 The Maison des livreurs de Bordeaux: A social entrepreneur, bastion of resistance to platform capitalismLa Maison des livreurs de Bordeaux: Un entrepreneur social, bastion de la résistance au capitalisme de plateformesAbdourahmane Ndiaye () and
Sophie Boutillier ()
Post-Print from HAL Abstract: For over a decade, we have witnessed the undeniable dominance of the GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) over the global economy. These five companies now rank among the top seven global market capitalizations, while Uber Technologies, another player in platform capitalism, which is also our subject of study, paradoxically, since its creation in 2000, only recorded a positive result in 2013, 13 years later. Digital platforms, one of the main vehicles of platform capitalism, currently contribute significantly to job creation. Their contribution continues on an upward trend (Forissier et al., 2020; Boutillier, 2020). Although salaried employment gradually became the dominant form of employment in the 20th century, since the beginning of the third millennium, however, we have witnessed a shift in this configuration, even if salaried employment remains dominant in industrial countries in Europe and the United States (Leriche, 2016). The wage-earning society, thanks to social struggles, has made salaried employment a stable and protected status (Castel, 1995). However, it is now being challenged by the development of the process of what is commonly called the "Uberization" of the economy (Benavant, 2016; Cette, 2017; Evans, 2017; Hill, 2015; Jacquet, Leclercq, 2016; Linhart, 2015; Veltz, 2017), in which the boundaries between salaried employment and self-employment are increasingly blurred (Forissier et al., 2020). This question of the development of digital platforms is part of a process of profound transformation of the economic and social organization, which is perceived by the respective share of salaried employment and self-employment. While the advent of the Internet and the Web had raised utopian hopes, the consolidation of platform capitalism has instead fueled a multiplicity of criticism and encouraged service providers to come together and take action to denounce their captivity to a summons. These mobilizations should lead public authorities to play a regulatory role, as illustrated in particular by the adoption of a European directive on platform workers on March 11, 2024 (consilium.europa.eu, 2024); or in reference to the fight led by digital platform workers demanding the reclassification of their service provider contract into an employment contract, which bore fruit, since the French Court of Cassation gave a favorable opinion to them in 2018. This deliberation should be seen as a strong signal of the beginning of regulation of this segment of the labor market. But nothing is less certain, even if the struggles of gig economy platform workers have become more visible due to their media coverage. The purpose of our proposed presentation is to understand and analyze the forms of resistance organized by a collective of self-employed delivery workers structured as a production cooperative. With a view to reconfiguring spatialities, we will focus on the characteristics of La Maison des Livreurs as a symbolic place, the material basis of resistance. The analysis is based on a monographic study of La Maison des Livreurs in Bordeaux. In addition to the history of the cooperative's formation, we examine its governance, organizational logic, operations, the objectives set by the members, the meaning of their cooperation forced by Uberization, the alliances formed, and their repertoires of action. La Maison des Livreurs can be understood as an unprecedented mobilization against new forms of contractual relationships in the world of work. We will seek to show the meaning and perspectives of this mobilization. Date: 2025-05-26 Published in XXIVe Rencontres du Réseau Inter-Universitaire de l’Économie Sociale et Solidaire (RIUESS 2025) : L’ESS au travail ! Enquêter sur les pratiques de résistance, de transformation et d’émancipation, Chaire ESS de Lyon; Laboratoire Coactis; Laboratoire Triangle; Centre Max Weber; Sciences Po Lyon; Université Jean Monnet de St Etienne, May 2025, Lyon, France There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05097480 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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