The Role of Digital Communities in Organizing Gig Workers

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12251
• Author: Michael David Maffie
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Published date: 01 January 2020

The Role of Digital Communities in Organizing

Gig Workers

MICHAEL DAVID MAFFIE*

Using survey data from 450 ridehail drivers, this article examines how social

networking sites (SNS) influence workers’views on union instrumentality and

unionization. This article finds that more frequent interaction with other workers

in online communities is associated with improved views of union instrumentality

and interest in joining a ridehail drivers’association. These findings link together

the fields of information sciences and industrial relations and suggest a new insti-

tutional actor in modern industrial systems, the online worker network.

Introduction

For nearly two decades, scholars have asked how the Internet will change

union organizing (Bryson, Gomez, and Willman 2010; Osterman et al. 2001).

Its promise is clear: The Internet eases the distribution of information and can

network together people with similar ideas and interests (Freeman and Rogers

2002). Moving actions from online to offline proved difficult, and the early

2000s provided little evidence that the Web was helping organized labor reach

new members or stem its losses in established strongholds (Nolan 2017). Yet

in March 2018, thirty thousand public school teachers in West Virginia

engaged in a statewide wildcat strike, demanding higher wages and better

health-care benefits (Bidgood and Robertson 2018). The teachers’subsequent

victory was a dramatic outcome for labor in an otherwise precarious national

environment (Zorn 2018). After the strike, workers pointed to an unusual orga-

nizing factor: a Facebook group called “West Virginia Public Employees Uni-

ted”(Bidgood and Robertson 2018; O’Donovan 2018). Highlighting the

importance of the Facebook group, strike supporters commented: “This strike

*The author’saffiliation is Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania. E-mail: mdm283@

cornell.edu. The data collection efforts for this article were supported by a research grant from Cornell

University’s ILR School. The author gratefully acknowledges the feedback and insights provided by Alexan-

der Colvin, David B. Lipsky, and Louis Hyman. Additionally, the author is indebted to Rachel Aleks and

Adam Seth Litwin for their advice and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article. Finally, data collection

would not have been possible without the support Harry Campbell.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, DOI: 10.1111/irel.12251. Vol. 59, No. 1 (January 2020). ©2020 Regents of the

Universit y of Calif ornia. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA,

and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK.

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wouldn’t have happened without the grassroots organization through the pri-

vate Facebook group ... without question, I don’t think this would have

reached the critical mass that was needed had they not had the platform of the

group to communicate”(O’Donovan 2018).

Although the teachers’Facebook group appears to have influenced this

strike, there is an ongoing debate in the academic literature about the role of

digital communication in union recruitment and labor actions. The union orga-

nizing literature has long emphasized the importance of in-person contact (e.g.,

Bronfenbrenner 2006); consistent with this line of research, early work on dig-

ital organizing found that Internet communication could not generate a sense

of labor solidarity (Heckscher and McCarthy 2014; Saundry, Stewart, and Ant-

cliff 2012). Yet a wave of teacher, Uber driver, and Deliveroo rider strikes

have led some scholars to reconsider the role of online communities in build-

ing labor solidarity. These scholars point to a new type of Internet structure,

“Web 2.0”networks, as a catalyst for labor actions (Pasquier and Wood 2018;

Wood and Lehdonvirta 2019; Wood, Lehdonvirta, and Graham 2018). Web

2.0 networks, like Facebook, are structurally different than the mechanisms in

previous studies of digital organizing because they are dynamic spaces that

allow people to engage in more personal and interactive ways. Early digital

communication (“Web 1.0”), like e-mail or blogs, were designed to distribute

information. In contrast, Web 2.0 spaces were created to mimic the most sali-

ent features of offline communities. These digital spaces allow people to create

online profiles; find like-minded individuals; engage in debates; establish their

own private groups; and move from a single-interaction format (e.g., reading a

website) to repeated, real-time interactions (Margetts et al. 2016). The existing

union organizing literature suggests that “offline”communities can help build

labor solidarity (Hedstr€

om 1994; Jarley 2006; Kerr and Siegel 1954), but has

technology progressed to a point to which these digital networks can establish

a similar level of connection?

Focusing on the ridehail industry, one of the most developed parts of the

“gig”economy, this article presents a mixed-methods study of the relationship

between digital interaction on Web 2.0 social networking sites (SNS), like

Facebook, and workers’interest in collective representation. The first part of

this article develops a case study of a ridehail drivers’group in the American

Midwest. Based on interviews with members of the group, archival data, and

daily observation, I map how online spaces can be used in a way that builds a

collective labor identity. Bridging the “offline”and “online”worlds, I find that

workers use online spaces to coordinate their face-to-face meetups and develop

connections “offline.”Next, using this case study and interview evidence from

fifty-five drivers located across the United States, I developed a ridehail-speci-

fic survey instrument to measure the relationship between workers’interaction

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