Avenues for social empowerment: the cooperative model for app-based food delivery and beyond

Abstract

Digital labour platforms have played a major role in organising the logistical process of connecting consumers, clients and suppliers with workers. Platforms have structured food delivery services as a market, with defined players, prices and dynamics. Although it varies depending on geopolitics and countries’ regulatory frameworks, platform workers generally lack access to minimum wages and social protections. Against this backdrop, the cooperative model and principles have inspired alternatives to the precariousness and control that platforms impose. This chapter provides an exploratory analysis of cooperatives in app-based food delivery and beyond, where they have developed alongside other kinds of collective organisation building, such as traditional unionism and new forms of collective representation. Based on a comparative research design, the chapter focuses on six cases in western Europe and the Americas, with the aim of contributing to mapping the pathways to workers’ social empowerment in app-based food delivery.