Work and resistance in Germany's platform economy - Interview with Oğuz Alyanak
The Gig Economy ProjectShow Notes
Germany is Europe’s largest economy, and it’s also a key site for Europe’s digital labour platforms, both as a major market and a source of venture capital funding for start-up’s in the gig economy.
Berlin, in particular, is the second most popular city in Europe for venture capital funding, and is the home of Delivery Hero, one of the world’s largest food delivery platforms, and Gorillas, the first European tech start-up to become a ‘Unicorn’ - achieve a valuation over €1 billion - within a year.
And where there is digital labour platforms, there is platform workers. Over the past 18 months, Berlin has been one of the hotbeds of platform worker resistance in Europe, most notably at Gorillas, where workers have dared to shutdown warehouses at a moment’s notice to fight for better working conditions, and established the first Worker’s Council at a food delivery platform.
Oğuz Alyanak, a cultural anthropologist at the Technical University of Berlin, has been following all of this through his work as a post-doctorate with Fair Work, the academic-action project which rates digital labour platforms based on how fair there working conditions are. Alyanak was one of the authors of the German Fair Work platform ratings report in March, and has also been actively involved in the movement of food and grocery delivery workers in the city, attending demonstrations and picket lines.
The Gig Economy Project caught up with Alyanak in Berlin to get his thoughts on the movement in Berlin and the platform economy in Germany more broadly. In this podcast, we discuss:
01:30: The Berlin food and grocery delivery workers movement
17:12: The recent jobs cuts in the sector
23:30: What’s distinct about Germany’s platform economy?
28:16: The problem of sub-contracting in the platform economy
33:50: The platform economy beyond transport delivery
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