This document discusses research into the risks and solidarity among Deliveroo food delivery riders in Edinburgh. It provides context on the growth of platform labor and gig work. The study aims to take a holistic view of who does this work and why, understand the risks involved, and how community and organizing help workers cope. Methods will include surveys, interviews, observation and analysis of social media to explore how risk is experienced differently and the role of mutual aid among workers.

1. R I S K A N D S O L I D A R I T Y A M O N G D E L I V E R O O
R I D E R S I N E D I N B U R G H
D R . K A R E N G R E G O R Y
K . G R E G O R Y @ E D. A C . U K
@ C L A U D I A K I N C A I D

2. INTEREST IN THE GIG ECONOMY
• Precarious work, under employment, and
unemployment
• Entrepreneurial responses to precarity
• Resilience to crisis: New networks, new opportunities?
• What of solidarity or mutual aid?

3. RESEARCH CONTEXT
• Sharing or “gig” economy research taking place in London and New York.
• Less known about how sharing economy is adopted in smaller cities in UK
and US. Some research coming from Australia.
• Legal battles & legal challenges tend to dominate the narrative: Uber,
Deliveroo, Airbnb. New worker categories needed?
• Interesting work on new forms of organizing via tech (Woodcock, Irani)
• We don’t see the whole worker, we see “new forms of work”, “future of
work.” Is this correct?
– Healy, J. Nicholson, D. and Pekarek, A. 2017. “Should We Take the Gig Economy Seriously?”
Labour and Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work. 27(3): 232-248.

4. “NAILING JELLY”
• Use of online platforms for managing work grew exponentially in the
decade following the 2007-8 financial crisis.
• Research to date has focused on particular platforms.
• “Crowd work cannot be distinguished precisely from other forms of
work but forms part of a continuum of casual, on-call, temporary or
other forms of contingent work.”
• Gender: “Crowd workers are relatively evenly balanced between men
and women and are more likely to be in younger age-groups,
although crowd work can be found in all life stages.”
• Flexibility is prized, but there are numerous risks. Health, overwork,
underwork, pay.
– Huws, U., Spencer, N.. Syrdal, D. and Holts, K. 2017 “Work in the European Gig
Economy: Research results from the UK, Sweden, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands,
Switzerland and Italy.” FEPS.

5. DELIVEROO IN UK: EDINBURGH?
• Deliveroo is estimated to have at least 20,000 drivers and cyclists across
84 cities in 12 countries. In 2016: Deliveroo (Guardian, 2017) claimed to
have “3,000 riders in the UK – a number that is rising weekly.”
• Deliveroo riders have community. Offline meeting space. Riders know one
another. Highly visible in the city
• Online forums, social media, and What’s App foster relationships and
communication
• Cycling experience is common among individuals I have met.
• Students and younger workers, who prize ”fitness” and “flexibility.”
• The app is central to the work experience. Yet, the backend of Deliveroo is
relatively obscured from workers.
• Worker organizing is happening here (and throughout UK: Leeds,
Nottingham, Brighton for example) Media here?

6. WHY THIS STUDY?
• To take a ”whole worker” (McAlevey 2014) approach to understanding
platform labor.
• To fill in gaps in understanding of who works in the gig economy and
why, as well as the pathways afforded (or delimited) by this work.
• To better understand the nature of risks posed by this work.
• To understand what happens when the work “goes wrong”, particularly
for full-time workers.

7. RISK & SOLIDARITY
• Defining risk: safety, insecurity, costs, investment, time, data privacy.
• Seeing risk beyond work: health, opportunities, financial security,
time/work balance, education, mobility, data shadows?
• Understanding how risk is differently experienced by part-time and full-
time workers, as well as specific to student workers.
• Understanding how community and relations buffer (if at all) risk. What
is relationship between worker organizing and mutual aid?
• How is solidarity conceptualized among workers?
• If mutual aid projects exist, what are they?

8. METHODS AND DATA
• Qualitative work:
– Survey deployed via social media and in worker forums (December
2017- January 2018) via Deliveroo contacts.
– In-depth interviews (January 2018-March 2018)
– Embodied Ethnography & participant observation (March 2018-April
2018)

9. OTHER FORMS OF DATA
• Social media data: Youtube videos made by workers (and Deliveroo);
Twitter stream and hashtags; Facebook posts (ethics here.)
• Worker forums & student forums (ethics and access here)
• Worker Data (during embodied ethnography) & GPS data (how does
Deliveroo understand Edinburgh?; Frank “a living entity of its own.”)
• Worker diaries?
• Media narratives & online accounts (how is media narrative shaping
worker consciousness?)

10. THE STATUS OF PROPAGANDA?
• Worker experience videos?
• Journalistic accounts, first-person accounts
• Documentaries
• Digital media ecology (brand building, networking)
encouraging reporting on self employment.

11. ”It isn’t the no-hope “McJob” that it’s often portrayed as by its
detractors. You can work full-time and earn a living at it, and many do.
But, as with many zero-hours contract jobs – which courier work is –
there is a downside. I’ll get to that later.
The job gives you a front-row view of Nottingham’s restaurant scene
and street life; you see the moods of the city change from morning
until night. Personally, I get a thrill out of locking horns with the traffic
at afternoon rush hour and still making a quick delivery. Weekend
evenings are the worst times; not for deliveries, since these are peak
times, but for rowdy crowds and drinkers spilling out of the pubs. You
need a thick skin for this job. And anyway, if you can’t ride a bike uphill
and down dale with a giant box on your back, in the rain, for several
hours a day, what can you do? It’s training for life.”
https://www.leftlion.co.uk/read/2017/december/a-food-courier-in-
notts#.WiPEOgci4BM.twitter