The Representation of Workers in the Digital Era: Organizing a Heterogeneous Workforce

200 Pages·2022·3.165 MB·English

by  Raquel Rego, Hermes Augusto Costa

The Representation of
Workers in the Digital Era
Organizing a
Heterogeneous Workforce
Edited by
Raquel Rego
Hermes Augusto Costa
Dynamics of Virtual Work
Series Editors
Ursula Huws
Analytica Social and Economic Research
London, UK
Rosalind Gill
Department of Sociology
City, University of London
London, UK
Technological change has transformed where people work, when and
how. Digitisation of information has altered labour processes out of all
recognition whilst telecommunications have enabled jobs to be relocated
globally. ICTs have also enabled the creation of entirely new types of
‘digital’ or ‘virtual’ labour, both paid and unpaid, shifting the borderline
between ‘play’ and ‘work’ and creating new types of unpaid labour con-
nected with the consumption and co-creation of goods and services. This
affects private life as well as transforming the nature of work and people
experience the impacts differently depending on their gender, their age,
where they live and what work they do. Aspects of these changes have
been studied separately by many different academic experts however up
till now a cohesive overarching analytical framework has been lacking.
Drawing on a major, high-profile COST Action (European Cooperation
in Science and Technology) Dynamics of Virtual Work, this series will
bring together leading international experts from a wide range of disci-
plines including political economy, labour sociology, economic geogra-
phy, communications studies, technology, gender studies, social
psychology, organisation studies, industrial relations and development
studies to explore the transformation of work and labour in the Internet
Age. The series will allow researchers to speak across disciplinary bound-
aries, national borders, theoretical and political vocabularies, and differ-
ent languages to understand and make sense of contemporary
transformations in work and social life more broadly. The book series will
build on and extend this, offering a new, important and intellectually
exciting intervention into debates about work and labour, social theory,
digital culture, gender, class, globalisation and economic, social and
political change.
Raquel Rego • Hermes Augusto Costa
Editors
The Representation
of Workers in the
Digital Era
Organizing a Heterogeneous
Workforce
Editors
Raquel Rego Hermes Augusto Costa
Instituto de Ciências Sociais Universidade de Coimbra
Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Economia
Lisbon, Portugal Centro de Estudos Sociais
Coimbra, Portugal
ISSN 2947-9290 ISSN 2947-9304 (electronic)
Dynamics of Virtual Work
ISBN 978-3-031-04651-3 ISBN 978-3-031-04652-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04652-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022
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Acknowledgements
This book is financed by Portuguese funds through the Foundation for
Science and Technology I.P. (FCT), within the scope of the project
Representativeness of Social Partners and the Impact in Economic
Governance (REP) (PTDC/SOC-SOC/29207/2017). The Editors wish
to thank the collaboration of Dr. Cristina Nunes, from the REP project
team, with the preparation of the manuscript.
v
Contents
1 I ntroduction 1
Raquel Rego and Hermes Augusto Costa
2 Precarious Work and Possibilities of Union Resistance in
Brazil 15
Andréia Galvão, José Dari Krein, Marilane Teixeira, and
Patrícia Rocha Lemos
3 How to Represent the Unrepresented? Renewing the
Collective Action Repertoires of Autonomous Workers in
Three Countries 37
Laura Beuker and François Pichault
4 Digitization and Collective Representation Strategies in
Spain 63
Antonio Martin-Artiles and Alberto Pastor Martínez
5 The Representation of Precarious Workers: Two Case
Studies from Portugal 89
José Soeiro
vii
viii Contents
6 Work Platforms, Informality and Forms of Resistance: The
Case of On-Demand Workers in the City of São Paulo 113
Ruy Braga and Douglas Silva
7 Gender Representation in the High-Tech Sector in Italy:
The Required Alliance Between Trade Unions and Women’s
Associations 137
Luisa De Vita
8 The Representation of Platform Workers Through
Facebook Groups in Bulgaria: A Partially-Filled Void 161
Vassil Kirov and Gabriela Yordanova
9 C onclusion 183
Hermes Augusto Costa and Raquel Rego
Notes on Contributors
Laura Beuker has a PhD in Political and Social Sciences. She is a
researcher at the HEC-Management School from the University of Liège,
in Belgium, and a project manager at the ‘The House of Human Sciences’,
which is affiliated to the University of Liège. Her current research inter-
ests include new forms of employment, labour market intermediaries, the
traditional organisations of representation and new forms of social dia-
logue. In the past, she has also studied active labour market policies, new
forms of dialogue for the autonomous workers and comparison between
European countries.
Ruy Braga is a Full Professor at the Department of Sociology of the
Universidade de São Paulo (USP), in Brazil, and currently head of the
Department, vice-director of the Centre for the Study of Citizenship
Rights (Cenedic) and researcher at the Centre for Research Society, Work
and Politics (SWOP) of the University of the Witwatersrand, in South
Africa. Ruy has published in numerous scientific journals such as Work
and Occupations, Social Forces, Globalizations and Latin American
Perspectives.
Hermes Augusto Costa has a PhD in Sociology. He is Vice-Dean and
Professor at the Faculdade de Economia from the Universidade de
Coimbra, in Portugal, where he co-coordinates the PhD Program in
ix
x Notes on Contributors
Sociology. His interests focus on trade unionism, sociological theories,
among others. Some of his publications include the book Trade Union
Powers: Implosion or Reinvention? (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020)
and the chapter ‘Trade unions and social movements at the crossroads: A
Portuguese view’, in the book Social Movements and Organized Labour:
Passions and Interests, edited by Grote & Wagemann and published in
2019 by Routledge.
Luisa De Vita is Associate Professor in Economic Sociology at Sapienza
Università di Roma in Rome. She is the Coordinator of a PhD course in
Applied Social Sciences. Her main research interests include inequalities,
gender policies, labour market and working conditions. She also works
on employment in the STEM field and on digitalisation and platform
economy, with a specific focus on the care sector. She has been involved
in several research projects at both national and international levels. She
directs the observatory Collective Bargaining, Technological Innovation
and Quality of Work with INAPP (the National Institute for the Analysis
of Public Policies).
Andréia Galvão is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Instituto
de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas of UNICAMP, in Brazil. She works on
labour relations, trade unionism, social movements and collective action
in Brazil, and has published several articles on these topics.
Vassil Kirov is Associate Professor in the Institute of Philosophy and
Sociology, in Bulgaria, and Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, in France.
His research interests are in the sociology of work and organisations,
employment relations and digitalisation. Vassil has been a researcher in
large EU-funded research projects and has worked as an external expert
for the European Commission, the International Labour Organization
and EUROFOUND. He was a member of the European Commission
High-Level Expert Group on the Impact of the Digital Transformation
on EU Labour Markets (2018–2019) and has published books and arti-
cles in international scientific journals.
José Dari Krein has a PhD in Social and Labor Economics from the
State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), in Brazil. He is a researcher
at the Brazilian Centre for Studies in Trade Unionism and Labour