Delivery Platform Workers during covid-19 Pandemic in the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina): Deepened Precarity and Workers’ Response in a Context of Epidemiological Crisis

ELBERT, RODOLFO; NEGRI, SOFIA

Journal of Labor and Society

Brill

Año: 2021 p. 1 - 25

2667-3657

The Covid-19 pandemic took the world by surprise in early 2020. By March 2020, many countries had taken drastic measures to contain the virus. In Argentina, on March 20, the government decreed the social, preventive and compulsory isolation (ASPO), which suspended most economic activities. Delivery platforms were excluded from this suspension; so, delivery workers continued with their jobs in a context of high epidemiological risk. In this article, we analyze the work and organizing experiences of these workers during the pandemic, from March 20 to July 1 of 2020. First, we look at the consequences of job precarity in the platform sector during the pandemic, both in terms of health and safety and in terms of income and work continuity in the event of illness. Second, we analyze workers? perceptions regarding the tasks they performed and the risk they faced. Finally, we study conflict dynamics between companies and workers to negotiate working conditions under the new circumstances. We analysed semi-structured interviews with workers and activists conducted by phone and WhatsApp during the ASPO and supplemented them with secondary statistical information about their working condition before the pandemic and the analysis of documents published by different workers? organizations.