App Workers During the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic: an exploratory study.

Abstract

In this article, we present a study on the experience of app drivers, conducted during the first half of 2020, during the lockdown months due to the Covid19 pandemic. Initially, we develop a brief literature review about the transformations in the world of work, and then a preliminary study about the Brazilian occupational structure based on available statistics from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). In Brazil, the unemployment rate has been on the rise in recent years, and with it the level of informality, that is, the number of workers without a signed labor contract and, therefore, without the guarantee of labor rights, has also increased. We can observe in the last three years a significant increase in the number of app drivers and delivery drivers. This category, for not having labor rights, faces precariousness, because it works for multinational companies that profit a lot, without any employment ties. This reality became even more evident in periods of crisis, as in the case of the coronavirus pandemic, when these workers could not comply with the isolation rules, because if they do not work they cannot support their families. The research intends to contribute to the understanding about the changes in work relations caused by the advance of digital tools that facilitate the exchange of services. To make this possible three specific objectives were defined: i) to map the debate in the specialized literature about labor relations mediated by the popularization of service provision apps; ii) to explore the statistics available from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) about the theme and present an exploratory study about the profile of app drivers. Public statistics on the economically active population will be examined and information on the occupational trajectories of service providers will be collected. Further discussion is expected about how these tools of service provision relate to work and how they modify these relationships based on the historical, economic, and political moment. They will also make it possible to contribute to producing sociodemographic information about these workers, about whom we have almost no statistics.