In early October, Italian media outlets ran extensive coverage of protests in Turin, where couriers working for the German food delivery company Foodora mobilized. For a country where industrial action is relatively common, why has a strike consisting of just fifty workers attracted so much attention? The answer is simple: this represents the first-known case of worker self-organization in the Italian gig economy.
Foodora, like Deliveroo or UberEats, owns an online platform that uses a “crowd-fleet” of cyclists to deliver food from local restaurants. Like other delivery apps, Foodora owns neither restaurants nor bikes and employs no couriers: its profits come from acting as the intermediary between consumers and workers.
Restaurants pay Foodora a commission (roughly 30 percent of the value of the food sold) to appear on their platform and cover the delivery costs. The riders log onto a smartphone app to receive delivery jobs, which an algorithm automatically allocates.
Foodora has invested a lot in self-promotion, and its distinctive pink ads can be seen everywhere on Turin’s public transport network. But its smooth expansion into the Italian market hit a snag on October 8, when a group of roughly fifty workers staged their first public protest in Turin, calling for a boycott and seeking the support of the restaurants that use Foodora.
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Fonte: http://sbilanciamoci.info/striking-the-startups/
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