Nov 8, 2023
While the rapid increase in app-based jobs around the world offers millions of workers additional avenues to ear money, it also creates new opportunities for employer exploitation through low wages, lack of health care and an absence of job safety–and that means unions must take action, says Sarah McKenzie, Solidarity Center program coordination director.
“If we’re going to make sure that workers’ rights are upheld and that we continue to create decent workplaces, we’ve got to care. We’ve got to care about where the work is going and where the workers are,” she says.
In the final episode of The Solidarity Center Podcast series, My Boss Is A Robot, Solidarity Center Executive Director and Podcast Host Shawna Bader-Blau speaks with two Solidarity Center union organizers to explore strategies for ensuring a decent future of work for delivery drivers and others engaged in platform-based jobs.
“Employers will continue to shift more and more toward this organization of work if they think it’s a way to avoid having to be accountable to their workers, a way to avoid labor unions,” says Andrew Tillet-Saks, Solidarity Center organizing director. “So I think in terms of trying to build the whole global labor movement, it’s really the nut that the global labor movement has to crack.”
Throughout the six-part My Boss Is a Robot series, app-based drivers and experts highlight the precarity of work through platforms, where algorithms are the new face of an old scourge: the bad boss. Download this episode and the full My Boss Is a Robot series here or at Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts.
Nov 2, 2023
Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) President Joe Ajaero was beaten and arrested November 1 as workers rallied to protest unpaid wages in Imo state in southeastern Nigeria. Police reportedly beat Ajaero and assaulted protesting workers with machetes and confiscated their mobile devices. Some NLC and Nigeria Trade Union Congress members who attended the rally say they have not been paid for up to 20 months. Ajaero was released from police custody to a hospital because of his injuries.
Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau offered this statement:
“The Solidarity Center joins calls by the Nigeria Labor Congress and the Nigeria Trade Union Congress in condemning the assaults on NLC President Joe Ajaero and the workers who rightfully stood up to receive the pay that they worked for and deserve. Violence and bloodshed have no place in the democratic exercise of the freedom to peacefully gather. The fundamental right of workers to be paid what they are owed is one of the bedrock principles of democratic societies. Efforts to intimidate workers and their elected leaders through brutal attacks must be called out for what they are: violations of fundamental human rights as guaranteed by international conventions and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, all of which the Nigerian government has signed.”
Our thoughts are with Joe Ajaero and all those injured as we call for justice to the perpetrators of these crimes.”
Oct 26, 2023
In the Philippines, 200 Grab Food Delivery Riders, through the National Union of Food Delivery Riders (RIDERS-SENTRO), waged a one-day strike October 25 to protest a fare decrease scheduled to start that day.
Grab’s new rate will reduce the base fare from 45 pesos to 35 pesos per order (from 79 cents to 61 cents), and the per kilometer compensation from 10 pesos to 7 pesos (from 18 cents to 12 cents).
The drivers turned off their apps and held a unity ride around the Quezon Memorial Circle in metro Manila, with signs on their motorcycle delivery boxes demanding higher fares and fairly calculated compensation. Grab riders also are seeking comprehensive insurance coverage, social protections and union recognition.
“If the goal of this new fare matrix is to ease the burden on Grab’s customers, it should not come at the expense of the platform’s riders,” Philippines Sen. Risa Hontiveros said in a video statement supporting the delivery riders.
The rally is the second in a week, with more than 80 drivers and their union protesting on October 19 at the Boy Scout Circle in Metro Manila.
Some riders who took part in the rallies reported that their Grab accounts were suspended or terminated, and RIDERS-SENTRO is planning legal action seeking to reinstate them. Several drivers in Pampanga were unjustly fired late last year following a worker rights rally they attended as drivers formed the Pampanga chapter of the National Union of Delivery Riders (RIDERS). They appealed the decision to the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) and the case is ongoing.
App-Based Drivers Advocate for Safe Jobs, Better Wages
Despite the challenges helping delivery drivers form unions—drivers have no single workplace and platform companies refuse to acknowledge they are employers so as to avoid fair compensation—RIDERS-SENTRO, a Solidarity Center partner, has made big gains.
(SENTRO General Secretary Josua Mata and John Jay Chan, a driver and union organizer, discuss how they are mobilizing drivers on the latest My Boss Is a Robot Solidarity Center Podcast episode.)
In just over a year, the union established four chapters of delivery drivers in multiple cities and islands and is organizing drivers in another 15 cities. Drivers are also engaging with local and national governments and, together with their union, crafted a Charter of Rights that lists basic rights for gig workers: a minimum wage, a written contract, health or accident insurance, and access to the country’s social security services. The Senate is now considering the bill.
Drivers also successfully advocated for a local ordinance in Cebu City to create free outdoor “riders’ hubs” in commercial outlets with seating and parking to offer drivers shelter from heat and rain.
