Tech Won't Save Us - Gig Work is Not a Novelty in Brazil w/ Rafael Grohmann

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

Paris Marx is joined by Rafael Grohmann to discuss the state of app-based work in Brazil, organizing by food delivery workers to demand better conditions, and even a recent strike by click farm workers. Rafael Grohmann is a professor at UNISINOS, coordinator at DigiLabour Research Lab, and principal investigator in Brazil of Fairwork Project. Follow Rafael on Twitter at @grohmann_rafael. 🚨 T-shirts are now available! Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon. Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.  Also mentioned in this episode:DigiLabour is organizing a PhD symposium on October 27-28. Find out more here.Some of the people and work mentioned in this episode: Callum Cant, Fabian Ferrari and Mark Graham, Noopur Raval, Rosana Pinheiro Machado, Cheryll Soriano and Jason Cabañes, and Wendy Brown.DigiLabour is looking into worker-owned platforms in Brazil.Vice wrote about gig work organizing in Latin America and talked a lot about the Anti-fascist deliverers.Rafael and his colleagues also looked at political struggle around gig work and the importance of communication.Support the show

The gig is not a novelty. The history of working class in Brazil is a history of a gig economy. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and today my guest is Rafael Groman. Rafael is a professor at Unicinos in Brazil, the coordinator of the Digilabor Research Lab, and a principal investigator with the Fair Work Project in Brazil. In this conversation, Rafael fills us in on the conditions and organizing of food delivery workers, ride hail workers, and even click farm workers in Brazil. class is used to the kind of insecure work that we in the global north associate with, you know, app based work and these platforms, because we are used to, you know, the employment contract being the way that most people experience work. But in a place like Brazil, where Rafael is based, that's not the case. And that kind of employment contract has never been as universal as it is in the global north.

And so gig work has always been a thing. And now it just takes a different kind of form when it's on these platforms and apps. So I think this is a really fascinating conversation about what's been going on in Brazil, about the organizing and strikes that have been happening, and even about the ways that the platforms have tried to kind of push back and try to change the narrative in their favor in the face of the protests and strikes and even the work that Fair Work has been doing

to create a rating system for the platforms around minimum Fair Work standards. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, a group of left-wing podcasts that are made in Canada, and you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com. If you like this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it.

And this episode of the podcast, like every episode of Tech Won't Save Us, is free for everybody because listeners like you support the work that goes into making it every single week. If you like the show, if you feel like you learned from the show, you can join supporters like Spiegel Mix from Taipei and Alessandro Delfonti from Toronto by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and becoming a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Rafael, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Hello, Paris. Thank you for having me.

I'm very excited to chat with you and to learn a bit more about what's been going on in the gig economy in Brazil. You know, I think this is a topic that a lot of people probably won't be familiar with. So I am really looking forward to learning more and to finding out what has been going on down in your part of the world. And so I wanted to start by getting kind of an overview of what the gig economy looks like in Brazil and what it means for these workers. So can you start just by explaining, you know, some of the companies that would be operating in Brazil and what it's like for the workers to work in this kind of sector of the economy, I guess. First of all, your podcast is a reference for us in Brazil and for many critical scholars around the world. And I don't like the term gig economy because I think there is a translation thing about a gig in Brazil and other countries, because in Latin America, in Brazil and other countries

from so-called global south, the gig is not a novelty. The history of working class in Brazil is a history of a gig economy. It's not a novelty. Before the emergence of digital platforms, before the emergence of other digital technologies, because the standard employment is not a standard thing in the Global South. And my first thoughts about this are Latin American and Global South are exceptions. No, there is not an exception. Europe, UK, United States are the exception.

The history of the economy is a big gig economy. So for us, the novelty is the subordination of digital platforms localized mainly in Global North. The gig economy subsumed in this platform labor context. For example, for instance, the work of riders of couriers are not a novelty. But now these people, these workers are subordinated and coordinated by digital platforms and platform companies around the world. And in Brazil, there is in this so-called gig economy, workers in the streets working for platforms and on the other hand, workers in their homes in web-based platforms.

