of the PT.

The Perseu Abramo Foundation, linked to the party, conducts quantitative and qualitative research on work on applications and the impact on political culture.

Regulation

A campaign commitment by President Lula (PT), regulation of the segment is the subject of a group in the Ministry of Labor and Employment.

An alternative to regulation is an agreement between companies and the category, mediated by the ministry, around points such as minimum remuneration, working hours and protection in case of illness.

It’s much less than would be necessary, says Nicolas Souza Santos, 35, member of the National Alliance of App Delivery Workers, which brings together entities representing the category across the country.

He defends the inclusion of other points in the regulation, such as the transparency of algorithms and workload.

Affiliated to the PDT, he says he regrets that his party abandoned the discussion about the category’s employment relationship.

“We are not against freelancers, but the platforms are. They time the time we have to arrive, they tell us who the customer is and what price we can charge.”

He recognizes, however, that the demand for employment causes divisions in the category, which he attributes to misinformation — since it would be possible, for example, to be employed as an hourly worker.

Mobilizing colleagues, in fact, is a daily challenge, according to Nicolas. Dispersed throughout the cities, they often communicate via WhatsApp and Telegram groups, in which rule number 1 is not to talk about politics to avoid generating controversy.

From his perspective, being part of this so-called new economy is not an advantage for those who need collective mobilization. “We’re not the metalworkers,” he says. “We were born practically the day before yesterday.”