Mexico City, Montevideo, and São Paulo: Collective Action by Delivery Platform Workers in Three Different Scenarios

Abstract

Latin American labor markets are remarked on for their structural heterogeneity, which, over the years, has been the result of a growing labor surplus. Thus, the digital labor platforms in delivery services that have emerged are breaking into a complex labor landscape, imposing new challenges. We intend to describe what forms the workers’ collective actions take and how these collective actions and their forms are linked with the labor institutions’ settings. We use three case studies with a comparative perspective of both national labor institutions and the history of collective action, particularly in the urban labor context. We collected secondary information from news media and academic bibliographies and primary information through interviews with collectives’ representatives. Our results show how the logic of digital platforms challenges collective action, and how the history of labor institutions might contribute to the rise of new forms of organization.