And there are many, many platforms here. Workers on the streets, there are Uber and Didi, Brazilian version, Chinese platforms called 99. And there are two main ride-hailing platforms here. And the delivery sector, the leader is a Brazilian company in the strong and aggressive platform called iFood. It's very important, a call about iFood, because this is a Brazilian company, a Brazilian platform with the Silicon Valley ideology in CEOs, discourses, in development and policymakers, and very interesting around

the world, but in Brazil too, that platforms have public policy sector in their companies and a mix of PR and they saying what cities must to have around public policies. And iFood sells themselves and brands themselves disruption, citizenship, and innovation, and anti-discrimination. And now, with our Fair Work project, the CEOs of this company is on the press and wrote, we are Fair Work. And it's very important to put the role of communication and media to platform labor around the world. But in Brazil, iFood has a central role in this. One example about this media strategies is that last year there was strong national strikes of delivery workers. And the social media of this platform said, unfair blocks, no, deliver worker, we are on your side. And it's very interesting because the workers were against this platform,

but social media said, oh, we are on your side. And in Brazil, it's very impressive the power of this company regarding control narratives and control public discourses. And this is the leader of the delivery sector here. And then there are Uber Eats, Happy. This is a Colombian platform based in Latin America. And this platform, you can choose anything. You can choose a food.

You can choose a beer. You can choose another thing. The people in Brazil made requests such as, okay, please go to university and assign my class presence. It's very interesting because HAPI sells everything. And in the contract of HAPI, they stated HAPI does not have liability around transportation of drugs. And this is the delivery sector and ride-hailing sector in Brazil. And cloud work, I don't like these terms, cloud work and so on. I have many criticisms around this work. But there are also about 50 micro work platforms in Brazil with many workers working here. Brazilian data show that we have about 11 million of workers depending on digital platforms to survive and to work.

And 1 million of delivery workers of couriers. And this is the scenario of Brazilian platform labor with many profiles of workers. For example, the profile of driver is white man around 30, 40 years. And the delivery worker is black people and younger riding with their bicycles. And with the pandemic situation, many people were unemployed and the number of couriers increased in Brazil in the last year. I think that is such a good overview of what is going on in Brazil. And, you know, especially, I want to emphasize that I take your point about,

you know, how the term gig economy in the way that we refer to it in the global north, specifically to mean work that happens, you know, through these specific platforms, doesn't really make as much sense in the global south, or in Brazil, where this kind of work is much more normal, and is not just kind of an exception that comes with the entry of these platforms. So I think that is a really good thing to emphasize to the listeners, especially because, you know, a lot of the listeners will be listening from the Global North as well. So I think that's a really good point that you make there. You know, you talked a lot about the workers who are in this sector, maybe, maybe I should say the platform economy instead of the gig economy. And especially in the delivery side of things, there has been a lot of protest, I guess, and strike in recent years, as these

workers have been pushing back against these companies and trying to, I guess, improve the conditions of their work, improve their pay, things like that. Can you talk a bit about the movements of these kind of delivery workers and what they have been demanding from the government and from the companies to improve their conditions? I just would like to add some things about the terms. I think that the terms and the concepts are not neutral. And I really like a piece from Nupur Raval around hiding labor and ghost work and the mistakes around those things and how to talk about hidden labor is so Eurocentric and so global north. And the main thing is about micro work

because the work is always macro because I work with my hands and with my head always. And I think that the academic field around platform studies and platform labor, we have many challenges to name this phenomenon. It's very hard to name these things and to not fetishize and to not brand. It's my brand concept.

It's a very complicated thing. But about the protest, It's my brand concept. It's a very complicated thing. But about the protest, the first thing is that workers are not unorganizable. Jamie Woodcock stated this, and Callum Kent, a good friend of mine, and doing hard work in this thing. And I don't believe in algorithm panopticon or the total power of algorithm around workers. Fabian Ferrari and Mark Graham wrote a piece called Fissures in Algorithm Power because the workers find ways to survive in many things, in building emerging solidarities, building other forms of solidarity. And this is a quote from Charo Soriano and Jason Cabanes.

