Delivery platform workers during COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina: deepened precarity and workers? response in a context of epidemiological crisis

ELBERT, RODOLFO; NEGRI, SOFIA

Conferencia; 15th Global Labour University Conference Building a Post-Pandemic World of Work with Social Justice; 2022

Global Labour University

The Covid-19 pandemic hit Argentina in the first months of 2020 and had a tremendous impact in the social and economic reality of a country that was already undergoing a prolonged economic crisis. In this context, the government suspended all non-essential economic activities and displayed certain social policies to contain the living wage of workers in paralyzed sectors. Delivery platforms such as Rappi, Uberteats, Glovo and Pedidos Ya were excluded from this suspension; so delivery workers continued with their jobs in a context of high epidemiological risk. In this context, our previous research shows that companies took advantage of the new situation and deepened precarity of work in the sector. Workers did not receive salary raises to keep up with inflation. Furthermore, workers did not receive enough hygienic care materials in order to continue their work under safe conditions. How did the workers? movement respond to these new circumstances? Did workers develop new organizing strategies during the pandemic? In this article we focus on delivery platform workers. This paper focuses on the work and organizing experience of delivery platform workers during the hardest part of the first year of the pandemic in Buenos Aires (Argentina). In the first part of the paper, we focus on the emotions and strategies of individual workers to confront to their new : What were the fears of workers once they had to start working under the new circumstances? What individual strategies did they develop in order to adapt to the new working conditions? In the second part of the paper, we analyze the collective strategies of workers in order to confront the deepened precarity of their situation. In our fieldwork, we have found that during the pandemic there was an organizing boost in the sector, translated into new organizations, more geographic coverage and new type of strategies. In particular, we focus on the online organizing of workers, following the social media accounts of activists and organizations during this period of time. Our methodological strategy combines in depth interviews with workers with the analysis of online dynamics of protests with the software R.