Infrastructural Power of Gafam and Worker Power in the Platform Economy

Thursday, 10 July 2025: 11:00-12:45
Location: ASJE021 (Annex of the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences)
RC44 Labor Movements (host committee)

Language: English

GAFAMs, big tech platform companies such as Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook (Meta Platforms), Apple and Microsoft, are pressuring national industrial relations systems everywhere. As infrastructural platforms, these transnational companies provide essential infrastructures (both physical and digital), thus amassing great power. GAFAM operations are carried out combining both direct investment and outsourcing and subcontracting GAFAM services. Outsourcing services allows GAFAM companies to indirectly influence industrial relations systems and mitigate the internal impact of the capital/labor conflict within their own business units by displacing these tensions to intermediary levels. It also allows GAFAM to circumvent national legal frameworks on labour standards, in addition to the adoption of union-busting practices that disrespect the internationally recognized rights (by ILO) of freedom of association and to collective bargaining. Labour conflicts have been on the rise in several GAFAMs’ sites, bringing to the fore debates on the impacts of GAFAMs on national industrial relation systems, and evince different strategies from industrial relations actors, both traditional and new. Labour movements’ power resources and innovation capacity are being tested, and different responses and outcomes might be expected according to the varieties of trade unionism at stake. By the same token, industrial relation systems are expected to display distinctive levels of resilience in the face of GAFAMs challenges. We invite papers which draw on social theory and industrial relations to discuss and illuminate the challenges posed by GAFAMs to national industrial relations systems all around the world.
Session Organizer:
Adam MROZOWICKI, University of Wroclaw, Poland
Chair:
Dora FONSECA, CoLABOR - The Collaborative Laboratory for Labor, Employment and Social Protection, Portugal
Discussant:
Joerg NOWAK, Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil
Oral Presentations
Global Amazon: Reflections from a Collaborative, Cross-Regional Project on Labor and Social Contestation of the E-Commerce Giant amidst International Expansion
Scott B. MARTIN, Columbia University & The New School, USA; Nikko BILITZA, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Austria; Katiuscia MORENO GALHERA, Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados, Brazil; João Paulo CANDIA VEIGA, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Amazon Labor Struggles & Solidarity in Germany
Sarrah KASSEM, University of Tuebingen, Germany
David Versus Goliath: Power Resources and Collective Action in the Context of Gafam's Outsourcing Practices in Portugal
Franco Tomassoni TOMASSONI, CoLABOR - The Collaborative Laboratory for Labor, Employment and Social Protection, Portugal, Portugal; Sara Nunes NUNES, CoLABOR - The Collaborative Laboratory for Labor, Employment and Social Protection, Portugal
Contested Amazonification: Comparing Amazon Workers’ Struggles in Italy and Poland
Adam MROZOWICKI, University of Wroclaw, Poland; Olga GITKIEWICZ, Uniwersytet Wrocławski / University of Wroclaw, Poland; Mattia FRAPPORTI, University of Bologna, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Italy; Szymon PILCH, University of Wrocław, Poland; Maurilio PIRONE, University of Bologna, Department of the Arts, Italy
New Avenues for Labor Relations in the Platform Economy? the Institutionalization of the Youtubers Union–IG Metall Coalition
Markus HERTWIG, Faculty of Social Science, Germany; Patrick WITZAK, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
Distributed Papers
Locating ‘Caste’ within Labour Theory
Mrinmoy MAJUMDER, UCA, India
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