And Charo Soriano and Jason Cabanes state that there are entrepreneurial solidarities. It's a contradiction around, on one hand, the building of these emerging solidarities, and the other hand, the strong presence of neoliberal ideology and entrepreneurial ideology. In Brazil, we have the same. This is not call the workers as entrepreneur or saying that workers think themselves as entrepreneur, because they said, I say and I know that I'm not entrepreneur. But the entrepreneurial and neoliberal rationality in government and ideology have a strong presence in everyday practices

and everyday movements in Brazil too. And last year, there was strong movements and national strike of Brazilian delivery workers in Brazil, in whole country, in the big country. It's very difficult to organize these things. And the workers demand more safety, more health for workers, and a fair pay for workers, and reclaiming against unfair blogs, against unfair management of these platforms. Because on the one hand, platforms seldom service innovators and disruptors

and citizenship and anti-discrimination, but the workers know that is not a thing. And there was a central role of social media like WhatsApp. In Brazil, we have a strong presence of WhatsApp in everyday practices of many citizens here, it's a good note to do, because I know that in many parts of the world, WhatsApp is not a big thing. But in Brazil, WhatsApp is the default of internet from many people. And in Brazil, the people say that,

I don't have internet, I have WhatsApp. Because Brazilian government and enterprises did contracts and so on. And people do not pay for data to use WhatsApp things. Brazilian writers and other Brazilian workers organized through WhatsApp groups and sharing photos and videos and helping each other and competing against other too, like I had more pay than you and so on. So the social media and communication through social media had a central role of a leader and build a leader of anti-fascist Correia in Brazil. And he said interesting things like, we are not entrepreneurs, we are workers. We have to learn with Paulo Freire things. And Paulo Freire is a hateful thing from Bolsonaro supporters here and far-right supporters. And he talked very well about the working class things and working class situation against fascists, against Bolsonaro and so on.

So Legacy Media represented Gallo and anti-fascist Corriere as the leaders of these strikes. And Paulo Galo was a delivery worker, but was blocked and does not work more with these platforms. Okay. And we discovered in the day of the national strike, in Twitter, many and most of mentions around the strikes was about anti-fascist Corrêa in Brazil because national media and because Twitter highlights the central role of Paulo Galo and so on. But we as researchers saw that in WhatsApp groups,

Galo was not a thing. Or the workers say, I'm not anti-fascist. I don't know what is anti-fascist. I want more pay. You know, I want more safety. I don't mind about anti-fascist things. And we discovered around the time, Paulo Galo, anti-fascist Correia,

has six delivery workers or 10 delivery workers or 20 delivery workers in Brazil. And they are not the main organizers. The main organizers was most normal people from working class and some delivery leaders in Brasilia and other cities around the country. But definitely Paulo Galo and Antifascist Corrêa are not the leaders of movement in Brazil. And we have a little confusion or a little of fight between these parts, the Antifascist,

because Antifascist Corrêia has a strong presence on social media and they are very cool and very interesting, but they are not leaders. And I like it. And I like other movements here. So this is about the national strikes 2020 in Brazil, but the workers have not gained this demand. And the Brazilian economy situation was more and more worse than last year. And so the movements since 2020, the media don't represent and don't highlight the strikes of Brazilian delivery

workers, but they are in movement. So in the last few months, Brazilian delivery workers from smaller cities, but not so small, but not in big capitals like São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, organized many strikes. One of the cities, São José dos Campos, is near São Paulo, organized a six-day strike with help of other countries and said to Eifun the same demands around health, security, and more pay, and against unfair blocks, and how iFood and other platforms in Brazil

block people who organize, they call about a discrete block. The platform never say you block because you strike with other workers. But in a day, you block it, and that is. So the people in Brazil and the working people in Brazil are in process of organizing in other emerging forms of solidarity. But we have a complexity around the political composition of the labor workers in Brazil. And my final thing about this question is around the book from Calum Scant, for Deliveroo. And it's very interesting that Calum said seven times about Brazilian delivery workers in the UK. And the first quotes about Brazilians is about,

