The precarization of work relations

the uber case and local development

Abstract

The precariousness of labor relations is present in various productive segments, having intensified in the last forty years, especially due to technological and communication advances that have gained more space towards the expropriation of the workforce to meet neoliberal policies, at the same time that they have surrounded themselves with unprecedented means of control. The growing number of unemployed people facilitates this logic of capital, when they discard the worker or make payment on demand. The technology companies, constituting themselves as private government, impose their own rules and create their own laws, to the extent that they exert astonishing power over the municipalities in which they are interested in setting up. While some time ago occupations without labor rights were admitted as "odd jobs", recently, as seen among transportation drivers through digital platforms, reveal workers with post-graduate degrees, performing the activity for years, uninterruptedly, as the only source of income, with the belief that, in fact, they are self-employed, repeating the discourse of the giants commanded by algorithms. The corporate narrative reaches the subjectivity of the workers, who start to ignore their peers, in an unequivocal disdain for collective mobilization. From my experience as a professional labor lawyer, the guiding question emerged: what do app drivers say about exercising this activity that has no labor guarantees? To answer this question, this study aimed to analyze the precariousness of labor relations in the activity of drivers who use the Uber app as income generation, even without labor guarantees, with a view to producing a technical contribution in the field of education, with characteristics of social innovation and focused on local development. The research, of a descriptive nature and qualitative approach, was carried out with fourteen drivers of the Uber app in the city of Belo Horizonte who were willing to answer a semi-structured interview. The interviews were recorded with their consent and later transcribed using the thematic content analysis technique, with the support of the webQDA program. The data indicated that the employees worked long hours, without vacations, sometimes without breaks during the day, and with lower pay as of 2016. The feeling of insecurity was another major finding among the interviewees. Despite the lack of labor protection in this activity, it was perceived that it is highly relevant because it meets the immediate needs of the workers. Another finding was the collective disarticulation, resulting from the individualism with which the work is executed, despite empathy actions within the group, but which are restricted to charity, which denotes the relevance of promoting awareness actions and critical reflection about the importance of collective articulation that contemplate the public composed of more than six hundred thousand drivers in Brazil, Thirty-five thousand of them are only in Belo Horizonte, through the dissemination of information such as podcasts, resulting in appreciation of the workers of digital platforms, which provides an improvement in the quality of life and local development.