Divided we fall: The breakdown of gig worker solidarity in online communities

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Peter Kalum Schou,Eliane Bucher
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12260

Received: 12 August 2021

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Accepted: 17 November 2022

DOI: 10.1111/ntwe.12260

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Divided we fall: The breakdown of gig worker

solidarity in online communities

Peter Kalum Schou

1

|Eliane Bucher

2

1

Department of Strategy and

Entrepreneurship, BI Norwegian

Business School, Oslo, Norway

2

Department of Communication and

Culture, BI Norwegian Business School,

Oslo, Norway

Correspondence

Peter Kalum Schou, Department of

Strategy and Entrepreneurship, BI

Norwegian Business School, Nydalsveien

37, 0484 Oslo, Norway.

Email: peter.k.schou@bi.no

Abstract

The ‘gig economy’presents a contested new work

arrangement where freelancers find work on digital

platforms. Subsequently, previous research has investi-

gated how gig workers develop solidarity and take

collective action against the exploitative practices of

the platforms. However, this research is limited by

mostly focusing on solidarity in contexts of local gig

worker communities. We investigate whether free-

lancers who work on a global platform, Upwork, which

hires people for diverse and complex jobs, can build up

solidarity in a global online community. Applying a

mixed‐methods research design, we analysed how gig

workers responded to a policy change by Upwork that

affected their working conditions negatively. In doing

so, we outline how solidarity breaks down in an online

community of gig workers, due to them realising

different interests and identities. We contribute to

recent discussions on solidarity in the gig economy,

and online communities as tools for organising.

KEYWORDS

collective action, freelancers, gig economy, mixed‐methods,

online platforms, power, solidarity

New Technol Work Employ. 2023;38:472–492.472

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wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ntwe

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2022 The Authors. New Technology, Work and Employment published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, an increasing number of workers worldwide have found jobs outside

traditional organisations, instead finding workondigitalplatformssuchasUber,Deliveroo,

Amazon Mechanical Turk and Upwork (Kässi & Lehdonvirta, 2018; Petriglieri et al., 2019;

Tassinari & Maccarrone, 2020). Scholars have estimated that around 160 million workers

operate in the gig economy, finding work on such platforms (Kässi et al., 2021). The gig

economy may offer opportunities to workers, especially to those in low‐income countries,

who often gain better and more lucrative employment on the platforms than through local

employment (Wood et al., 2019a). Yet, most scholars are worried that such platforms may

take advantage of workers, as they do not treat them as employees but as replaceable labour

(Duggan et al., 2020;Fieseleretal.,2019; Tassinari & Maccarrone, 2020;Veenetal.,2020;

Wood et al., 2019b). This fear may be warranted as gig workers have taken highly publicised

collective action against the platforms to protest poor working conditions. For example,

workers have protested Uber in the United StatesandDeliverooinItalyandintheUnited

Kingdom, due to a perceived lack of worker rights and poor pay (Tassinari &

Maccarrone, 2020). Consequently, a budding research stream is focused on how gig workers

can take collective action against platforms to improve their conditions (Gegenhube

et al., 2020; Kalleberg & Vallas, 2018; Tassinari & Maccarrone, 2020;Veenetal.,2020;

Wood & Lehdonvirta, 2019). This work points to a key ingredient in workers setting up

collective action; solidarity, that is ‘a collective understanding of the situation of different

groups of actors and how this can be defended and/or improved by collective action’(Morgan

& Pulignano, 2020, p. 22). Solidarity can thus inspire workers to come together, organise and

present as a collective entity fighting to better working conditions and pay (Morgan &

Pulignano, 2020;Royle&Rueckert,2020). Recent research has indicated that gig workers can

overcome the atomised work arrangement, and build solidarity with each other, which

facilitates collective action (Tassinari & Maccarrone, 2020;Woodetal.,2018). In particular,

this research has highlighted the usefulness of online communities in this regard

(Maffie, 2020;Woodetal.,2018). Wood et al. (2021, p. 17), for example, suggest that online

communities empower workers to voice complaints and build solidarity with each other.

However, the claim that workers can build solidarity and collective action in online

communities, as forwarded by recent research (Maffie, 2020; Walker, 2021; Wood et al., 2021),

may suffer from a couple of limitations. First, this research mostly focuses on how workers

localised in the same place or in the same organisation build solidarity (e.g., Maffie, 2020;

Tassinari & Maccarrone, 2020; Wood, 2015). For example, Tassinari and Maccarrone (2020)

focus on how food delivery workers developed solidarity in three respective cities. Yet, gig work

is a global phenomenon. Second, the research tends to focus on workers operating on platforms

with low diversity in skills and tasks, such as Deliveroo (Tassinari & Maccarrone, 2020) and

Uber (Maffie, 2020). On these platforms, the task is often physical (delivery or driving), limited

to a short period, and clearly defined. In contrast, other platforms, such as Upwork, have a

much wider range of workers that solve tasks ranging from voice acting to advanced

programming (E. L. Bucher, Schou, et al., 2021). These factors may play an important role in

shaping solidarity and collective action. Therefore, Wood and colleagues (2018,2021) argued

that we need a better understanding of how gig workers operating on remote, diverse platforms,

such as Upwork, can build solidarity and collective action. Therefore, we ask: ‘Can dispersed

and diverse gig workers build solidarity through online communities?’

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