Platform couriers' self‐exploitation: The case study of Glovo

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Tiago Vieira
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12272

Received: 28 May 2021

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Accepted: 8 May 2023

DOI: 10.1111/ntwe.12272

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Platform couriers' self‐exploitation: The case

study of Glovo

Tiago Vieira

Department of Political and Social

Sciences, European University Institute,

Florence, Italy

Correspondence

Tiago Vieira, Department of Political and

Social Sciences, European University

Institute, Florence, Italy.

Email: Tiago.VIEIRA@eui.eu

Funding information

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Abstract

This article examines the phenomenon of self‐

exploitation among platform couriers, using the

company Glovo as a case study. The research, based

on a qualitative approach with interviews from 22

different stakeholders, highlights the ways in which

precarity, entrepreneurial subjectivity, and gamifica-

tion intersect to create what are referred to as

postdisciplinary control mechanisms. These mecha-

nisms shift the locus of exploitation from the employer

to the workers' inner selves, which are compelled to

follow implicit guidelines due to their precarious

situation. The use of algorithmic management by

platform companies like Glovo plays a major role in

this architecture marked by overwork, exposure to

hazardous conditions, and economic dependence. The

article urges policymakers to look beyond platform

workers' employment status debate and address the

design of algorithms and broader forms of labour

precarity, so that policies that successfully improve

workers' experience are designed.

KEYWORDS

control, entrepreneurial subjectivity, gamification, Glovo,

platform work, precarity, self‐exploitation

New Technol Work Employ. 2023;38:493–512. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ntwe

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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.

© 2023 The Authors. New Technology, Work and Employment published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last decade, platform work's advent and massive expansion brought about an

earthquake in the labour relations landscape. At the tip of this proverbial iceberg involving

millions of workers around the globe (Vallas & Schor, 2020) stand those employed by the parcel

delivery industry: platform couriers.

As an echo of their visibility, couriers' working conditions have drawn much attention, both

in and outside academia. The prolific production of scholarly literature on this topic has offered

unmistakable evidence that parcel delivery platforms subject workers to work intensification,

low earnings, discrimination and hazardous working conditions (Gregory, 2020; Gregory &

Sadowski, 2021; Moore & Newsome, 2018; Van Doorn, 2017). Deploying algorithmic

management facilitates the intense precaritisation of couriers as it allows decision‐making to

be largely automated, at once invisibilising the human manager and promising optimal

productivity outcomes (Gillespie, 2014). Critical studies on the impacts of algorithms on the

governance of workplaces have proved them to be tools dedicated to exacerbating employers'

control through information asymmetry and pervasive forms of surveillance, rendering couriers

highly dependent on their hiring platforms and further worsening these workers' exposure to

indecent working conditions (Griesbach et al., 2019; Shapiro, 2020; Veen et al., 2019).

While the aspiration to see their situation improve has spurred the emergence of protest

movements of couriers across virtually the entire globe (Trappmann et al., 2020), parcel

delivery platforms continue to flourish, nonetheless—a tendency before the pandemic, but that

COVID‐19 has greatly accelerated (Curry, 2022). If anything, platforms have proved able to

acquire the consent of couriers regarding their modus operandi, mobilising workers' dedicated

commitment around both pernicious labour process designs (Galière, 2020) and—further

intriguing—even around their disputable classification as independent contractors (Barratt

et al., 2020; Vieira, 2021).

These counter‐intuitive developments beg explanation. Vallas and Schor (2020) have argued

that platform workers have more control over certain aspects of their work than conventional

workers. However, whether this is a positive development or not remains under dispute, for

how some works have shown it may well be that platforms exert different a form of control

rather than simply relinquish it (Gandini, 2018).

This article aims to continue this scholarly debate. To do so, the situation of couriers is

scrutinised against the theoretical backdrop of self‐exploitation. As elaborated in detail over the

following pages, platform workers, in general, and couriers, in particular, are exposed to three

possible sources of self‐exploitation (precarity, entrepreneurial subjectivity, and gamification),

which makes them particularly prone to a ‘power that seduces instead of forbidding’

(Han, 2017) and, in that way, forges the consent and earns the dedication of those it exploits.

The suggestion that labour platforms may induce self‐exploitation has been introduced

previously (Gajewski, 2021; Gomes, 2018; Huang, 2022; Prassl, 2018) but is yet to be explored.

The present article draws from a critical inquiry into Glovo's labour process in Spain as a case

study to understand if, how, and to what extent this paradoxical phenomenon is occurring. The

main takeaway is that all three forms of forging workers’consent (precarity, entrepreneurial

subjectivity, and gamification) operate as mechanisms of concealed yet meaningful

disciplination. As a result, this article's contribution is three‐fold. Theoretically, it expands

existing knowledge of a phenomenon as complex as self‐exploitation, hereby explored in the

peculiar realm of platform work. Empirically, it offers further evidence of how platforms'

control of workers is exerted in particularly pervasive ways and with meaningful, detrimental

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