Work by app: algorithmic management and working conditions of Uber drivers in Brazil

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/workorgalaboglob.14.1.0101
• Pages: 101-118
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Author: Henrique Amorim,Felipe Moda
• Subject Matter: work by app,algorithmic management,Uber,Brazil

Work organisation, labour & globalisation Volume 14, Number 1, 2020 101

Work by app:

algorithmic management and working conditions

of Uber drivers in Brazil

Henrique Amorim and Felipe Moda

Henrique Amorim is an Associate Professor of Sociology

in the Department of Social Sciences and the Graduate

Program in Social Sciences at the Federal University of São

Paulo (UNIFESP), Brazil.

Felipe Moda is a Master Student in the Graduate Program

in Social Sciences at the Federal University of São Paulo

(UNIFESP), Brazil.

ABSTRACT

Aiming to contribute to the understanding of how the relationship between

autonomy and control is materialised in ‘work by app’, this article draws on

the results of research conducted in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, with Uber

drivers, The research aimed to analyse the management practices in ‘app’

work. Because this survey was conducted in the global South, we also present

some considerations about the Brazilian working-class conformation and the

conditions under which work by app is being performed in Brazil. We argue

that the algorithmic management made possible by adopting apps across

labour processes is consolidating a new form of management, organisation and

control of labour power, increasing workers’ actual subsumption to capital and

radicalising forms of work exploitation and domination.

KEY WORDS

work by app, algorithmic management, Uber, Brazil

Introduction

This article aims to analyse how the relationship between autonomy and control is

materialised in the work of Uber drivers, using this as a case study to understand the

102 Work organisation, labour & globalisation Volume 14, Number 1, 2020

forms of management, organisation and control used in work by app.1 Because it is

theoretical-empirical research2 conducted in the city of São Paulo (Brazil), in this

article we will also present some characteristics of the formation of the Brazilian

labour market and the operation of this service in this national context, to help

understand how labour power management apps may have a different impact on the

countries of the global North and South. We start from the hypothesis that the use

of platforms in different labour processes is deepening the real subsumption of

workers to capital, consolidating a radicalisation of the forms of exploitation and

domination of labour.

Because Uber is a worldwide company with similar operations in the different

countries in which it operates, there are several similarities between the work by app

that drivers do, for example, in Brazil, in the United States of America, in England, in

India or in South Africa, since the management practices, based on algorithmic

calculations are the same. However, the way this management is materialised in

working conditions differs in each country, especially when comparing countries in the

global North and South, due to the unique characteristics existing in the formation of

the different labour markets and in relation to the respective labour laws. Thus, the

objective of this article, besides presenting how algorithmic management acts to

organise the workers registered with the company, is to carry out a critical-descriptive

analysis of the working conditions in the Brazilian case. By making such a contribution,

we seek to contribute to the panorama of research carried out in other countries, to

enable us to understand the global consequences of work by app.

We use the term ‘work by app’ to express the central form of service production

under Uberisation. In this form of work, the set of algorithms responsible for the

functioning of the app are built in, in order to prescribe how each task should be

performed by workers, in line with the contemporary updating of capitalist

management. Thus, in this article, the app has a central role, bringing about different

consequences on the labour process when the work of Uber drivers is compared with

other activities performed digitally and/or virtually.3 Thus, the algorithmic

management that structures the app provides the basis for a new horizon of labour

exploitation and domination hitherto little known to the working class.

In this sense, we consider that the main specificities of work by app – the factors

that distinguish it from other forms of digital work – are: first, that the work process is

actuated by the app, which sets in train the series of actions necessary for carrying out

1 The phrase ‘work by app’ is used in this article as a synonym for ‘platform labour’. We use this term

because it is the best-known terminology among the Brazilian population. Platforms are privately owned or

publicly owned data-driven software and hardware infrastructures that are automated and organised using

digital algorithms (Casilli & Posada, 2019), enabling interaction between two or more people or groups

(Srnicek, 2016:43).

2 The data used in this article are the result of 22 interviews, with semi-structured script, conducted with

drivers and former drivers who provided services using the Uber application in the metropolitan region of São

Paulo, between 2018 and 2019, twelve of which were conducted during the Global App Driver Strike, which

took place on May 8, 2019 and brought together approximately 200 drivers in the downtown area.

3 Fuchs & Sandoval (2014) argue that there are 1,728 different possible forms of digital work, ranging from

ore mining activities for laptop production to software development, demonstrating the need to create specific

nomenclatures when we look at any one of the forms of this work.