Tech Won't Save Us - How Indonesian Gig Workers Are Organizing w/ Rida Qadri

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Paris Marx is joined by Rida Qadri to discuss how gig workers in Jakarta created networks of mutual aid in the face of a lack of support from companies and the government, and how their experiences show the importance of workers’ local knowledge for delivery platforms.Rida Qadri is a PhD candidate in Urban Information Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Follow Rida on Twitter as @qadrida.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:Rida wrote about how delivery platforms in Jakarta show the importance of the human workers and their local knowledge.Paris wrote about Uber’s dark side, including its lack of support for drivers in Mexico and Brazil who faced violence.Gojek and Grab may merge, which would cause problems for gig workers in Southeast Asia.Support the show

Drivers call themselves brothers on the road, and they have these amazing slogans. One of them is that we might not be blood, but we are closer than family. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Ritha Khadri. Ritha is a PhD candidate in Urban Information Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she's recently been doing work on how gig platforms like Gojek and Grab operate in Indonesia, and how motorcycle taxi drivers have responded to their changing working conditions. As I said at the end of last year, I want to do more conversations this year looking at tech issues outside the United States, outside North America, and even outside

the global north. And so that's part of the reason why when I read about Ritha's work in Indonesia, I wanted to speak with her because it sounded really interesting. In particular, how app-based work in Indonesia, because of how the city is organized, really shows how important the driver, the human worker, is to making those systems efficient and workable. You know, part of the argument is that it's these algorithms and the technology that make these systems and these services efficient. But what Ritha's work shows is that without the drivers and their knowledge of the local situation, that's not going to happen.

So I think you're really going to like this episode and find it really interesting as Ritha explains how these things work in the Indonesian context. 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 the show, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and make sure to share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues you think would be interested in it. Every episode of Tech Won't Save Us is free for anyone who wants to listen, and the reason for that is because listeners like you support the show. So if you like what you're hearing, you can join supporters like Wilhelm, David Blundell, and Paul

by going to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus and becoming a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy the conversation. Ritha, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Thanks so much. I'm really excited to be here. It's great to speak with you. I read your article on Slate and then the papers that you sent me about your work that you're doing in Indonesia, looking at how app-based work is working over there. And it's really fascinating to see how in Indonesia, the kind of discourses that we're always talking about in the United States or Canada or the UK don't necessarily apply the same way, right? And so that's kind of what I wanted to dig into with you today. But obviously, before we get into what's actually happening on the labor side and with these apps and with these workers, I wanted to get some context of the situation in Jakarta,

because a lot of our listeners probably won't have much knowledge of Jakarta or much reference for it, likely will never have been there, just like me. So I was hoping that, you know, you could give us a bit of an overview of the situation in Jakarta. What is the city like? What's it like to kind of get around in the city? And how prevalent is this kind of app based work that we're going to be talking about? So yeah, Jakarta is a really interesting city because it's a mega city. It has around 10 million people living in it right now. And it's also amalgamated a lot of existing kind of boundary locations within it. So it's huge.

And like most Southeast Asian cities, one of its hallmarks is that it features completely gridlocked traffic. So the only kind of mobility solution that works in that traffic is the motorbike taxi. So the motorbike taxi in Jakarta is one of the most popular ways of getting from point A to point B. And specifically, before these apps came in, there was an informal motorbike taxi market where there were these stations around different parts of the city, and you would walk to those stations and hop on. And what's important to remember is that this mobility market was completely unregulated. So it was completely informal, it was grassroots organized, there were no necessarily safety or wage or employment contracts. And we can talk about this later, but that has really informed the way the mobility apps have also entered the space. So around in 2015 and 2014 is when mobility apps like GoJag and Grab started

entering Jakarta. They have now, of course, become DecoCorns, valued of over $10 billion. But in around 2015 and 2014, when they were entering, the idea was that they would reorganize this existing informal taxi market. So they will take this existing motorbike taxi system that is so essential to mobility in the city, but remove the friction. And interestingly, both companies Grab and Gojek, Grab is Malaysian-Singaporean and Gojek is Indonesian, were started by two people who met at Harvard Business School and apparently took similar courses and got these ideas from the same place. So the idea is very similar for both of them. And now post 2015, the apps have

really sort of integrated into urban life and the urban landscape. So these apps are particularly super apps or have sort of tried to become super apps. Unlike Uber and Lyft, they don't just provide ride hailing and delivery, but also, you know, you can get your groceries delivered, you can get cleaners, masseuse, you can get someone to go stand in a line for you, you can ask someone to go to any shop in Jakarta, irrespective of what it is, and ask them even if it's like one thing you want picked up, you can basically ask someone to run all those errands for you. It's also a payment solution. So not only can you use GoPay and Grab has OVO on the app, but also in most retail stores. So it's not just,

