The problem of unpaid labour in food delivery platforms in Europe: understanding the role of socio-technical and employment contract effects

Valeria Pulignano and Damian Grimshaw

Chapter 8 in The Elgar Companion to Regulating Platform Work, 2025, pp 133-150 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter interrogates the diverse patterns of unpaid labour in food delivery platform work. It argues that no simple correspondence exists between unpaid labour and platform work. Platforms’ socio-technical strategies of labour governance steer unpaid labour differently by enabling or constraining key aspects of worker autonomy. Moreover, platform reliance on self-employment exacerbates unpaid labour in comparison to the use of employee status. The chapter establishes that there are ‘open’ and ‘closed’ regimes of governance. Combined with a relatively open worker regime, self-employed workers experience diminished market shelter and can be easily replaced in a relatively overcrowded sector that requires few skills. Conversely, the use of the employee form can mitigate unpaid labour within relatively closed regimes, although it cannot eliminate it completely. Unpaid labour persists under an hourlypaid system since the worker is subordinated to work faster (work intensification) and is also subject to short-term changes in working time arrangements.

Keywords: Algorithm technology; Autonomy; Employment relationship; Food delivery platform; Skill; Unpaid labour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035321131
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