Meaningful Work Formed by a Class Struggle. The Experience of Meaningful Work among Platform Workers Engaged in Forming a Labour Union
Roč.22,č.2(2025)
The Future of Work
Many individuals experienced the COVID-19 pandemic as a situation characterised by working from home, zoom calls, and isolation. Nevertheless, this experience for many was only enabled by a significant upsurge in the delivery sector. The platform economy, as a dominant organisational form of the delivery sector became a lived reality for a significant part of the population. This paper explores Viennese platform workers who are self-employed in an Austrian food delivery service called Mjam. The topic focuses on meaningful work, which is an increasingly significant concept in both popular and expert discourse, to describe one’s relationship to their workplace. The study is based on semi-structured interviews analysed using a phenomenological analysis method. The paper investigates how meaningful work is experienced by workers in a precarious low-income sector and shaped by emerging labour unions against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study concludes that meaningful work is an ethical and political concept enabling or preventing one’s actions. The concept of meaningful work is applicable in the context of emerging labour unions at the workplace of the studied platform. The engagement of some of the workers with the labour union increased their identification with the workplace, effectively leading to a stronger and more refined experience of meaningful work.
platform economy; labour unions; meaningful work; COVID-19 pandemic
Allan, Blake A., Cassondra Batz-Barbarich, Haley M. Sterling, and Louis Tay. 2019. “Outcomes of Meaningful Work: A Meta‐Analysis.” Journal of Management Studies 56(3): 500–528.
Bergfeld, Mark and Sara Farris. 2020. “The COVID-19 Crisis and the End of the ‘Low-skilled’ Worker.” Spectre Journal. Retrieved September 13, 2024 (https://spectrejournal.com/the-covid-19-crisis-and-the-end-of-the-low-skilled-worker/).
Bernstein, Basil. 1971. Class, Codes and Control. Volume 1: Theoretical Studies Towards a Sociology of Language. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Boltanski, Luc. 2011. On Critique: A sociology of Emancipation. London: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Routledge classics.
Chalofsky, Neal. 2003. “An Emerging Construct for Meaningful Work.” Human Resource Development International 6(1): 69–83.
Delivery Hero. 2024. “Delivery Hero Geschäftsbericht 2023 [The Delivery Hero’s Financial Report].” Delivery Hero. Retrieved September 13, 2024 (https://ir.deliveryhero.com/financial-reports-and-presentations/).
Deranty, Jean-Philippe. 2009. “What Is Work? Key Insights from the Psychodynamics of Work.” Thesis Eleven 98(1): 69–87.
Deranty, Jean‐Philippe. 2015. “Historical Objections to the Centrality of Work.” Constellations 22(1): 105–121.
Farrugia, David. 2019. “Class and the Post-Fordist Work Ethic: Subjects of Passion and Subjects of Achievement in the Work Society.” The Sociological Review 67(5): 1086–1101.
Graeber, David. 2018. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. London: Penguin Books.
Herr, Benjamin. 2018. Ausgeliefert: Fahrräder, apps und die neue Art der Essenszustellung [Delivered: Bike Riders, Apps, and the New Way of Food Delivery]. Vienna: Verlag des Österreichischen Gewerkschaftsbundes.
Kenney, Martin and John Zysman. 2016. “The Rise of the Platform Economy.” Issues in Science and Technology 32(3): 61–69.
Lysova, Evgenia I., Blake A. Allan, Bryan J. Dik, Ryan D. Duffy, and Michael F. Steger. 2019. “Fostering Meaningful Work in Organizations: A Multi-level Review and Integration.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 110: 374–389.
Maurel, Maryse. 2009. “The Explicitation Interview: Examples and Applications.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 16(10–12): 58–89.
Michaelson, Christopher. 2021. “A Normative Meaning of Meaningful Work.” Journal of Business Ethics 170(3): 413–428.
Moustakas, Clark E. 1994. Phenomenological Research Methods. London: SAGE Publications.
Nikolova, Milena and Femke Cnossen. 2020. “What Makes Work Meaningful and Why Economists Should Care about It.” Labour Economics 65.
Reay, Diane. 2005. “Beyond Consciousness?” Sociology 39(5): 911–928. doi:10.1177/0038038505058372.
Rubery, Jill, Damian Grimshaw, Arjan Keizer, and Mathew Johnson. 2018. “Challenges and Contradictions in the ‘Normalising’ of Precarious Work.” Work, Employment and Society 32(3): 509–527.
Schwartz, Adina. 1982. “Meaningful Work.” Ethics 92(4): 634-646.
Skeggs, Beverly. 2016. “Class: Disidentification, Singular Selves and Person-Value.” Pp. 145–173 in Sallum, B., L. M. Schwarcz, D. Vidal, and A. Catani. Identidades. Sao Paulo: Universidade De Sao Paulo.
Smith, Jonathan A., Paul Flowers, and Michael Larkin. 2009. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Theory, Method, and Research. London: SAGE Publications.
Soffia, Magdalena, Alex J Wood, and Brendan Burchell. 2022. “Alienation Is Not ‘Bullshit’: An Empirical Critique of Graeber’s Theory of BS Jobs.” Work, Employment and Society 36(5): 816–840.
Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1994. The Phenomenological Movement. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Veltman, Andrea. 2016. Meaningful Work. New York: Oxford University Press.
Vojtko, Jan, Filip Titlbach, and Vítek Svoboda. 2024. “Studio N: Vztah k práci. Proč v ní nepřestávat hledat smysl? [Studio N: Relationship to Work. Why Not to Stop Looking for the Meaning of Work?]” Deník N. Retrieved September 13, 2024 (https://denikn.cz/1467999/studio-n-vztah-k-praci-proc-v-ni-neprestavat-hledat-smysl/)
Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. London: Duke University Press.
Weeks, Kathi. 2017. “Down with Love: Feminist Critique and the New Ideologies of Work.” WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 45(3–4): 37–58.
Wong, Sut I, Christian Fieseler, and Dominique Kost. 2020. “Digital Labourers’ Proactivity and the Venture for Meaningful Work: Fruitful or Fruitless?” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 93(4): 887–911.
Yeoman, Ruth. 2014. Meaningful Work and Workplace Democracy: A Philosophy of Work and a Politics of Meaningfulness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tato práce je licencována pod Mezinárodní licencí Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 .
Copyright © 2025 Jonáš Kreisinger