Democratising the platform economy
Platforms such as Glovo, Deliveroo and Uber Eats that operate in the field of food delivery have set up in cities all around the world. The expansion of these platforms has had an impact on workers’ rights in what is considered as platform capitalism. Even then, democratic alternatives connected to the social and solidarity economy and digital commons exist. This article analyses the democratic qualities of four alternative food delivery platforms with headquarters in Europe (CoopCycle, CILFé, Crow and Mensakas). On the one hand, the results show that these platforms consider their workers’ rights; that is the main reason why they form an alternative to platform capitalism. On the other hand, the analysis shows that these platforms face important challenges, especially regarding their economic sustainability and scalability.
ODS
Melissa Renau CanoDoctoral student for Dimmons in the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalonia. She is currently developing her doctoral thesis at Dimmons on flexibility and working conditions in the platform economy, as part of the EU project Platform Labour in Urban Spaces. She has a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Barcelona and a degree in Business Administration from Pompeu Fabra University.
Mayo Fuster MorellPrincipal investigator for Dimmons in the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalonia. A faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, she also manages the Barcelona UOC Chair in Digital Economics: for a Collaborative Economy, focused on people’s well-being and the right to the city, by UOC together with Barcelona City Council and Barcelona Activa. She has been principal investigator at UOC for the EU projects DECODE: Decentralised Citizens Owned Data Ecosystem, and PLUS: Platform Labour in Urban Spaces. She was the principal investigator in the EU project P2Pvalue: Techno-social platform for sustainable models and value generation in commons-based peer production in the Future Internet. In 2010, she completed her doctoral thesis at the European University Institute of Florence on the governance of commons-oriented peer-to-peer production, and has made numerous publications in this field.
Ricard EspeltSenior researcher and coordinator for the Dimmons research team in the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalonia. He centred his doctoral thesis on studying the impact of the Internet in the sphere of agroecological cooperativism and has developed his line of research around platform cooperativism. He holds a degree in Fine Arts and has a long career in the core of activity which interrelates education and art. He is a postdoctoral researcher and coordinator for the EU project PLUS: Platform Labour in Urban Spaces and was coordinator of the project DECODE: Decentralised Citizens Owned Data Ecosystem for Dimmons.