you know, it's a kind of a one-stop shop mobility and urban lifestyle solution, I guess. And another thing to remember is that, again, unlike Uber and Lyft, in Jakarta, the vehicle of choice for most of this is the motorbike taxi, which really then changes the political economy of the ride-hailing space. And the last thing to know about Jakarta's use of these apps is that it's really cross-class. So you have street vendors on Gojek and Grab giving both food delivery and allowing their payment system because it's like cell phone to cell phone so you don't really need a bank account for it and you don't need a fancy like point of sale terminal to pay digitally. In kampongs which are the kind of

informal semi-formal neighborhoods of Jakarta where mostly the urban poor or lower middle class live, they extensively use Gojek for food delivery and for delivering like how the small businesses have popped up that use Gojek to deliver their kind of, you know, baked goods or clothes or whatever they're selling. So it's really all over the city and anything that you can think of, you can get done on Gojek and Grab. That's fascinating. It really shows how, you know, the way these apps work in Indonesia is quite different from, you know, what we experience with these kind of gig economy apps in the United States or the UK or what have you, right? You know, in particular, it sounds like these apps were kind of successful in moving toward that kind of super app position, I guess, as you describe it, where they're offering a whole range of different services, not just mobility options. And that was something that Uber,

you know, once said that it wanted to achieve, but seems to have pulled back on, right, and seems to have been unable to carry out. And now one of the really interesting pieces of that is how, and I think that started to come up in your answer there, right? Is how these apps kind of position themselves as creating a more efficient means of mobility, of distribution, but how those narratives hide all of the kind of human elements that are beneath the surface, right? That the person putting in the order on the app might not see, but that is essential for that very efficiency that the app claims the technology is providing. So I was hoping you could kind of expand on that and kind of explain how the human workers on these

apps are really essential to delivering on that efficiency promise. And it's not just because there's this really good algorithm that is distributing orders in an efficient way or whatever. Yeah, I think that's one of my favorite things to talk about. So I think when apps entered Jakarta, they were entering an existing form of transportation and an existing market. These informal motorbike taxis were already everywhere in the city. And the way they entered the space is initially sort of partnered with existing motorbike taxi drivers to get them to switch onto their platform. So a lot of these motorbike taxi drivers then, of course, brought their existing knowledge of the city, existing social relationships onto the app. And initially, I don't know if that number is still accurate, but initially,

approximately 50% of the motorbike taxi drivers on these apps were drivers who were existing informal bike taxi or who had been these, they call them O-Pang, so Ojek Pangkalan, so the existing O-Pang drivers. So a couple of things happen in Jakarta that make the app sort of not function. The technological utopia of frictionless mobility through these applications isn't necessarily made a reality. One, the city is at least initially not very well mapped out on Google Maps. That architecture of Google Maps is what at least Gojek relies on

for routing and for pinpointing locations. And that has changed now over time, but still there are all these side streets and shortcuts that Google Maps at least initially did not know. So the idea of, you know, very quick, efficient delivery was, of course, then dependent on these drivers knowing better shortcuts and better routes, especially using the motorbike, because at least initially,

Google's algorithm was not taking into account that there are some streets that are only possible by a motorbike taxi, as opposed to like a larger car and vehicle because there's sort of small roads that go through informal settlements etc so that's one thing another is of course a lot of the food kind of scene delivery options in jakarta exist in these humongous malls that you completely like get lost and there's no internal navigation system or maps within the mall. So that also relies on then the driver knowing that mall really well, or the driver going in and figuring out, you know, where is the KFC, let's say in this particular mall and the risk of not finding the KFC or not finding it quickly enough is also on the driver because if the delivery is late,

then the driver is the one who gets dinged in their customer review. So that's another one. But I think something that's very unique to Jakarta is the social relationships that the drivers have developed amongst themselves. And these social relationships are directly borrowed from what used to exist in the informal mobility market. As I said, Jakarta had these motorbike taxi drivers because they couldn't look to the state or to an employer to get any kind of benefits or any kind of insurance, they really developed internal mechanisms to protect themselves. And those mechanisms were basically relying on each other. So there was mutual aid, there was a lot of internally within the group,

looking out for one another, collecting dues, creating some sort of community insurance pools. And those relationships have really carried forth into the app-based world where drivers now rely on each other through this intricate, very extensive WhatsApp group networks and also in-person meeting networks to, you know, find up-to-date information about particular areas, to navigate particular social relationships that come in in urban spaces, you know, like this particular area, don't go to this area at 10 p.m., it's unsafe, there's a strike happening somewhere, or X area is very unfriendly, particularly to online motorbike taxi drivers, because the existing informal motorbike taxi drivers are, you know, hostile. And this is something that the apps don't take into account, because in the gaze of the app, the only thing that matters is supply and demand, right? And you're sort of matching supply to demand, but the driver knows better because

