Profile, employment situation, and expectations of digital delivery platform workers in the city of Paraná.

Abstract

On this occasion, and as part of an ongoing project on digital platform delivery workers operating in the city of Paraná (capital of the province of Entre Ríos), our attention is drawn to the way in which facets of job insecurity and atypical employment modalities affect this workforce. This calls our attention to delve deeper into the profiles of these workers, the working conditions under which they perform their activities, and the main problems affecting them. After intersecting this information as a diagnostic snapshot of Paraná platform delivery workers, we explored their expectations regarding union representation (nonexistent at the local level) and specific protective legislation (nonexistent at the national level) that would allow them to improve their current situation.
The research focus is therefore on how the relentless advance of new technologies within the world of work modifies and makes labor relations more flexible, focusing on a segment of on-demand work (Madariaga et al., 2019) that primarily attracts young people with weak employment trajectories marked by a shortage of formal or decent work—according to the ILO—in these times of economic stagnation, financial speculation, and state austerity. These hinder access to formal employment and make it difficult for young people, especially, to enter the labor market.
We argue that, like Del Bono (2019), the algorithmic mediation introduced by digital technology gives rise to new forms of work characterized by the shifting of certain boundaries at various levels—working hours, wages, autonomy, control, etc.—which raises multiple questions in the field of collective bargaining and regulation. We incorporated into our analysis, as a factor that hinders the recognition of rights that platforms have promoted, the identity attribute of workers perceiving themselves as independent, autonomous, and intermediaries between the supply and demand of services, a configuration that seems to have consolidated as an employment relationship.
Regarding the methodology, it corresponds to quantitative work, using primary sources based on the processing of the Survey of Platform Delivery Workers in Paraná (October 2024). The survey was administered by students from the UNER School of Social Work to delivery workers from the PedidosYa and Rappi apps. The sampling was non-probabilistic and purposive, combining digital and in-person fieldwork at the workers' usual waiting areas.
We maintain that firsthand research on this group of workers provides valuable information from their own perspectives and expectations, as well as advancing our understanding of how technological changes are transforming the current labor market, posing—in our view—new challenges in terms of labor regulation and social protection that are necessary but still pending in Argentina.