New autonomous workers collectivism, The Belgian Deliveroo Riders case

Companies deviate more and more from the stable full time open-ended contract and enter to new atypical work arrangements: solo self-employment, freelancing, etc. (Eurofound, 2015). In these circumstances, the evolution of these workers’ fate warrants attention. Collective action seems a rather obvious choice to thwart this asymmetry of power. Previous researches on that topic show that these collective activities addressed to new autonomous workers may be grouped into three categories of collectivism: the union expansion, the development of quasi unions, and the emergence of transient unionism. Moreover, two main categories of action may be distinguished: the servicing and the organizing models.
Based on these distinctions, this paper introduced an analytical grid to better understand the dynamic interplay in the Belgian Rider Collective fight against Deliveroo’s decision to impose the self-employed status.