the driver navigates the streets on the ground. So the driver knows that urban space is really infused with social relationships and frictions and hurdles. But overcoming those then is also solely on the motorbike taxi driver. But that's not to say that these drivers are kind of like passive victims to this app. They have also, and maybe we can talk about this later, have really come up with very interesting ways to game the system, to survive the system, to resist the system, a whole slew of very innovative ingenuities and strategies that help them both understand the system, but also respond to it in a lot of ways. I think that's fascinating. And I think it really gets to how these driver relationships look quite different in the Global South, or at least in Jakarta. And I'm sure Jakarta is unique in its own ways from other cities in the Global South. about the different ways that the drivers respond to the environment around them and the particular social conditions of doing this work in Jakarta. But I'm wondering, because of how the app is just, as you say, concerned with supply and demand, making sure things get to where they're going,

when they need to get there, and not really thinking about these things that can potentially get in the way of that order or ride getting to where it needs to go, and thus kind of invisibilizing the importance of the human labor in the process. What does that mean for these workers' ability to kind of push back against the app if, say, a decision is made that is not in their interest or they're having to deal with conditions that make their ability to carry out that work really difficult to fulfill, I guess? Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question. And lots of people have theorized on what it means to resist technology in general, but these algorithmized systems in particular. And I don't want to make it seem like there is some sort of homogenous response that drivers have. Different drivers, different communities, different types of drivers have differential abilities and differential bandwidth to respond. The types of these responses vary from everything from what we call these kind of everyday forms of resistances where drivers will

turn off their GPS locations on their phones when they're in a particular area because they don't want orders from that area. But there's no way for them to tell the system that, right? There's no way for them to sort of toggle on and off spatial preferences. So they kind of find a workaround to that. That's one way. Another thing that drivers do is they're very, very active on Twitter, for example. And in response to actually like a system change that Gojek made, I think in like January last year, drivers started this viral Twitter trend and actually got Gojek to back down and respond. Then there's all these small things. So one thing, for example,

drivers in Jakarta, and this is again like a Jakarta in urban context problem, is they can't necessarily wait around on streets while the customer is coming or to be matched to a particular order. But they also understand proximity to a location is very important when they're being considered in the allocation system. But because of reasons of security, reasons of traffic, reasons of physical danger, they can't just be waiting around outside malls and outside McDonald's and outside parking lots. So they've figured out ways to create false GPS traces in particular areas and then just kind of move like a minute or two minutes away from there so they can wait under the shade or wait in there. They call them base camps.

They're these kind of physical spaces, DIY shelters that drivers have built for themselves. So, you know, there's a sort of a whole host of strategies. And of course, strategies around protests also, they're not as widespread as we would expect, given how extensive driver networks are in Jakarta. So, you know, you would expect that they have these robust communities that, you know, I've written about in some of those papers i've sent you that that latent political power would be turned into protests but we don't see as many protests as we would expect but of course they're like kind of small scale protests by some drivers as well and of course kind of the last resort is just kind of quitting by just leaving the app and moving on to some other kind of work but for drivers drivers who kind of stick it out, I think,

and those who are interested in this kind of resistance, because, you know, there's some drivers who are what I would call a kind of fatalistic drivers. So they'd be like, okay, we don't care what's happening. We're sort of now this is our job. We'll just take what it gives us. And then there are drivers who are very strategic, who even drivers themselves call like fighters.

So they want to kind of crack the system and understand the algorithm and figure out what's going on and figure out ways to resist that. And there's just, as I said, this whole host of ways of resistance that don't depend on logging out or boycotts, but are kind of a way of internally resisting while still being part of this kind of algorithmic system. If we take our focus off the workers just for a minute, because obviously I want to come back to that and understand more about their experiences and how they're navigating doing this work in Jakarta. But if we take our focus to the app level and what these companies are doing. How do, say, Gojek and Grab operate differently in Jakarta than how we might see them operate in other cities or how we might see them operate from,

say, an Uber and a Lyft in North America? How are they distinct from what we would see with other apps that are offering these kind of services? I think there are some subtle ways they're different and some more kind of major systemic ways that they're different. As we were sort of talking about the urban landscape of Jakarta, of course, very different from, let's say, Boston, where I am right now. So the idea or the dream that ride-hailing technologies could work the exact same way in Boston and New York and, you know, in Delhi and in Jakarta and Lahore is, that's what it is. It's a dream, right? There's just no way a one-size-fits-all app can enter these very diverse mobility markets and

urban landscapes and function the same way. This is something I think that most, unfortunately, most companies did not necessarily consider before they entered these markets. So Uber, definitely, there was a lot of resistance on the part of Uber to localize and to adapt to local conditions in the same way as, you know, some other companies have been more successful in doing, which is why Uber has not done that well in Southeast Asia. They've either had to be acquired or they have acquired or partnered with local companies. And again, I don't want to say that Southeast Asia, all of Southeast Asia is the same, because in fact, I did some research in Bangkok and Right Hill Technologies are working very differently there than in Jakarta. So, you know, even two cities who we would push together under the Southeast Asian cities label, you know, things worked very differently.

