Abstract

BALLESTRIN, Juan Bautista. Work and Alienation in Delivery Platforms: Freedom, Money, Guilt and Boredom. Trab. soc. [online]. 2024, vol.25, n.42, pp.345-366.  Epub Jan 01, 2024. ISSN 1514-6871.

The article analyses a process of alienation derived from working for delivery platforms. Based on qualitative research carried out with Rappi and Pedidos Ya delivery drivers in the city of Buenos Aires, it is an observation of the intersection between work and subjectivity, highlighting the sufferings that indicate the impossibility of autonomously conducting one's own will. Here it is shown that workers suffer from guilt and boredom when they are not working, which is understandable considering the importance of money within this occupation. In a rather subtle interweaving with some experience of time freedom, the piece rate payment crystallizes coercive powers that result in suffering during non-working hours, revealing the lack of autonomy created by the work scheme of delivery platforms. This sociological critique of companies that are key to platform capitalism seeks to substantiate an approach that demonstrates how they do not grant freedom to workers, not by denying their actual experiences of freedom, but by accepting them and tracing them back to the adverse personal effects that immanently show that they are denied.

Keywords : Platforms; Work; Alienation; Autonomy; Money.

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