From control to mobilization. The struggles of the riders and logistics porters in Italy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2421-2695/11258Keywords:
labour process theory, logistics, platform economy, social movements, workers’ capabilities, worker mobilizationsAbstract
Following years of declining labour activism, militant forms of worker mobilization have recently emerged in the Italian platform economy and logistics sector, exhibiting novel forms of organisation and action repertoires. This paper investigates two cases which have been ongoing since 2011, namely mobilizations by logistics porters and food delivery couriers. Both cases seem puzzling since workers have mobilized under circumstances normally associated with non-mobilization, meaning a workplace characterized by technological innovation and by absent or ineffective traditional labour unions. Why and how have these mobilizations occurred? We argue that these workers successfully overcame such circumstances by relying on resources and opportunities related to their workplace and external to it, which they have been able to create and develop over several years. We gathered data from semi-structured interviews with workers, union representatives, lawyers, managers and participated at political meetings, strikes, and protest events in four Italian cities between 2018 and 2019.References
Ackroyd S., Thompson P., Organizational Misbehaviour, Sage Publications, 1999.
Alimahomed-Wilson J., Ness I. (Eds.). Choke points: Logistics workers disrupting the global supply chain, Pluto Press, 2018.
Alquati R., Camminando per Realizzare un Sogno Comune, Velleità Alternative, 1994.
Anwar M. A., Graham M., Hidden transcripts of the gig economy: Labour agency and the new art of resistance among African gig workers in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2019.
Archer M., Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Atzeni M., Workplace Conflict. Mobilization and Solidarity in Argentina, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Atzeni M., Beyond Trade Union’ Strategy? The Social Construction of Precarious Workers Organizing in the City of Buenos Aires in Labor History, 2016, 57 (2), 193-214.
Benvegnù C. - Cuppini N., Struggles and grassroots organising in an extended European choke poin in Choke points: Logistics workers disrupting the global supply chain (Eds. J. Alimahomed-Wilson & I. Ness), Pluto Press, 230-242.
Braverman, H, Labour and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century, Monthly Review Press, 1974.
Bologna S. - Curi S., Relazioni industriali e servizi di logistica: Uno studio preliminare in DLRI, 2019, 161 (1), 125-156.
Briziarelli M., Spatial politics in the digital realm: The logistics/precarity dialectics and Deliveroo’s tertiary space struggles in Cultural Studies, 2019, 33 (5), 823-840.
Caruso L., Chesta R., Cini L., Le nuove mobilitazioni dei lavoratori nel capitalismo digitale: una comparazione tra i ciclo-fattorini della consegna di cibo e i corrieri di Amazon nel caso italiano in Economia e Società Regionale, 2019, 1, 61-78.
Cini L., The Contentious Politics of Higher Education. Struggles and Power Relations within Italian and English Universities, Routledge, 2019.
Cini L., Tassinari, A., On Struggles in Logistics: Notes for militant labor activism from the Italian experience, in Notes from Below, 2018, https://notesfrombelow.org/article/struggles-logistics-notes-militant-labor-activism.
Cillo R., Pradella L., New immigrant struggles in Italy’s logistics industry, in Comparative European Politics, 2018, Vol. 16, 1, 67–84.
Collinson D., Ackroyd S., Resistance, Misbehavior, and Dissent, in Ackroyd S., Batt R., Thompson P., Tolbert P. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Work and Organization, 2006, 306-321.
della Porta D., Cini L., Guzman Concha C., Contesting Higher Education. Student Movements against Neoliberal Universities, Bristol University Press, 2020.
della Porta D., Diani M., Social Movements: An Introduction, Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.
della Porta D., Keating M. (Eds.), Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A Pluralist Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Edwards P, Ramirez P., When Should Workers Embrace or Resist New Technology? New Technology, Work and Employment, 2016, 31 (2): 99-113. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12067.
Eisenhardt K., Building Theories from Case Study Research in The Academy of Management Review, 1989, 14 (4), 532-550.
Fantasia R., Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary American Workers, University of California Press, 1988.
Frege C., Kelly, J. (Eds.), Varieties of Unionism. Strategies for Union Revitalization in a Globalizing Economy, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Gandini A., Labour Process Theory and the Gig Economy in Human Relations, 2018, (Online First): 1-18. DOI: 10.1177/0018726718790002.
Hall R., Renewing and Revising the Engagement between Labour Process Theory and Technology in Thompson P., and C. Smith (Eds.), Working Life. Renewing Labour Process Analysis, Palgrave MacMillan, 2010, 150-181.
Katz, C., Growing up global. Economic restructuring and children’s everyday lives, University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
Kelly J., Rethinking Industrial Relations. Mobilization, Collectivism and Long Waves, Routledge, 1998.
Levesque C., Murray G., Understanding union power: resources and capabilities for renewing union capacity in Transfer, 2010, 16 (3), 333-350.
Massarelli F., Scarichiamo i padroni. Lo sciopero dei facchini a Bologna, Agenzia X, 2014.
Mathers A., Upchurch M., Taylor G, Social Movement Theory and Trade Union Organising in Grote J. - Wagemann, C. (Eds.), Social Movements and Organized Labour. Passions and Interests, Routledge, 2018, 22-42.
Polletta F., It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics, Chicago University Press, 2006.
Quondamatteo N., Non per noi ma per tutti. La lotta dei riders e il futuro del mondo del lavoro, Asterios, 2019.
Rydzik A., Anitha S., Conceptualising the agency of migrant women workers: Resilience, reworking and resistance in Work, Employment and Society, 2019, 0950017019881939.
Sacchetto D., Striking against cooperatives: Migrants lead the way in Global Dialogue, 2015, 5 (4). http://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/striking-against-cooperatives-migrants-lead-the-way/
Sen A., Elements of a Theory of Human Rights, in Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2004, 32 (4): 315-356.
Silver B., Theorising the working class in twenty-first century global capitalism, in Workers and labour in a globalised capitalism (Ed. M. Atzeni), Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 46-69.
Srnicek N., Platform Capitalism, Polity Press, 2017.
Tassinari A., Maccarrone V., Riders on the Storm. Workplace Solidarity among Gig Economy Couriers in Italy and the UK in Work, Employment and Society, 2019, (Online First): 1-20. DOI: 10.1177/0950017019862954.
Thompson P., The capitalist labour process: Concepts and connections, in Capital & Class, 2010, 34 (1): 7-14.
Veen A., Barratt T., Goods C., Platform-Capital’s ‘App-etite’ for Control: A Labour Process Analysis of Food-Delivery Work in Australia. Work, Employment and Society, 2019 (Online First): 1-19. DOI: 10.1177/0950017019836911.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Lorenzo Cini, Bartek Goldmann
Copyrights and publishing rights of all the texts on this journal belong to the respective authors without restrictions.
This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (full legal code).
See also our Open Access Policy.
