Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance

Not surprisingly under such conditions, digital platforms have gradually become the primary employers for motorbike food delivery riders and couriers in the industry. Nevertheless, platforms have not addressed the entrenched macho and informal work regulations in postal and courier services, and especially in fast-food stores, delivery restaurants, and grill houses. In other words, despite the disrupting effect on employment, digital platforms have not significantly impacted the working conditions across the industry. This happens for the simple reason that emphatically mentioned an interviewed delivery worker with more than 20 years of experience: “Platforms have not changed how small restaurants operate”.

In other words, digital platforms broke their initial promises as soon as they established a strong foothold in the market. Nevertheless, it should be noted that such broken promises and management control of the labour process by the platforms were made possible with policy incapacity and specific regulations taken by the government in 2021. As one participant in the interview highlighted: “The mobilization in the e-food sector began in September, but legislation under Article 69, initiated in July, laid the groundwork for freelancing. This legislative move was influenced by lobbying effortsfrom Delivery Hero”.

In a similar vein, a participant made the following critical comment on digital platforms: “They manipulated the entire delivery market, and the Competition Commission didn’t create any obstaclesfor them. We only have two digital platforms, creating a cartel-like environment and manipulating not just the ready-to-eatfood market but also retail trade”.

Another delivery worker, who works for both platforms (Wolt and e-food) as a freelancer provided an indicative aspect of this market hegemony: “Over the past two years, platforms have reduced their fees to riders. I believe that in the future, they will pay us the same amount as small food and coffee shops, or possibly even less while requiring us to cover our own social security, VAT, and taxes”.

To sum up, many participants noted that digital platforms offered better working conditions, and pay to attract the necessary workforce to dominate the market in comparison with courier services and fastfood restaurants. However, reduction of fees and instances of exploitation, similar to those seen with “neighbourhood capitalists”, soon began to escalate. The first such big change was related to the status of employment and the contractual arrangements. “The performance evaluation system used by the platform was advertised as a reward toolfor workers. It turned out to be it was used by the platform as a toolfor laying offdelivery workers to have only freelancers. Currently, 85% of delivery people are working as freelancers, which was not the case at all atfirst”.

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Furthermore, platforms often do not provide adequate personal protective equipment, forcing workers to operate in adverse weather conditions with increased accident risks. As it was argued by a participant working in a platform: “You can’t complete a 150-kilometer ride in central Athens with just a regular biker’s helmet; a full-face helmet is necessary. In 2022, we tragically lost three freelancers to facial skull injuries. Shouldn’t delivery shifts include breaks to prevent accidents?”.

In addition, management unilaterally sets work schedules and pay rates, or performance evaluations without negotiating or consulting with motorbike delivery drivers and their unions. A freelancer delivery worker, who dislikes working in local fast-food stores, argued: “Small shops are having trouble finding delivery workers without papers because e-food pays better. But this might not last long. We’ve already seen our earnings drop, and they mightgo down even more in the future”.

A motorcycle courier involved in an anarchist-leaning union focused on delivery and courier services, which has been active for nearly two decades, stated: “Working in delivery feels like navigating through hell. Finding someone who pays 4 euros and provides insurance makes you feel like a king. Mostfood delivery workers are migrants”.

As such, for migrant delivery workers, the dominant business model especially in food delivery creates even tougher working conditions and rules of exploitation. As an interviewed participant mentioned: “We are seeing instances oftrafficking. A big digital platform provides ID codes not just to freelancers, but also to subcontractors. It’s like a slave market—they give 100 mobile phones to these subcontractors, who then rent them out to economic migrants. For example, they might give 100 codes to a popular person from Pakistan, who then distributes them to 100 fellow countrymen. Someone elsefrom Bangladesh does the same with another 100 Bangladeshis. Another one does this with Albanians. A mobile phone might be shared with four Pakistanis living in a small apartment in the area ofKypseli. In this way, a single phone is being used 24 hours a day. The platform faces no risk because the subcontractors bear all the responsibility. Last year, there was a fatal accident that we reported. However, even ifan accident occurs, it’s not considered a workplace accident because the individual is not an employee but a freelancer”.

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According to an interviewed union leader: “Subcontractors serve as a parasitic mechanism to reduce platform fees for food delivery workers, leading to competition between freelancers and subcontracted delivery workers, who are typically migrants”.

Subcontracting practices and undeclared work are not restricted to food delivery services. Such employer strategies are also emerging in other industries and professions in both urban and rural areas. In this context, migrant work in the Greek gig economy does not differentiate much from traditional employer practices in the conventional economy. This situation is related to the broader deregulation of industrial relations and the opening up of competition by the entry of platforms in the market. For example, changes in the legislation of holding occupational licences and the rise of platforms like Uber in the Greek market gave many migrants the option to be employed as taxi drivers without the necessary credentials and controls for doing this job.