whoa, Brazilians have the best tactics of strikes. Brazilians have in their WhatsApp groups from Brazilians that born the first strike in Brighton and so on. And the last time he said, but Brazilians are Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil. So the political composition of the labor workers in Brazil is very complex, and it's about how these workers can organize themselves as workers, but supporting Bolsonaro. There is a thing, and other researchers, such as Rosana Pinheiro Machado, a Brazilian that teaches in the UK, are researching now the relationship between Bolsonaro supporting and organizing delivery workers and how these things occur

in other countries such as Philippines and so on, and this relationship between authoritarianism and organizing workers. That is so fascinating to learn about, you know, all those aspects of, you know, the organizing that is taking place in Brazil, but then also, you know, what it looks like when Brazilian workers who are in another country are organizing as well. I think that gives us a really good insight into what is going on on that aspect of delivery workers in Brazil, and the organizing they've been doing to try to improve their conditions and how difficult that is because of the power of these companies. There's another aspect of this as well, that I think is really important in that you kind of touched on there.

And that is for the past three or four years, Jair Bolsonaro has been the president of Brazil. And during that time, there has also been this terrible pandemic that has hit Brazil really, really hard, in part because of Bolsonaro's bad governing style. And so I'm wondering, what has the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro meant for these delivery workers? And I guess what the pandemic has meant for them as well? Jair Bolsonaro has at least bad government here and around delivery workers and around other working class people in Brazil. The Brazilian government offered in the first year of pandemic a pay for low pay workers. But in the international media, Brazilian government say that the pay is very high and

it's decent pay to Brazilian and to build welfare state and so on. But the things are very different and the payment are very, very low to Brazilian people. And many people, unemployed, was beginning to work on delivery sector or other sectors from delivery platforms. And in Brazilian government, there are about 30 or 35 bills. And we have conservative deputies and senators and so on. And most of these bills, proposals are from conservative way and to deepen this sacrificial citizenship, a term from Wendy Brown, and to say, OK, let's in a more liberal way than secure the real and decent payment to workers. So the institutional politics in Brazil in the regressive context here. In the next year, there will be next general elections here. of Bolsonaro against Lula. And I don't know what we can expect,

but I think the things will be better in the next year. I certainly hope so. You know, it'll be really interesting to see what happens with the general election. You work with the Fair Work Project, and that obviously puts out standards for, you know,

these delivery companies and ride hailing companies and things like that. And, you know, how they should be treating workers to kind of rank them based on that. Can you talk a little bit about the work that you've been doing with Fair Work in Brazil, and how platforms have responded to the attempts to kind of push them to improve their conditions, I guess. We are scoring six platforms here from Ryan Halen, from delivery sector, and also general services like painter and other domestic work and so on. I can say that in Latin America, the Fair Work project is scoring many platforms. Now we are on Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Argentina.

And in Chile and Ecuador, we released two reports this year. And the best platform has 3 to 10 score. And I think this shows that in Latin America, the platform labor is a deep web of platform labor around the world and realistically that fair work has the minimum principles for fair work in digital platforms. It's not the revolution, it's the minimum principles regarding pay, regarding contracts, regarding work conditions, regarding management, regarding representation. And the Brazilian and other in Latin America platforms does not match with this point regarding minimum wage and regarding fair contracts and so on.

And the real challenge is how can push the platforms against these principles and better improve the work conditions from these fair work principles. It's our challenge. And I have a few words about that and two gags, I think. The first is that the Brazilian and other, I think, Latin American CEOs have a strong Silicon Valley ideology and colonial ideology too. So it's very interesting because when I, Rafael,

with my Brazilian university, emailed this platform, I didn't have the answer. But I say to my Oxford colleagues, well, send an email with the Oxford logo to them in English. And they answered the email and they talked to us. It's a very colonial perspective about these things. But I think my main concern about this,

it's very important to say to an international audience, is that in our process in Brazil, we discovered that two platforms searched for a think tank and a liberal think tank here, a managerial think tank here, to build an alternative Fair Work principles in a commitment letter from the platform side. And they want to release their commitment letter.

