Logistics platforms’ ‘new’ mode of appropriation? An analysis of four trends from inside Germany’s Q-commerce sector

Abstract

This article investigates the ‘newness’ of platformised logistics labour through an ethnographic study of a Q-Commerce platform – ‘Smart Groceries’ – in Germany. Because conditions at ‘Smart Groceries’ seemed comparatively good, the authors were forced to question the centrality of ‘gigification’ to platform logistics labour. The article draws on participant observation and 16 in-depth interviews with workers and suggests that logistics platforms’ ‘new’ mode of harnessing labour to capital represents an intertwining of four trends: algorithmic management, flexibilisation, the ‘explosion’ of the factory and the incorporation of migrant labour. These trends foster alienation, precarity, fragmentation and exploitation, respectively.