As a rank-and-file activist of the biggest taxi drivers’ association explained: “On platforms, many migrants can’t even speak Greek, unlike in radio taxis where taxi drivers know each other”. He went on to argue: “95% or even 100% ofall migrants working as taxi drivers collaborate with digital platforms because most ofthem are not taxi owners but independent contractors working with taxi owners. Platforms have also led to the rise of unlicensed taxi ride-sharing in the tourism sector. Both Greeks and migrants are involved in taxi piracy through the use of ride-hailing platforms, often finding these jobs by word ofmouth”.

Loopholes in legislation and a disorganized market create job opportunities for migrants, but they also risk increasing precarity and informality in work regulation. In some cases, they result in severe exploitation, as we discussed earlier with the subcontracted food delivery workers.

As an interviewed senior manager of a big agricultural cooperative mentioned: “In the beginning, we had Polish agricultural workers, who eventually moved to Australia. Then came Albanian workers, followed by Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants, most of whom went to Germany and the UK. Now, most of our migrant workers are undocumented Pakistanis, who often move on to places like Italy because they can get visas more easily there. Their living conditions are extreme, with bad employers and numerous criminal networks within their communities exploiting them. The average daily compensation for farming workers is between 35 to 45

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euros, but they usually end up with no more than 20 euros in their hands”. And he continues: “Labor authorities conduct intensive inspections in agricultural cooperatives, but they rarely visit food processing factories, despite numerous labour law violations and undeclared work occurring there”.

7 Conclusions

The standard employment relationship is a historically contingent and geographically specific construct, built on preconditions that no longer exist. Modern pressures such as financialization and digitalization especially in Europe and the USA contribute to the fragmentation of employment structures, increasing differentiation and inequality (Weil, 2014). Consequently, the once ‘standard’ model of employment is now exceptional, underscoring the evolving dynamics of contemporary labour markets. Nevertheless, context still matters.

In the case of Greece, austerity memorandum agreements throughout the 2010s resulted in the recommodification of labour and the further erosion of collective bargaining structures along with a profound job crisis. Therefore, the potential for new job opportunities arising from the expansion of the gig economy should not be underestimated, particularly for a country with one of Europe’s highest unemployment rates. This partly explains why recent legal interventions and discussions on the gig economy have focused mainly on tax-related matters while overlooking pressing labour issues (Mexi, 2019).

In this context, migrants, alongside other vulnerable workforce groups such as women and young workers, have historically constituted the foundation of zones marked by vulnerability and marginalization in Greece. As explained in the analysis, research on migrant labour within the Greek labour market reveals a prevalent trend of collective inaction and reliance on individual coping strategies to manage precarity and insecurity. Migrant labour has not integrated into broader progressive movements nor developed a distinct resistance project against precarity. Despite certain efforts, collective actors such as trade unions and political parties have failed to provide adequate spaces and mechanisms for organizing and representing migrant workers’ interests.

In this increasingly precarious environment, the rise of the gig economy in Greece may provide an alternative employment option for migrant workers. However, gig work does not eliminate the ongoing social and employment disadvantages faced by migrant workers. In the current chapter, relevant statistical evidence and interview data for delivery workers were analysed to testify to this. Similar to other contexts (Wood et al., 2018), the gig economy in Greece does not provide a fertile ground for collective organizing.

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Even the most notable examples of effective resistance from digital platform workers, such as the e-food campaign, have experienced shortlived and limited impacts, much like other mobilizations such as the migrants’ demonstrations in the strawberry fields of Manolada. Additionally, the individual strategies employed by migrants to cope with precarity have had similarly limited effects in terms of providing access to full citizenship. Migrant workers consistently serve as a reserve army of labour without union representation, which subjects them to direct employer control and workplace exploitation.

This takes us to two main conclusions. First, the employment disadvantages of migrants in Greece both before and after the emergence of the gig economy should be understood both as part of the historical interplay between social, cultural, and economic forces, and as a power issue involving the complex interplay of managerial practices, state incapacity, and the agency of individual migrants and their associations. Second, jobs in the gig economy, which are frequently evangelized in the media as providing greater flexibility and choice (Chen et al., 2019; Fleming, 2017; Zwick, 2018), can also conceal the decline of workers’ rights and the harsh exploitation of already politically and economically vulnerable groups, such as migrant workers. Such conclusions indicate the urgent need for more inclusive policies for migrant workers by the state and the Greek trade union movement.

References

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