So one way in which, and this is sort of my favorite way in which Grab has localized in Jakarta, is they've started this thing called GrabNow shelters, which are basically offline queues. You know, you have a dispatcher drivers turn off their like online matching system and they just wait around and they write down their name on a whiteboard and a dispatcher says okay i need two motorbike taxis and then they erase their name from the whiteboard and they go it's basically exactly like the system that used to exist before the apps came out, but they just call it GrabNow and they're like, oh, look, we're just, we're so innovative,

but they're not. They're just basically mimicking the system that used to exist. And in this way, in this kind of setup, the only thing the app is used for is a payment solution. So you basically have a QR code on your phone and you match the QR code with the driver. And then when the driver ends the ride, the app just builds you on your cell phone. So that's the only thing that the app is really doing in this case. And the reason this happened was because Grab realized that one, because of traffic in Jakarta, it's not always more efficient to match you algorithmically on your phone. That you would probably find an idle motorbike taxi driver like right in front of you while you're walking around and be quicker as opposed to you waiting for this person to kind

of navigate through traffic and get to you. So that's one thing. The other thing they realized was that drivers, and this is a sort of a legacy of the pre-existing informal motorbike taxi market, that drivers really like to hang out in groups in Jakarta. You know, they're very social. They want to be with each other. It's very hard to move them from these clusters that they have formed. So I think Grab thought, well, I've talked to some drivers about it who have sort of said this is what Grab's thinking was, that if they made their own shelters, then it would be much easier to attract drivers to those spaces and manage supply as opposed to trying to manage these sticky spatial preferences that drivers develop.

When you said how do apps work differently and how do Grab and Gojek work differently, I think a key part of that is how do the drivers work differently? It's really the drivers who are forcing Grab and Gojek to change their system. And it's really the drivers who I would say really are the system. Because if the drivers are not willing to move to a location, the kind of spatial positioning optimization that undergirds a lot of these apps falls apart, right? If the drivers don't want to accept a particular ride, the efficiency of algorithmic matching just falls apart. And this is something that Uber, for example, is now suffering with because for the first time, Uber has started showing drivers

destinations in certain cities. So earlier it was blind acceptance. Drivers did not know what they were accepting, what destination they were accepting or rejecting. But now in places like London and California, they've been forced to kind of show drivers the destination. And this business model that relied on blind acquiescence from drivers suddenly has provided drivers with some agency and more information. And the system suddenly doesn't work because drivers are saying, oh, maybe we don't want to go to central London at 5pm during rush hours. So we'll just reject this. And this was something that was not baked into Uber's business

models. So similarly, Grab and Gojek's business models were not geared to have these drivers who have all of these very strong spatial preferences and strong preferences about how to work and where to work. So it's a constant, I think it's a constant tussle, which is what makes it interesting. There's no equilibrium necessarily, where I don't think I can say drivers are so powerful right now, because of course, tomorrow Gojek system could change in a way that really undercuts that power. So it's, you know, it's a constant cat and mouse game, but drivers definitely have a lot of agency and power in the way they're forcing, I think, Grab and Gojek to respond to their preferences and not just the other way around. I love how you reframe that question, not as how are the companies

changing the way that they work in different cities, but rather how are the workers in these cities forcing the companies to adapt to the way that they work? So I love that. And what you described there with the base camps and the way that workers kind of root themselves in certain spatial positions and have a different way of organizing their work than maybe we would see in the United States or Canada, for example. So I was hoping that you could describe a little bit more about how that works. What are these base camps? How do they work? And how do they act as, I guess, places where kind of drivers can get to know each other, can work together, can engage in this kind of mutual aid to make sure that different drivers have the

information that they need, that they're staying safe, all of these things that are really important to being able to do this kind of work. Before I kind of tell the story of Jakarta, just a really quick, I think, summary of what existing assumptions about digital labor organizations or formations are. So going into Jakarta, what I had read, you know, excellent, excellent work by these amazing scholars who'd been looking at very specific contexts. So, you know, most of the digital labor networks were mostly online. So based on Facebook or based on like kind of these chat rooms, they were mostly kind of these loose occupational networks that weren't really transformative in any way. They were mostly kind of these loose occupational networks that weren't really transformative in any way.

