Precarization platform: conflicts in the regulation of work in delivery apps

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze how Brazil’s Labor Court has been deliberating on legal conflicts involving delivery workers and delivery app companies. The results of a survey of sentences by the TRT-10, in which delivery workers and the main application companies operating in Brazil appear as parties, are confronted in three fronts: the argument that the relationship between couriers and companies is governed by flexibility and autonomy; the approximation between uberization and outsourcing; and the unjustified termination of couriers’ accounts on the platforms. Then, the article addresses the assertion of the technological novelty of digital platforms, which permeates the companies’ rhetoric, and which is a relevant element in the Court’s sentences. The criticism of this assertion is situated in the Brazilian context of historical informal work, of the management of survival strategies of the black and marginalized youth, and of a previous process of precarization of labor. Finally, the article considers the role of labor regulation institutions, especially Brazil’s Labor Court, in safeguarding the rights of these workers and in applying legal limits to this type of work.