At the same time, we will release our fair work ratings. And the CEOs of one of this platform wrote on the main newspaper in Brazil that iFood is very commitment with fair work, with decent work, and so on. So they are afraid that with public energy and media energy around the world about unfair work from these platforms, afraid about that and they want to build alternative fair work principles to guarantee that they are fair and they are cool and so on. This strong struggle regarding media, regarding narratives and regarding how can we put these things in a minimum decent, minimum real things that is our big challenge to do until the end of this year. In that answer, you gave us a lot of important insight into, you know, how the companies are thinking and how the companies are trying to push back on these ideas that you're trying to

put out there, that Fair Work is trying to put out there about like, you know, even just minimum standards about what work should look like in this sector, right? And they are trying to push back and reframe the conversation to still suit themselves instead of helping the workers. But obviously, you have also written about how in Brazil, there is also kind of a growing kind of platform cooperative movement to try to create alternatives to these platforms that are serving workers in a different way. So can you talk a little bit about platform cooperativism in Brazil and I guess what that looks like? At the Digital Labor Research Lab, we launched in this year a platform co-op observatory in Portuguese to promote platform cooperativism in Brazil. My first thing is that I really like the term and the movement around platform co-op. And I understand and agree regarding the criticisms about Callum Kant or Marisol Sandoval

about the limits or the perils of platform co-ops. So, first of all, I think we can, from the Brazilian side, do a broader sense of platform co-op in a way that building worker-owned platforms and worker-owned technologies that say that it's not only co-ops, they can be collectives or other worker-owned institutional designs. And on the other hand, what is a platform? And the term platform can be an Eurocentric issue or a peril to reproduce

techno-solutionist perspective to platform and services or so on. It's not a thing. So we can reframe this platform co-op. I think platform co-op is a useful brand

because in Brazil, even in Brazil, this term is very strong., I think platform co-op is a useful brand because in Brazil, even in Brazil, this term is very strong. But I think we can move towards a broad sense of platform co-op. And in Brazil, we have emerging collectives of delivery workers. One of these called Señoritas Currie is formed by women, Currie and trans people building a collective without a platform.

They have only automated form and circulating meanings around mobility and real diversity and decent work and other things. In Brazil, we have about 10 collectives or co-ops of workers here. And this theme of platform co-ops was emerged in media with the national strikes. And with the national strikes, the workers say, and even the anti-fascist courrier, we have to do a co-op. But some workers negotiated with CoopCycle in France. But in Brazil, many workers work through motorcycle and not cycle.

And for CoopCycle, and I think it's a good thing, they agree with the mobility and the importance of cycle and not motorcycle for environmental issues. So the Brazilian has not agreed with co-op cycle. But on the other way, many of these co-ops and collectives of delivery workers are trying to build these own technologies because Brazil has a strong movement of free software and free technologies, mainly in Lula governments. And I think we can relate delivery workers movement and free softwares and free technologies movement. And I think this can be a thing.

In Argentina, delivery workers are with CoopCycle and building platforms with CoopCycle. But my thing, we must build this technology from below because there's not a thing to reproduce technologies from other side or for other people. And my principles around platform co-op is a mix about design justice and inter-cooperation and decent work. And I really like the work from Demos at the Open University of Catalonia because they have a broader sense of platform co-ops regarding data co-ops and regarding data commons

and other interesting issue and i'm very inspired by that then is that disco co-op i think this thing can be a mixed interesting mix uh from brazil and my my last example here is about homeless workers' movement. And the homeless workers' movement in Brazil have a technology sector offering courses of things and artificial intelligence with Paulo Freire pedagogy, with a left side. And they built a virtual assistant to connect militants and people searching for workers like painter and designer and domestic worker. And this virtual assistant called Hires Who Struggles, in Brazilian, Contrate Quem Luta. And the name of virtual assistant is Leon, from Leon Trotsky and so on.

