When apps crash

The month of July 2020 has already entered the long list of landmark moments in the struggle of the Brazilian working class. The delivery workers' strike, or #brequedosapps, already in its second phase, stirred the public scene with its mobilization that took over several capitals of the country. They are, today, the sharpest point of the fight against the precariousness of work and life in the country, within a framework of social insecurity instituted, in continuity, by the labor (Temer government) and pension (Bolsonaro government) counter-reforms. 

The scenario before the pandemic already bore the mark of social insecurity, precariousness, informality, and unemployment. The health emergency has laid this bare and exacerbated its impacts. This is why the demands presented by delivery workers, while highlighting the hardships they face in their work, shed light on the social and labor processes that have been dismantled and reconstituted in Brazil in recent years, as well as indicating an even darker horizon ahead and the potential resistance to it. 

The category was already present, circulating hurriedly and anonymously through our cities, visually detectable, on motorcycles, bikes Or on foot, carrying brightly colored backpacks bearing the names of delivery app companies, ensuring, at their own risk, the maintenance of isolation for various social sectors. However, it marked the public space differently in the last month, doing so as a collective subject demanding higher pay and better working conditions. By targeting companies, the movement had impacts on a much broader universe of social, political, and economic spaces and actors, affecting companies, public opinion and consumers, political parties, the labor movement, the legislature, the judiciary, etc. Collectively, they moved from social invisibility, individualized and anonymous, to social and political visibility. 

The agenda publicly presented by the delivery workers' movement includes points such as increasing the minimum delivery fee, increasing the value per kilometer traveled, theft, accident and life insurance, the provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as hand sanitizer and masks, sick pay in case of absence due to Covid infection, and an end to unfair account blocks and deactivations.

Given the divisions that run through the category, several other points emerge here and there, but this first set is the one that has been the most convergent in terms of possible unified demands. This process of identity construction, quite contested in its formation, was not and is not easy; it has been marked by a complex social and political dynamic that includes, among others, workers, various entities that represent or seek to represent the category or part of its contingent, pages and groups organized on social networks, political groups, etc., not to mention the companies' own attempt to intervene in this process.

Despite the statements demonstrating a certain consensus on the degree of exploitation to which they are subjected by companies and on the central role of their direct mobilization in attempting to change this situation, seeking what would be "urgent" results that cannot "wait any longer," there is a wide spectrum of ideas and practices within the category and among those who are at the forefront of the organization and mobilization, for example, ranging from those who defend the CLT (Brazilian Labor Law), those who want specific regulation to those who do not want any type of regulation, there are those who say they do not want political involvement to those who embrace the most general political struggles, there are those who say they want to distance themselves from traditional union forms and those who are affiliated with them... and so on. 

It is important to remember that these workers are facing an extremely unequal struggle. They are facing the old capitalist exploitation relationship, now in its algorithmic version. The companies, among the largest employers in the country, refuse to accept any formal employment relationship with their workers. They hide behind the unsustainable argument that, in this case, they are merely intermediary tools between restaurants, delivery drivers, and consumers. In this distorted view of reality, delivery drivers are not their workers, they are "service providers"... "partners". 

The reality, beyond the "cloud," leaves no doubt about what is happening. The sophistication hyping digital producing intense forms, and nothing hypes...of precarious work and living conditions. It is a sharing economy in which companies share very little of their enormous profits with workers. gig economy The working class "does odd jobs" for 8, 10, 12 hours a day in exchange for low pay and precarious working conditions. Companies have been more concerned with advertising, image, shareholders and investors than with the workers from whom they derive their wealth.

Not everyone believed that, subjected to such a degree of informality and precariousness, under the control and pressure of sophisticated technological mechanisms, but also of authoritarian labor relations already known to us, now through the despotism of the algorithm, forced into intense and extensive work rhythms and hours, in a constant "rush" without being able to stop, it was possible to carry out a significant national movement. And it did succeed, regardless of possible comparisons between the impacts of the two moments of mobilization, which must take into account all the dynamics that occurred, not only within the category, but, above all, through the action of companies reacting to the movement that linked their brands to the degradation of work. 

The political and organizational gains and repercussions of the #brequedosapps (app strike) are quite significant. Their movement has already set things in motion. The path the category will take after these two mobilizations is still undecided and under debate. To a large extent, it will depend on their labor, political, and organizational choices. In any case, this movement rebels against processes affecting many other sectors, incorporating large contingents of workers, and which are likely to spread even further. It is clear that capital's plan is to move rapidly towards informality and precarization of the entire world of work. This has only been stopped throughout history by the organization and mobilization of the working class. This step had an important milestone in our country in July 2020. Thus, the fate of the struggle of delivery workers against the precarization of work and life can help open and guide paths for many other sectors and movements in this direction.