Oct 25, 2023
Despite unfair working conditions, many gig workers need to be convinced to join together in unions or associations to more effectively advocate for basic benefits granted to employees in traditional jobs. On the latest episode of the Solidarity Center Podcast series My Boss Is a Robot, union organizers in the Philippines talk about how they reach workers who believe that they should not—or cannot—–stand up for their rights on the job.
“Many riders thought that we don’t have any labor rights,” John Jay Chan tells Podcast Host and Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau. Chan, a delivery driver, is helping organize app-based food delivery drivers through RIDERS-SENTRO. Launched in 2022, the union has established four chapters in multiple cities and islands and is mobilizing drivers in another 15 cities, while navigating an environment where red-baiting of unions is common and where union members are often threatened, harmed or murdered.
Yet Chan and Josua Mata, SENTRO secretary general, say one of their biggest hurdles is getting drivers to understand they are not freelance workers with no rights but employees of corporate giants that “have effectively disguised the employee-employer relationships that they have with their riders,” says Mata.
“Essentially every rider, whether they’re considered a freelance rider, independent contractor, actual employees of the platform, has to enjoy the rights that every single worker enjoys in this country,” he says. Working with the drivers, the union crafted a Charter of Rights that lists basic rights for gig workers: a minimum wage, a written contract, health or accident insurance, and access to the country’s social security services. The Senate is now considering the bill. The Charter itself provides a focal point for organizing more drivers.
For union organizers, reaching app-based workers with no central workplace and employers who refuse to acknowledge their role requires new approaches. Says Mata: “We in SENTRO will never claim that we know the proper strategy now. We’re practically experimenting. We’re testing everything.” Download The Solidarity Center Podcast to find out more about SENTRO’s strategies for organizing delivery drivers.
“My Boss Is a Robot” is a six-part series that seeks to shine a light on the behind-the-scenes practices of app companies that exploit workers in the global gig economy. Download the latest episode, Tips to Help Delivery Drivers Form Unions, and watch for the final episode on November 8.
Listen to this episode and all Solidarity Center episodes here or at Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts.
Oct 11, 2023
Ride share drivers face many job-based hazards–and for women, the dangers are compounded by sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence. Women app-based workers also are disproportionately targeted by what law scholar Veena Dubal has termed “algorithmic discrimination.”
“The structure of the wage-setting process, the structure of the algorithms, tends to recreate traditional forms of discrimination. Again, replicating the gender wage gap,” Dubal tells Solidarity Center Executive Director and Podcast Host Shawna Bader-Blau on the latest episode of “My Boss Is a Robot.”
Algorithmic bosses turn the traditional employment model on its head–and not in a good way.
“Uber’s own research shows that people who work longer hours actually earn less per hour,” says Dubal, a law professor, University of California, San Francisco College of Law.
“All of these sort of basic ideas about work are being disrupted invisibly by algorithmic wage setting processes that could very easily spread to other sectors of the economy, disrupting traditional ideas of how wages should be and are set, and really disconnecting work from security in a way that’s quite dystopian.”
Tech Discrimination: The New Way We Work, explores what this new model means for gig workers–and how it could shape a new world of work where how much we are paid, how many hours we will work and what our job will be day to day are completely out of our control.
“My Boss Is a Robot” is a six-part series that seeks to shine a light on the behind-the-scenes practices of app companies who exploit workers in the global gig economy. Download the latest episode, Tech Discrimination: The New Way We Work? and watch for the next episode on October 25.
Listen to this episode and all Solidarity Center episodes here or at Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts.
Oct 5, 2023
Union leader Jude Thaddeus Fernandez, 67, was killed September 29 in the house where he was staying in Binangonan, Rinzal Province. A division of the Philippine National Police reportedly entered Fernandez’s home and shot him dead. Fernandez was mobilizing his community in a campaign to raise wages and end government corruption and human rights violations. Four union leaders and members have been murdered in the Philippines this year. The International Trade Union Confederation also ranks the Philippines as one of the ten worst countries for worker rights.
Solidarity Center Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau offered this statement:
“The Solidarity Center stands with our partners in the Philippines, the Nagkaisa labor coalition, in condemning the brutal killing of Jude Thaddeus Fernandez, a dedicated union organizer who devoted decades to improving the lives of working people. We are outraged by this unconscionable act and denounce the escalating violence against union leaders and working people in the Philippines and around the world for seeking to improve their working conditions and ensure their fundamental democratic rights.
“We extend our deepest condolences to Jude’s family and community as they mourn their loss, and we stand in solidarity with the Philippine labor movement in its call for the International Labor Organization, the UN Commission on Human Rights and other relevant agencies to swiftly respond and act to attain justice.”
