Maximizing Income Through Platform Dependence: The Case of Turkish Platform Delivery Workers

• In Event: Labor and Workplace Control

Abstract

The precarity approach considers platform work as the most contemporary incarnation of precarization of work, driven by legal and organizational transformations. These transformations lead to a bundle of deleterious working conditions and outcomes for platform workers, including low earnings. In response, studies by Schor et al. contest the framing of platform workers in this literature as homogeneously precarious. These studies find that while platform workers who depend on platform work to meet their subsistence needs experience high levels of precarity, those who work at platforms to supplement their existing earnings use their income from platforms as a cushion against precarity. In turn, I find platform worker outcomes that do not neatly conform to the descriptions of these two approaches to platform work. Drawing on 38 semi-structured interviews with delivery workers in Turkey, I find that contrary to what the precarity literature would lead us to expect, platform workers alleviate their income precarity by engaging in platform work. Furthermore, contrary to findings of Schor et al., I find that workers who are fully dependent on platform income alleviate their income precarity with their earnings from platform work. However, I also show that these workers are only able to alleviate their income precarity by working very long working hours, at an intense working pace and taking on significant bodily risk. In other words, they engage in a tradeoff, where they sacrifice their leisure time and physical safety in exchange for decreased income precarity.

Author

• Duygun Ruben, Boston College