A nova morfologia do trabalho e a consciência de classe: uma análise a partir do trabalho de entregadores de aplicativo

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the social and economic determinations in the labor process of delivery app workers that enhance or obstruct the development of these workers’ awareness of their class position in the relations of production, that is, the consciousness (or not) of their position as working class. The delivery work done by apps grew exponentially in Brazil and in the world during the covid­19 pandemic. However, this growth was not accompanied by better wages and working conditions for app workers. The new morphology of labor, understood as the recent changes in labor relations on a global scale, currently takes on particular contours, derived from the advent of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), among them, the use of digital platforms (apps), which attribute particularities to the labor processes in various sectors of the production and circulation of goods. However, these changes do not represent a breach on the attributes of work in capitalist society, work that aims at valuing value, that is, subsumes labor to capital. Therefore, the new morphology of labor has both points of continuity and of discontinuity with the flexible accumulation regimen and the Toyotist labor organization model, points that ought to be analyzed in light both of the critique of political economy and of a perspective of proletarian organization against Capital’s offensives. With that in sight, the starting point of the research was the relationship between labor, consciousness and class consciousness, studied from a Cultural­Historical Psychology optic, as well as from the optics of Marxist authors who study the subject of class consciousness. From these, it is understood that the proletariat’s class consciousness is connected to the class’s social existence and must be analyzed in its processuality, according to the real movement and determinations of class struggle in each period, which produces specific advances and setbacks. Thus, based on the studied bibliography coupled with the data collected through semi-structured interviews with app delivery workers — that outlined an overview of working conditions, remuneration contract, occupational health and political organization of the category — categories of analysis for discussing the results of the research were sought, concerning the development of delivery workers’ perception about their class condition, namely: flexibility, informalization and amateurization of work, algorithmic management, dependent self-management and the city as a workplace. In this sense, it was concluded that, although the morphology of labor in app delivery work presents several obstacles to the delivery drivers’ self-recognition of class, the conditions in which the work takes place and the category’s organization strategies make it possible to understand that these are precarious workers.