And it's a very useful example about emerging worker-owned platforms. It's not only about platform co-ops. And my last thing, real, is that I think Fair Work can be useful to score platform co-ops and worker-owned platforms. Because in the next five years, I don't know if there will useful score the same platforms and same platforms with score two and score one and so on. We have to put these minimal principles to help to build this platform co-ops and these worker-owned platforms like a basic principle to do that. Yeah, I think that's great. And, you know, I think it's really interesting to hear how the homeless workers movement are also kind of developing their own technologies to suit their purposes and, you know, what's

needed there as well. So I think that's really fascinating. You know, I feel like I have learned a lot in our conversation. And so I wanted to end with one more question that is not so much on delivery workers, but, you know, another form of this kind of platform work or digital work or whatever you want to call it. And that is, you know, you told me that there was a click farm strike recently in Brazil. And so I wonder if you could give us some insight into that side of this kind of work, the click farms, and what actually happened with this strike? First of all, we have in Brazil, there was about 50 micro world platforms regarding platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, Appen, Lionbridge, and so on, and global AI platform. And on the other hand, there's content moderation platforms from TikTok, Twitter, and so on. And we recently discovered ClickFarm platforms in Brazil. There are about five or six platforms in Brazil. There are others in Latin America,

but ClickFarms is mainly in Latin America and South Asia too. And there are Brazil-based platforms paying people to click, follow on Instagram. I call these platforms as parasite platforms because they depend on social media platforms, infrastructures, and parasites around workers, too. The first thing is that the clients of these platforms are mainly influencers and politicians and celebrities. We discovered TV shows, presenters, singers and so on. And people are paid less than one cent per task. And people, for survive purposes, people use more than one

account and mainly fake accounts. And it's very interesting because the people hired these platforms to don't use bots because they want organic or real engagement on these platforms. But workers, angry because it's very low pay, they outsource these tasks for bots and use bots and sharing the photos of bots, saying, OK, now I am working with 200 of bots and 200 of accounts. And it's very interesting because the people are paying even to dislike on YouTube. And it's very interesting because it's not about, in Brazilian, the people say that Bolsonaro have hate room, but it's not a hate room of government. It's a hate factory floor in this click farm. And my colleague Jonathan Ong called about disinformation for hire and the role of click farming so uh these people mainly women working

for this click farm platforms from their homes with children with cell phones of children of husband with many gadgets in the side in the last year the main platform here, called in English Earn on Instagram, Earn Money on Instagram. It's very interesting because the people discovered this platform through YouTube channels saying, earn more money, earn easy money,

and so on. And these YouTubers' channels offered courses. And Charles Soriano called these skill makers. So, okay, these people learned to use these platforms. And in the last year, the main platforms earned money on Instagram, changed the pay, and the minimum price decreased in 50%. And the people was very angry. And the people say they are calling us slaves

or they are crazy. And with the help of YouTube coaches and coaches YouTube, they organized a strike of two days. And on YouTube, the YouTube coach said, we have to paralyze these parasites and know about our strike. And it's very interesting because these people are not represented through media

or I don't like the term invisible labor, but they are invisible on media, even in Brazilian media. The people don't know about the presence. And my colleagues from the communication and media department don't know that the influencer economy has a strong cost and so on. The people had this strike in March this year and discovered the cell phone of one of the CEOs and said, we better have my money and say things like that.

But the platform side is that many workers are blocked by Instagram. And when they are blocked, the people are not paid. And the clients are understanding that it's not a real good job. But I think the click farm in Brazil is a deep web of platform labor here. And we have more work to do about that. Yeah, no, definitely. And I think it's really interesting to hear how, you know, even on the YouTube channels, the people they were going to for coaching were saying like, okay, we need to have this two day strike. So people that know about it. Yeah. So that's, that's really interesting. Rafael, I think you've given us so much to think about when it comes to

this kind of work in Brazil and what things are looking like down there, how people are organizing. It's been great to chat with you about this and to learn more about it. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. And if you can subscribe to DigiLabor newsletter and DigiLabor website, we will organize a PhD symposium.

You are very welcome. Thank you very much, Paris. Rafael Grohman is a professor at Unicinos, the coordinator of DigiLabor very welcome. Thank you very much, Paris. us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, and you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.