How Can New Players Establish Themselves in Highly Institutionalized Labour Markets? A Belgian Case Study in the Area of Project‐Based Work

Abstract

How can new players seeking to serve nonstandard worker categories (such as project-based workers) establish themselves into labour markets that are highly institutionalized? This paper explores the case of SMart, a Belgian communitybased labour market intermediary that successfully developed solutions to better represent the interests of project-based workers and secure their discontinuous careers. Using an organizational legitimacy approach, we find that labour market entry and growth involve different types of boundary-crossing when addressing the needs of workers that do not fit into established categories. However, to justify boundary-crossing, the new player must complement its pragmatic work on delivering new services and tools with conceptual (cognitive) and structural (moral) legitimation work.

Solidarity at Work: Concepts, Levels and Challenges

“…Whether these organisational ties are created within traditional unions or in new trade unions, or even in new forms of platform-based collective identity (e.g. Smart in Belgium) (Xhauflair et al, 2018), is an open question, which in turn links to whether such actions can draw on existing organisational and institutional resources. Furthermore, it is also an open question whether the emergence of these new forms of solidarity are strong enough to facilitate complementarity among what we define in this article as the languages and discursive resources of solidarity or whether some trade-offs among the moral, political and performance of solidarity can be identified.…”

Riders, Rights and Collective Action

“…The agreement between Smart and Deliveroo in Belgium including insurances and minimum wages was thus an exception [6]. The model proposed by SMart is not uncontroversial and has been criticised by some unions as it "legitimises grey zones" instead of fighting them [41].…”

A freelancers’ cooperative as a case of democratic institutional experimentation for better work: a case study of SMart-Belgium

“…While several studies of SMart and its worker-led initiative exist, none examine the organisation in terms of institutional experimentation (or the potential to engage in it). Beuker et al (2017) (and also Xhauflair et al, 2018; Lorquet et al, 2018) have treated SMart as an institutional player, positioning it as a labour market intermediary; Drahokoupil and Piasna (2019) have mainly analysed how its support has positively affected a small category of its (former) worker-members, Deliveroo riders. Such approaches to SMart reflect the two standard focuses of literature on self-employed, freelance, gig or project workers: first, the ‘precarious’ conditions of their work and employment (see Doellgast et al, 2018; Kalleberg, 2009) and their legitimate claims to labour protections (De Stefano, 2016); and second, institutions active in the triangulation of labour relations, including trade unions, associations and cooperatives (Benassi and Dorigatti, 2015; Bureau and Corsani, 2018; Gumbrell-McCormick 2011; Heckscher and Carré, 2006; Heery and al., 2004).…”