They were just providing this kind of small scale aid to each other. Or there was sort of on the other hand, there was this unionization and drive for protests and collective bargaining and legal action. And what I found in Jakarta was sort of somewhere in the middle. So these are not unions. They're not legally incorporated as unions. They don't call themselves unions. But they're very, very robust communities of solidarity networks that are geographically spread all across the city. There are thousands of these communities that then kind of link up to each other in different ways.

There's a lot of cross community communication and cross community networking. Most of these communities are cross company also. So it doesn't matter whether you work for Grab or Gojek. You know, what matters is they call themselves OJOL, so online OJOK. OJOK is the word for motorbike taxi in Jakarta. So they're online OJOK, so OJOL. They're very highly structured. Each community has their own elections, has their own, well, not elections. They have something similar to elections, but let's call them elections for now. They have, you know, a treasurer, a vice president, a president, you know, someone who's the IT person. They have this thing called the

emergency response system. So the U urc where different communities sort of volunteer a person to the urc network and this is for all across jakarta the urc whatsapp group all you have to do is report an accident or you know some kind of trouble that they've had on they call it troubles or trouble on the road and the urc sort of sends a representative so it's kind of like their own emergency response system that's very, very quick. They have things like extensive mutual aid. So everything from insurance that they have collected internally within the community to more kind of out there things like they call it an ambulance escort, which is basically any time a driver or a driver's family needs an ambulance and they get into an ambulance, that route, the pickup and drop-off location of

the driver of the ambulance is blasted across the ambulance escort WhatsApp group. And then each community's representative who's on the WhatsApp group will tell their community that, oh, this ambulance is passing through our area. So then they send like a couple of people to escort the ambulance to clear traffic and make sure the ambulance gets to their location in time. There's a lot of investment in identity formation. So that kind of battles that anonymization that we think is a part of app work. Their logos, their emblems, their names. These emblems are traded when they go to each other's base camps. There's anniversary events.

So each community will sort of celebrate an anniversary event and invite all their friends in the area and all the other communities in their network. But I think the biggest sort of difference between Jakarta and other places that I have seen be studied for digital labor communities is the base camp. And these are DIY shelters that drivers have built. And there are

hundreds of them all over Jakarta. And these are spaces where drivers in that community can rest, charge their phones, there's always some electricity and electric outlet there, watch TV, get to know each other, get mentorship from senior members. And if they're on a route, and you know, they're in an area where they're tired, they can go to someone else's base camp, community base camp and rest there. So these spaces have really become what drivers actually say themselves. They're like, this is our second home. So whereas in the US and, you know, at least narratives that we hear about app work in the US, you know, they're sort of, they're very sanitized. There's cold, dark, terrible work experiences, which they are, of course, even in Jakarta, there's a lot of precarity. There's a lot of exploitation.

There's a lot of struggles with income and work hours. But drivers have found a way to mediate all of those problems in a way that is very, you know, contextually driven. So these base camps are actually reminiscent of how the motorbike taxis used to organize earlier, which was these small pockets of geographically kind of bounded stations that they've developed. And Basecamps, even though app workers don't need stations anymore, they've developed their Basecamps. So the Basecamp is not a place of work anymore. It's more a place of leisure and relaxation. And that has then allowed drivers to develop this narrative of friendship and kinship and community that helps them create very effective solidarity with each other that goes beyond just their company

and their daily occupational issues, but really is about them being there for each other as friends and as brothers. They call themselves brothers on the road. And they have these amazing slogans. One of them is that we might not be blood, but we are, you know, closer than family. Or that this is, you know, being part of these communities is a calling of the soul. So there's all these like ideas of being each other's family on the road that I think translates into very different solidarity than we see in the US where the conversations are around more formal structures like unionization and protests. Yeah, this is one thing that I found fascinating when I was reading your work and

really encouraging, right? And really uplifting. It sounds like these workers have been able to kind of develop these structures in an environment where they don't necessarily have, certainly not support from their employer, and also probably not very much support from the government as well to be able to protect their rights and things like that. So they've taken it upon themselves to build these structures to help one another out as much as they can, and to kind of provide these functions that are not being provided by the employer, by the government. And I'm assuming that maybe the

culture of unionization in the way that we would understand it in the West isn't there as much, and maybe that's why they are developing these particular structures that work better for their situation. And so I wanted to ask, just to follow up on that, one of the things that is seen as an issue in the United States and in the West when it comes to these gig companies and why it's seen that workers should have a union to be able to push back is when, say, the algorithm changes and that disadvantages workers, or when the companies unilaterally cut pay, and then these drivers who were making so much last week now all of a sudden are making a lot less, and the company says that if you drive more, you'll be able to make this up, right? And so what I'm wondering is, do the workers in Jakarta face those similar kinds of issues with algorithms changing and pay rates being cut? And do they have a way to respond to that through these organizations and structures that they have set up to kind of meet their needs. Yeah. So one thing to remember is that in Jakarta, entitlements of what work is and what work

