Algorithmic Management and Employment Programmes: The Precarious Working Environment of ‘Income By App’ Delivery Riders in Recife, Brazil

Algorithmic management, especially in the context of digital delivery platforms, redefines and challenges the principles of decent and productive work advocated by the International Labor Organization (1999). Although algorithms promise efficiency and data-driven decisions, their impact on organizational decisions and working conditions (Kellogg et al., 2020) often conceals structural inequalities and can exacerbate a precarious labour environment by perpetuating the interests of their creators (O'Neil, 2016).

Mobilizing the Fairwork (2020) framework – evaluating work on digital platforms based on criteria such as fair pay and contracts, safe work environment or transparent management – this paper aims at understanding the consequences for workers when a public body follows the logic of platform labour when designing employment programmes.

Seeking to insert young people into the job market by supporting their onboarding on digital delivery platforms – providing them with bikes, smartphones and data plan – the “Income by App” programme was designed by the Brazilian city of Recife as an urban policy promoting social inclusion and combating youth unemployment. However, as revealed by extensive ethnographic interviews conducted with bike delivery workers having benefited from the programme, the working conditions faced on the ground reveal more than significant challenges.

By failing to question or regulate the inner workings of delivery platforms, the programme indeed left the workers vulnerable to the algorithmic management ruling these apps, resulting in gruelling working hours, low wages and a lack of social protection. This tacit adoption of digital labour principles consequently fosters an inherently precarious working environment, increasing the workers’ vulnerability to algorithmic despotism (Griesbach et al., 2019) in a way starkly at odds with the promises of social inclusion and economic development – highlighting the crucial importance of independent public policies effectively guaranteeing the respect of workers’ rights and dignity in a global context of rapid digitalization.