COGONU · COntesting GOvernance by NUmbers: The Mobilizations of Food Delivery Couriers across Europe in Time of the Pandemic

COntesting GOvernance by NUmbers: The Mobilizations of Food Delivery Couriers across Europe in Time of the Pandemic

The rise of digital labour and the platform economy has triggered a burgeoning public interest in the topic of technological innovation in the workplace. However, only a few research projects have explored the conditions of workers. Even less attention has been paid to the collective actions of workers affected by these changes. The research project ‘COntesting GOvernance by NUmbers: The Mobilizations of Food Delivery Couriers across Europe in Time of the Pandemic (COGONU)’ has been the first study aimed to fill this gap by exploring the forms of organising, action repertoire, and strategies that food delivery couriers have devised to demand better working conditions. These mobilisations are puzzling, as they have arisen in circumstances normally associated with non-mobilisation, namely: a) the presence of technological and organisational innovation; b) a limited presence of traditional trade union organising. However, militant forms of worker mobilisation have recently emerged across Europe, and especially in the platform economy, exhibiting novel forms of organisation and action repertoires. COGONU investigated the mobilisations of these workers in two European countries, Ireland and Italy, before and during the Covid crisis to make sense of their variation in terms of action repertoire, forms of organising, alliance building, and target, and to understand the dynamics of contention, their political strategies, and policy outcomes. I concluded my action by co-organising with my mentor, Prof. Roland Erne, an international workshop (29 June – 1 July 2023) at the host institution University College Dublin, titled 'Governance by Numbers and its Discontents' (https://www.erc-europeanunions.eu/workshop-governance-by-numbers-and-its-discontents/). There I presented the results of my research action and discussed them with colleagues and experts in the field of labour politics. This research action is relevant not only for economic sociology and industrial relations, but also for the future of democracy. Indeed, the technological transformations occurring in platform economy run in parallel with the innovations occurring in the forms of governance at the societal level, moving from a model of government guided by law to a new one guided by numbers, where rules are enforced by performance indicators. This logic is indeed not only used by multinational corporations but also by political institutions. One example is the EU’s New Economic Governance (NEG) that is designed to control national budgets and economic policies by using key performance indicators without creating a federal political organisation. Another example is the use of key performance indicators to assess research and teaching in todays’ universities. Therefore, the study of couriers’ contestation of governance by numbers in their own companies also helps us to better understand the challenges to this new form of governance elsewhere.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз