At what price? Labour politics and calculative power struggles in on-demand food delivery
Open accessAbstract
This article asks what can be gained by making calculability a pivotal demand for wage politics in gig economies characterised by dynamic fee structures. It examines how a small group of Berlin-based food delivery workers attempted to challenge Deliveroo's market power by building their own makeshift calculative equipment to help them ‘reverse engineer’ the company's fee pricing algorithm. It then documents the difficulties these ‘riders’ experienced when attempting to translate their fight for calculable earnings into a more comprehensive labour politics. Finally, the article addresses the limits of market-based struggles over calculative power, against the background of a still pervasive ‘platform exceptionalism’: a socio-legal imaginary that treats platform companies as unique business entities, enabling them to engage in regulatory arbitrage while contractually enforcing the subordination and rightlessness of gig workers.
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Information on how platforms' payment algorithms operate is used to prevent gig workers from collectivizing.
“Information on how platforms’ payment algorithms operate, for instance, is used to prevent gig workers from collectivizing as detailed by Van Doorn (2020) in his study of Berlin-based delivery workers.”
From Algorithmic management in a work context (2021) · cites this paper as Van Doorn (2020)
Cites
An introduction to market devices
Muniesa, F., Millo, Y., & Callon, M. (2007) · The Sociological Review · doi:10.1111/j.1467-954x.2007.00727.x · Cited by 795 · see citing works
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Algorithmic management in a work context
Jarrahi, M. H., Newlands, G., Lee, M. K., Wolf, C. T., Kinder, E., & Sutherland, W. (2021) · Big Data & Society · doi:10.1177/20539517211020332 · Cited by 532 · see citing works
“Algorithm aversion refers to people’s hesitance to use algorithmic results, usually after observing imperfect performance by algorithms; this can even occur in situations where the algorithm may outperform humans in certain accuracy measures (Dietvorst et al., 2016; Prahl and Van Swol, 2017).”
BackgroundInfluentialAnthropotropism: Searching for Recognition in the Scandinavian Gig Economy
Newlands, G. (2022) · Sociology · doi:10.1177/00380385211063362 · Cited by 39 · see citing works
- Authors
- Doorn, N. V.
- Affiliations
- University of Amsterdam (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Doorn, Niels van
- ORCID
- Doorn, Niels van
- Venue
- Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation
- Publisher
- Pluto Journals
- Published
- 2020-01-01
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 1745-641X (ISSN-L)
- 1745-6428
- OpenAlex
- W3043424711
- Cited by
- 96
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 11
- FWCI
- 16.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Work Organisation Labour & Globalisation (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Economy and Work Transformation
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Industrial relations › Legal and Labor Studies
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Employment, Labor, and Gender Studies
- Keywords
- gig economy, food delivery workers, Deliveroo, computability, algorithmic pricing, dynamic pricing, labor politics, platform regulation, regulatory arbitrage, Berlin
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