The Platforms of Contention: How algorithmic organization of work spark militant labor movements in China

• In Event: 41012 - The Future of Work

Abstract

Over the past decade, the platform economy has rapidly expanded in China, which was accompanied by a rising wave of gig worker strikes with mixed results. Given the atomization of platform work and the post-pandemic oversupply of labor in China, the emergence and the outcomes of these strikes remain unresolved puzzles. Contrary to previous research that highlights how gig work hinders labor organizing, I argue that the platform architecture—designed to discipline labor—can also be transformed into a mobilization structure that facilities social movements, which would otherwise fail in labor-repressive settings. Drawing on 65 in-depth interviews and three months of fieldworks in 2024, I compare strikes in food-delivery platforms and ride-hailing platforms in two nearby cities, Shanwei and Dongguan, Guangdong Province and traced their respective history of gig worker activisms dating back to 2018, when platforms were launched in these cities. In line with the hypothesis, I identify three mechanisms under which the “platform of exploitation” can be transformed into the “platform of mobilization”: (1) the application of big data in performance evaluation encourages network formation in the workplace; (2) platform algorithm inadvertently signal strikes emergence through work assignment; (3) platform architecture unintentionally helps sustain strike by revealing strikebreakers. I further supplement this four-case comparison with a brief statistical analysis using web-scrapped data on gig workers’ collective action nationwide. This paper demonstrates why and how the algorithmic shift in platform work shapes the prospects for spontaneous strikes in China’s rising platform economy. When it comes to the future of work, it also aims to identify a new form of structural power embedded in gig work and shed light on how the development of platform capitalism, driven by its internal contradictions, increases workers’ indigenous organizational capacity even without formal organizations, a key difference from traditional unionized labor movements.
Keywords: social movement, spontaneous mobilization, platform economy, network structure, algorithmic control, gig work, China

Author

• David Su, University of California-Berkeley