provides you and what an employer provides you are very different because the context of the employment of the labor market is not one where the employer is necessarily giving you health benefits and social security and a pension. So the alternatives for a lot of these workers are also semi-formal or informal or contract work. That's important to remember. So they are not necessarily, in all my interviews, I would ask about whether they want to be, whether drivers want to be, you know, recognized as employees or they want, you know, XYZ benefits from Go-Jek. And that distinction of employee versus independent contractor is not one that resonates necessarily, because even if they were an employee, they wouldn't be getting a lot

of benefits from their employer, right? So that's one thing that's important to remember. And the other is unions are, of course, helpful because they give workers a collective voice and allow for some forms of collective action. In the case of Jakarta, and I'm not going to say that they're necessarily 100% effective all the time, these collective community structures that drivers have formed actually do help them mobilize their collective voice. So because of the latent political power that these communities hold, you know, there are thousands of members across Jakarta,

their information networks are so efficient. Companies have actually developed very extensive outreach with drivers. So they have dedicated teams who actually go to these base camps and these communities and are in touch with the community leaders for a lot of the Ojo communities. They say, you know, there's, of course, not perfect, but there's an attempt to do a lot of consultation with them. And as I said, like drivers find ways

to flex their collective power without protests as well. So the Gojek Kanapa hashtag movement that happened where Gojek Kinapa means like, where is Gojek? The drivers made viral and was covered and were covered with like all the media and like Gojek responded and Grab jumped in about a system change that sort of was cutting drivers' space and changing the way drivers were being matched to rides. So that was one way that drivers, you know, kind of have some sort of collective power over Gojek and Grab. That cuts both ways, though,

because Grab and Gojek are so aware of these communities, they are also always intervening in these communities. So they're trying to co-opt leaders to work with them. And, like, you know, there's some communities, there's this kind of rift in the communities, there are communities that are independent and communities that work with Grab. And Grab has actually hired some communities to manage their shelters. There's, of course, a lot of, you know, back and forth going on in terms of the relationship between the company and the

communities. But even without being a union, they're able to get the attention of the companies, which is, of course, one of the most important things. One of my favorite ways of collective action that I saw drivers undertake in my last trip was the one restaurant posted a sign outside saying that no Ojo will be allowed inside the restaurant. And if they're coming for delivery pickup, they have to stand outside for whatever reason, because like customers get uncomfortable or whatever the reason was. This was a restaurant that was very highly rated on Google. It was like 4.8 stars, I think, or 4.5 stars before this happened. And then one driver took a photo of this, posted it on Twitter. And then all these like thousands of drivers launched this hive attack on this restaurant's Google reviews page. And that restaurant within

a couple of hours went from 4.8 stars to 1.3 stars. And the entire review section, and I like, I was kind of live watching this happening, like, entire review section was just, you know, they discriminate against us and do nothing without the ojo and you know your linus for delivery and the restaurant eventually alerted google so google kept trying to remove these reviews while they were going on but there was kind of again this back and forth between google and the restaurant and the drivers and just kept going on and on and on and on and i think eventually they got their rating back but at least for bit, drivers were able to show how much power they wield just because there's so many. And these kind of narratives, again, of solidarity really helped mobilize them in any crisis.

Because, you know, if you do something to one Ojo, you're doing it to all Ojo. And Ojo are so many in number that everyone is a bit, I think, scared of what they could do, even if they don't do anything right now. I love that. And thanks for telling that story. That's fantastic. You know, obviously, it's fascinating to kind of get that perspective on how these workers are, you know, able to push back against the company. And, you know, it's no surprise that the company are then also trying to intervene into their forms of power, right? Their ability to push back. And I'm wondering, because you talked about earlier how, you know, when these companies arrived, they tried to get some of those traditional motorcycle taxi workers to join the apps. But obviously, a lot of those

workers still remain and haven't joined Grab or Gojek. So what is the relationship between these app-based workers and the more traditional workers? And how did that relationship start? And how has it kind of evolved over time, I guess? Yes. So Gojek and Grab did try to get existing motorbike taxi drivers onto their system. And that was a big reason why they were very quickly able to onboard so many drivers, because entire communities of drivers got onto the app, following their leader together. There was a lot of violence and tensions between the Opang, who are the traditional drivers, and the OJOL, who are the online drivers, because of course, Opang had monopoly over this entire

very lucrative mobility space. And this new entrance came in and disrupted them. And so unfortunately, it wasn't even the Gojek was the disruptor. Physical violence and the tensions that were faced were on the backs of the drivers, right? The drivers were the one navigating these challenges actually on the road, seemingly with not a lot of help from Gojek, according to drivers. And that's actually one of the reasons that these communities of online drivers started being formed, because they were like, okay, we need to do something. Initially, they started hanging out, and then they started talking about all these collective experiences of marginalization. And then they ended up, these WhatsApp groups started being formed.

