Before working as an Uber driver, Enrique* spent years as a mechanic in an employed position and, later, as an independent contractor in the D.C. area. As a Central American immigrant and a father of four without a college degree... 1/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X20949266

Uber was appealing. He said: "Uber and Lyft created a new way of living. They created something good for some people. Some people got in big, big-time debts. Some people saw themselves making 4k dollars a month… [I] could go home and go to sleep. It was actually a job." 2/

But this honeymoon period did not last. After 4 yrs on the platform, Enrique felt he had been tricked by the company. On May 8, 2019, at D.C.’s National Airport, Enrique and 40 other drivers disrupted in-bound traffic. 3/

For 20 min, they slowly circled the arrival lanes in their vehicles & honked horns in unison. A taxi driver later called the event a “fake strike.” But to Enrique, the action was a step in the right direction: “What we accomplished, it was not big. But it sent a message.” 4/

This paper examines worker agency in the platform economy in one city for 3 yrs prior to, and 6 months after, the 2019 Uber strike. We ask what new dynamics btwn labor and technology mean for the production, accumulation, and contestation of power. 5/

Our argument is simple: The big innovation of the Uber platform is the creation of a “just-in-place” worker. Akin to those materials for assembly lines that arrived just-in-time for production, so too do drivers end up in just the right place for Uber’s services to be offered. 6/

The Uber platform relies on algorithms not to schedule its drivers as much as to *place* its workers where it wants them across the city. What is at stake in the struggles of drivers like Enrique are the conditions under which Uber can and cannot create “just-in-place” labor. 7/

Although Uber’s attempts to keep workers “just-in-place” generally isolate and disempower them, in specific moments these efforts can actually enable (!) new modes of organization. At DCA, Uber unwittingly provided opportunity for collaboration and conspiracy among workers. 8/

What we find: Drivers created temp moments of solidarity bc they were emplaced and could therefore overcome a fundamental condition of the Uber workplace: the socio-spatial atomization of workers. But, drivers lost out because of how Uber manipulated tech in that place. 9/

A snippet from Mark, a driver who didn't mind the workplace atomization: "I don’t have any real interest in socializing with other Uber drivers. Partly I think that—and I don’t know this—but partly I think that I’m, hm, how to say this? Overqualified for the job." 10/

78% of the 40 drivers we interviewed in 2016 said they had never had a meal or drink with another Uber driver. In 2019 we found the exact same pattern, which can breed a sense of superiority among drivers. 11/

Drivers that we interviewed and surveyed frequently discussed other workers on the Uber platform not as colleagues or peers but as competitors to be beat or unknowing dupes to be pitied. 12/

The socio-spatial isolation of the Uber workplace seems to have a point: to keep Uber drivers in the dark. The drivers that we interviewed and surveyed did not understand the
rules or policies of the platform, a significant barrier in itself to worker agency. 13/

Of the drivers in this study, 83% knew what percentage of their fares Uber took but 38% did not know how Uber determined the amount drivers took home on a single fare. Enrique said: 14/

"If you ask any driver, if you ask any Uber driver right now, when they signed up, did they know how much they were going to get paid per mile? They will say, 'No.' ...They actually don’t know the terms. They don’t how much they get paid per mile." 15/

Bottom line: Though the Uber workplace seems to be place-less (“You can work anywhere!”), our analysis of the airport reveals the extent to which place (hello geography!) is fundamental to spatial strategies for worker agency. /End.