Abstract
Delivery app services have expanded their activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, their workers have experienced even more social precarity. This paper investigates the relations between State action and the vulnerability faced by these workers during the pandemic context. It does so by following a two-fold methodological approach: based on research of legal documents and on literature review, the analysis ranges from the examination of concrete cases and norms to the consideration of underlying social theory concepts. In its first section, the paper analyses legislative and judicial documents and actions that conform delivery app workers’ social precarity, so as to present the normative structure and the institutional dynamic that have operated in order to erode the incidence of social security rights, as well as of labor rights in contracts between delivery workers (contracted party) and digital platforms (contracting party). In the following section, the paper examines some theoretical categories - such as “espoliative contracts”, “financialization” and “genocidal agenda” -, which allow a better understanding of the current patterns of relations between these parties. One may notice how, at the same time, delivery app workers are classified as “essential” but are continuously exposed to the sacrifice of themselves and their families, due to the lack of basic health and safety conditions at work.
Keywords:
Covid-19; Delivery App Workers; Precarity