Technological change and flexibility in the labor market. The case of delivery workers on digital platforms

Abstract

Technological change has proven to be a necessary condition for promoting a country’s economic and social development. However, there is currently evidence of asymmetries in its impacts, with advances in technologies that have promoted a reconversion of the modes of capital-labor relations. The case analyzed in this research is about an emerging sector in the labor market, namely platform delivery drivers, who have arrived to stay and have been made possible under the paradigm of platform capitalism. In particular, the way in which labor relations occur—between the platform, the delivery worker, and the customer—makes it a job without clear boundaries. Far from improving workers’ living conditions, it reveals a reality where labor vulnerability is accentuated and generated under a contradictory discourse in which everyone feels like an “entrepreneur” or “their own boss,” concealing the informality and asymmetrical relationships in the labor market. The case study is based in the city of Paraná, Entre Ríos, Argentina, where we surveyed 130 workers in the sector, seeking to understand their employment situation in the context of depersonalization as workers in relation to the company where they work.