And then from that, Basecamp started being formed. So tensions with the OPANG were one of the biggest reasons, one of the biggest push for collectivization for the OJOL. Interestingly, and again, this is again another example of how the drivers are the ones who are navigating these tensions on the roads and resolving them. Also, the online drivers actually then started negotiating once it formed communities started negotiating with the opang and these community agreements community level neighborhood level agreements started

being formed where the neighborhoods opang and the neighborhoods ojol would kind of agree that okay ojol will not pick up anyone from this, and they start calling them red zones, from this red zone that's in the OPAN territory. And then we won't pick up anyone from this territory. The app, of course, doesn't care about these agreements. So every time you would get like a pickup from a red zone, the app driver would call their customer and say, could you move like 500 meters to the left? Because I can't pick you up from there that's one thing and that now you know incomes for the informal motorbike taxi drivers have dwindled their power has dwindled the ojol are so much more powerful they're very visible in their power also you know they have these base camps so interestingly a couple of opang that

I interviewed in Jakarta were like oh those aren't drivers they're like gangs because you know the online drivers just have so much visible clout on the streets and the the informal motorbike taxi drivers are now so few in number and just they don't have any power or any clout so the tables have sort of turned in that power relationship where earlier the online drivers were afraid of the traditional drivers and now it's the other way around. Now there's, I think there's very, very few pockets in Jakarta is what drivers report where there are any remaining tensions. There's one or two train stations where there's still some tensions because traditional drivers still have a hold there. But for the most part, on the backs of these online drivers,

those tensions have been resolved. And interestingly, even the narratives of solidarity within the OJOL or the online drivers are very expansive and they cover anyone who generates income through Grab or GoJek or through mobile apps. Those narratives of solidarity don't extend to the Opang, even though they're also motorbike taxi drivers. So there is still that distinction where the Ojo are like, we are more modern and we are

more, we are sort of, you know, we use cell phones and we are more nimble. And Opang are kind of old and they're from the previous world. And, you know, they haven't kept up with the times. So, yeah, there's definitely those. It's interesting also for the drivers to see the drivers themselves inherit and mimic this language of modernization and technological superiority almost in some ways when talking about the Opah,

even though they themselves do know intimately how inappropriate some of these systems can be for the road. What you say about the conflicts between the drivers early on reminds me very much of what I read about when Uber entered Mexico and Brazil and other markets like that, where, again, they kind of came in, flooded the taxi market that was previously controlled by these taxi companies, and all of a sudden wages fell. And the traditional taxi drivers took it out on these new ride-hailing drivers, right? And the companies did very little to support those drivers. So it sounds very similar in that way. But again, obviously,

there are distinctions in Jakarta, and I'm sure that other cities would have their kind of unique aspects to what happened as well, right? Just to end, I wanted to ask you, what has kind of happened in the past year? Because obviously, we're in this pandemic right now. We know in North American Europe, that's affected app-based workers a lot. In the United States, it's pushed a lot of workers to demand more unionization rights or employee recognition, more benefits, things like that. But it has also made their work less safe because it's made them open to potentially catching COVID-19 and that could make them really sick. It's affected their incomes if they were providing rides to people initially, but those who were

doing food delivery and stuff, they've seen the business increase. So you've described how these workers have formed bonds of solidarity and have found ways to work together and to kind of represent their collective interests, even though they are employed through these apps, right? So have these structures held up during COVID-19? And how has the pandemic affected these workers? They struggled. Jakarta went into not just didn't just go into lockdown, but the government banned motorbike taxis during COVID, at least initially, because there's no way to socially distance yourself on the back of a motorcycle, right? So a lot of these drivers who relied on ride hailing, even within these apps, had to switch to food delivery,

because that was the only thing that was available. But then in a lot of areas, lots of restaurants closed down. So there's just less business also. So yes, they've struggled. These structures still have seemingly held up well. I did a survey back in March, no, back in May, sorry, of drivers that I had earlier talked to. And I got around like 350 drivers to talk about their experiences with mutual aid during this pandemic. And drivers, yeah, reported extensive material and emotional support from their communities and from other drivers. They, of course, reported that the government and platform were sort of the least supportive. So a lot of drivers were relying on these existing informal infrastructures of support that they had developed pre-pandemic. I will say that the response of the companies in Indonesia has been different than the response of Uber and Lyft. So whereas, you know, during the pandemic, Uber and Lyft were acting like this is all the states, they're sort of passing the ball to the state, right? Like, you figure this out, these workers, you know, need help. So the

state needs to do something. In Indonesia, though, both the state and the companies particularly did deploy extensive, well, extensive in the context of what platforms around the world have done. So, you know, extensive with like caveat aid. They've been distributing food vouchers to drivers. You know, they instituted a VH guarantee almost immediately, helped drivers install protective partitions for those who had cars, distributed PPE, even imported PPE and masks for their drivers. Kojak announced a relief fund back in March that amounted to approximately like 25% of all the manager's salaries were being donated to that relief fund. And of course, a lot of this, I would say, is probably just PR exercise. But even in terms of that CSR window dressing kind of work, they're so far ahead of what Uber and Lyft were claiming they were able to do.

