O “Delivery do trabalho” na Pandemia da Covid-19 no Brasil

Abstract

This study has the purpose of understanding the contradictions expressed in the delivery work mediated by apps in Brazil during the Covid 19 pandemic. This is an exploratory research, with a qualitative and quantitative approach, based on bibliographic and documentary studies, using the dialectical historical materialism method, which is based on a critical understanding of reality beyond the phenomenal apprehensions that do not reveal the totality of the aspects and contradictions existing within the phenomena. From studies of scientific articles that analyzed data and microdata from Pnad Contínua, Pnad Covid-19 and other secondary sources, and from the documentary analysis of journalistic sources (news, reports and interviews), it was seen that during the pandemic there was an intense precariousness of the delivery people's working conditions by apps, including the remuneration drop, even with the greater demand for delivery services. About the platforming of services: while workers use their devices as the main means of production to guarantee their income, the apps works as a fundamental external instrument for the control and management of work processes. The platforms are the new expression of a contemporary capitalism that decentralizes, makes flexible and incessantly moves away from labor rights. In this way, due to these dynamics of exploitation and expropriation of the work to which they are subjected, the exposure to risks experienced in the Covid-19 pandemic, and against the false discourse of autonomy promoted by digital platforms, couriers of goods through apps begin to to articulate internationally and to carry out mobilizations to denounce the exploitation of their living and working conditions. Become aware of the power structures and the contradictions promoted, these individuals outline the figure of a new political subject: the subject of delivery.