Latent Conflict, Invisible Organisation: Everyday Struggles in Platform Labour

Abstract

 The article looks at everyday practices of platform workers and their micro-conflicts with management or customers, which are often disregarded in platform labour literature. Based on empirical research in Berlin, we describe small-scale forms of opposition, conflict and resistance, which often constitute crucial pre-conditions for larger forms of collective action. The article analyses such practices on the platforms Uber, Deliveroo and Helpling. For each platform, we first analyze individual practices (tricking algorithmic management, circumventing regulation) and in a second step describe the more collective approaches (collective blacklisting, algorithm tinkering) arising from it. The article closes with some conclusions and perspectives that can be drawn from these phenomena.