New research on worker-owned platforms and intersectionality

DigiLabour announces that it has received the first research funding in Canada, the Insight Development Grant, from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The research, coordinated by Rafael Grohmann, focuses on worker-owned platforms and intersectionality, an action research with tech workers and delivery workers in Brazil and Argentina.

This research addresses four main objectives. First, it examines and supports what would be worker-owned intersectional digital platforms from workers in cooperatives in delivery and technology sectors in Brazil and Argentina. Second, the research aims to connect current debates on worker-owned platforms with Latin America’s rich history of social-movement-building around solidarity economies, community and alternative technologies. Third, the research will develop a method for action research that involves workers and participatory research design in Latin America to serve as methodological intervention in the field of platform studies. Fourth, the investigation will develop, through co-creation workshops with workers, a design document that outlines the features of worker-owned intersectional digital platforms. The project’s aim is to collectively discuss the different dimensions of how to build a worker-owned intersectional labour platform. This involves conversations with workers on the organization of labour, platform governance, data policies, and the redesign and construction of platform infrastructures.

The co-ops and collectives participants of the research are: Alternativa Laboral Trans, Central Cooperativa, Federacion Argentina de Cooperativas de Tabajo de Tecnologia, Innovacion y Conocimiento (FACTTIC), MariaLab, Nucleo de Tecnologia do MTST and Senoritas Courier.

DigiLabour will launch soon a website for this new research!