Sep 13, 2023
For many job seekers, joining the ranks of delivery drivers or other app-based workers is sold as entrepreneurship–a way to make money as an independent contractor and be their own boss. But the reality is much different, as workers from Africa to Latin America have found out.
“Just in Latin America, we see millions of [app-based] workers who are exploited, who are working injured, who don’t even have a minimum salary guaranteed, who are risking their life every day with no guarantees whatsoever because the company can terminate them if they deem that they’re not meeting certain standards,” says Mery Laura Perdomo, a lawyer for the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW), a Solidarity Center project.
Perdomo and other experts joined Solidarity Center Podcast Host Shawna Bader-Blau on App Workers Seek Level Playing Field, the second episode of “My Boss Is a Robot,” to discuss how delivery drivers and other app-based workers are excluded from basic labor protections because companies have classified them as “independent contractors”–all while enforcing rules and requirements as in a standard workplace.
But even as app companies around the world have waged multimillion dollar campaigns to prevent court decisions or legislation that would classify gig workers as employees, delivery drivers are standing up for their rights on the job.
Explore their battle for fair treatment as they seek to be recognized by companies as the employees they really are.
“My Boss Is a Robot” is a six-part series that seeks to shine a light on the behind-the-scenes practices of app companies who exploit workers in the global gig economy. Download the latest episode, App Workers Seek a Level Playing Field, and watch for the next episode on September 27.
Listen to this episode and all Solidarity Center episodes here or at Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts.
Sep 7, 2023
If you work seven days a week, 12 hours a day and don’t make enough money to pay the bills, you can talk to your boss, right? Not if your boss is an app.
“My Boss Is a Robot,” a new series on The Solidarity Center Podcast, explores the challenges delivery drivers around the world face as they navigate not only dangerous traffic but a workplace where algorithms arbitrarily determine wages, hours and working conditions.
In the first episode, “21st Century Workplace: Exploitation by App,” Solidarity Center Executive Director and podcast host Shawna Bader-Blau talks with Yuly Ramírez, a delivery driver in Ecuador, who worked for Uber and Glovo.
“We used to have a base salary of $1 per hour,” says Ramírez. “Our rates were cut down almost by half. We found out that we could not make nearly as much as we were making before, not even working 12 hours a day, seven days a week.”
The episode also features Arianna Jiménez, a scholar who interviewed app-based drivers in Colombia, most of whom are migrants seeking opportunities to support themselves and their families. Jiménez discusses the vast profits of delivery corporations like Rappi in Latin America, which bases its business model on workers forced to work harder for lower and lower wages.
“They’re gaining profit from all sides and maximum cost is transferred to the individual,” says Jiménez.
“Exponential growth without investment in its workforce,” says Bader-Blau. “And, recently, during the worst parts of the pandemic in Colombia, Rappi made its drivers compete for vaccines, if you can believe it.”
App-Based Exploitation Doesn’t Stop at the Border
As the series shows, app-based workers from Thailand to Colombia face the same exploitative working conditions, as a new form of Gilded Age workforce repression spreads globally.
But like the early industrial era, delivery drivers and other app-based workers are standing up for their rights. Across Latin America, for instance, workers have been staging organized protests as early as 2018, and in Nigeria, delivery drivers formed the country’s first union of app-based workers. The series will conclude with two episodes on worker organizing in this growing industry.
Download 21st Century Workplace: Exploitation by App and watch for the next episode on September 13.
Listen to this episode and all Solidarity Center episodes here or at Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts.
Nov 16, 2022
For more than 10 years, union women who work at factories, on farms, in restaurants, taxis and offices campaigned for an international treaty to end gender-based violence at work. In 2019, they achieved a huge success when the International Labor Organization (ILO) adopted Convention 190 to end violence and harassment at work.
Authors of a new book share these women’s stories on the latest Solidarity Center Podcast and describe the powerful movement they created collaborating with human rights, feminist, disability rights and other organizations around the world.
“We wanted to document this because there are such myths and stereotypes about who’s capable of doing this,” co-author Robin Runge tells podcast host and Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau.
“These are garment workers, domestic workers, agricultural workers from all over the world, and have been told their whole lives, ‘Well, you can’t do that. You can’t negotiate a global treaty.’ It’s absolutely false.”
Along with Runge and Jane Pillinger, co-authors of “Stopping Gender-Based Violence and Harassment at Work: The Campaign for an ILO Convention,” the episode highlights South African union activist Brenda Modise, who describes her experiences on the front lines of the campaign
“The thing about this convention is that it brings women together across the world, irrespective of your age, irrespective of your culture, irrespective of all the things. It doesn’t matter whether you speak English, you speak Portuguese, you speak French, it brings us together. As soon as you say C190, it brings women together and it makes a force,” says Modise.
“One of our main conclusions is that really remarkable things happen when women stand in their own power,” said Pillinger.
Adds Runge: “Only through collective action with freedom of association and collective bargaining is it really possible to truly prevent and eradicate gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work.”
Listen to this episode and all Solidarity Center episodes here or at Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher, or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts.
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Apr 21, 2021
When the Nigerian government sought to raise taxes on basic goods and decrease subsidies on key items like fuel as millions of workers struggled without jobs or wages during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 4 million members of the Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) successfully stood up against these assaults. NLC President Ayuba Wabba says the union first tried negotiating with the government. When that effort did not work, workers were set to strike, he said on the latest episode of The Solidarity Center Podcast.
“Many Nigerians are in very difficult situations right now because of the challenge of COVID-19. Most of their income have been disrupted and their survival is so difficult. So that is why we have to respond, to actually draw the attention of government. And such an approach is very, very necessary. We thought that governance should be about the interest of justice,” Wabba told podcast host and Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau.
A New Social Contract
In a wide-ranging conversation, Wabba, who is president of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), describes efforts at the global level to build a post-COVID world where all workers are covered by social protections such as paid sick leave, access to protective safety equipment, health care and good wages.
“COVID-19 has exposed the inadequacies in the entire social protection system,” he says. “We are also trying to make sure that COVID-19 is one of the diseases that is also covered by occupational health and safety for all workers, including casual workers, including migrant workers, including workers working in the precarious sector because this is very important. If not, the inequality gap between the rich and the poor will continue to be widened.”
As a global union leader, Wabba is at the forefront of the international campaign to ensure the future of work ensures good jobs as well as green jobs to address the ongoing challenges of climate change. “You don’t need to contaminate the environment for you to be able to retain jobs. Jobs can be produced using greener forms of energy.”
Download Season One Episodes
The Solidarity Center Podcast, “Billions of Us, One Just Future,” highlights conversations with workers (and other smart people) worldwide shaping the workplace for the better.
Check out the full first season of The Solidarity Center Podcast and stay tuned for season two this fall!
This podcast was made possible by the generous support of the American people through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under Cooperative Agreement No.AID-OAA-L-16-00001 and the opinions expressed herein are those of the participant(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID/USG.