And the state also specifically targeted a lot of aid delivery to these online motorbike taxi drivers post lockdowns. You have to be in Jakarta to see how visible Gojek and Grab drivers are there. They're basically like an essential part of the urban landscape. And so there were some complaints that actually the government was prioritizing online app workers and leaving out other precarious workers from their release plans. The other caveat is that the president, President Jokowi, right now is a huge supporter of Gojek. And Gojek is also sort of considered like an Indonesian asset.

It's one of the first Indonesian unicorns and decacorns. So yeah, the Ojo did, I mean, it wasn't enough relief given the extent of how much precarity they have had to face. But when you compare it to what was happening in the US with Uber and Lyft drivers or like Instacart workers, it still feels much more extensive, both because the community-centered relief that has been distributed within the OJOL communities, but also based on what the companies and the state was doing. That's really interesting because it sounds like because they have been able to form these structures and make themselves visible in this way, if the companies or the government hadn't helped them, then they

would have had a lot more leverage to then push back and kind of demand something be done or actually show their anger in a way that, as you say, other precarious workers might not have been able to do that. I wonder, just to end, if there's anything that we didn't get to that you think is important that we understand about, I guess, how these apps and how this kind of app work differs in the global South as compared to, you know, what we more often hear about in the global North. I guess just as a summary, I think looking at the existing socioeconomic conditions, the labor market conditions, the socio-technical practices that the app is embedding itself in is extremely important for any kind of analysis of what the app is doing. The app, the technology

will come in and it'll change some things, but it'll also be changed itself by users. So, you know, users always domesticate technology and transform its use into things that were never even imagined by the designers of the technology. So in Jakarta's case, you know, the fact that it was a pre-existing informal mobility motorbike taxi market existed with particulare. there was extensive mobile use and social media use in Jakarta that doesn't necessarily exist in other parts of the global south across all classes. It wasn't just, you know, the kind of rich sitting on social media talking. But I think in like 2012, Jakarta was called like the Twitter capital of the world because the most tweets in the world were kind of sent out from Jakarta. So I think that's important to remember and that also obviously helps both

familiarity with the app but also what other technologically enabled relationships can be formed in the mobility market by drivers. I think existing ideas of entitlements from the state and the employer are extremely important to consider. You know, and just like kind of how people move in the city, like how do people get from point A to point B? Do people like walking? Is it a walkable city or not? Is it a city that's mapped? How much informality exists? You know, the fact that in Jakarta drivers can co-opt space and build base camps in different areas is something that would be unthinkable in the u.s right like drivers are not going to be able to build an entire humongous structure on their own and get an electrical connection there and put a tv there and put like a coffee maker there you know on like in the middle of the city

and they're like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these base camps. They're not hidden. So the informality of the urban space and also the decentralization from the federal government. So there are kind of like community or more community oriented governance practices that regulate urban space that have really helped drivers make some of these connections. So I think all of those things are extremely essential to look at when we're looking at the implications of a platform or any technology entering, which I

think is why I sort of bristle a little bit when conversations in the US are sort of almost universalized in some way, because, you know, the context of the US and even parts of Europe are so different from a lot of these cities. And so I really wish that people would start creating these caveats in their conversations where they acknowledge the fact that when they're talking about the US, they're talking about a very specific labor history and urban history and history of socio-technical practices, which will inform their analysis of what is going on. Yeah, I completely agree. I love that. We should support these workers in the United States as

they fight for employee recognition and unionization, because that is how they see their path toward gaining the rights that they need. But then that will look different in other parts of the world. In Jakarta, it will look like supporting these mutual aid organizations that have cropped up and their ability to kind of exert their power in the way that works in their particular conditions. And, you know, it'll look different in maybe Eastern Europe and South America and wherever else. So I really appreciate you taking the time to chat today to provide this perspective, to give us some more insight, you know, outside of the kind of North American, Western European bubble. So thanks so much. Thanks so much.

Ritha Khadri is a PhD candidate in urban information systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You can follow her on Twitter at at Khadrida. That's Q-A-D-R-I-D-A. You can also follow me at at Paris Marks and you can follow the show at at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save 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 I put into making this show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening.