Worker Organisation in Precarious Times: Abandoning Trade Union Fetishism, Rediscovering Class

Abstract

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Collective resistance and organizational creativity amongst Europes platform workers: a new power in the labour movement?

“…These kinds of organizational experimentation hint at the possible coexistence of several models of unionism and new forms of collective representation -indeed, the latter requires widening the research lens beyond mainstream unions (Atzeni 2020). The degree of organizational fragmentation and cooperation between the old and 'new' will be subject to dynamics within industrial and national regulatory contexts (Hyman and Gumbrell-McCormick 2017).…”

Mutualism, class composition, and the reshaping of worker organisation in platform work and the gig economy

“…To answer these questions, we build on research showing how platform workers create solidaristic links despite constraints of algorithmic management, geographical dispersion, and contractual insecurity. We share the commitment to bottom-up explanations of worker organising developed at length by Atzeni (2021) in his critique of trade union fetishism, and neatly summarised in Atzeni (2016: 194):…”

Introduction: Janus meets Proteus in the platform economy

“…Whether such communities are simply confined to the virtual world or can be considered prototypes of 'platform unions' remains to be seen. Their development, whether solely virtual or not, entails opening the lens to other collective organizations in the labour movement, like (platform) cooperatives, than simply (and rather myopically) analysing (long-established) trade unions (Atzeni 2020;Vandaele 2021). Even so, as the state has noticeably refrained from legal action so far, the combination of bottom-up approaches with regulatory creativity promises to be fruitful in the building of countervailing power vis-à-vis the platforms.…”