Uberization, digital work and industry 4.0 - by Ricardo Antunes

Organized by Ricardo Antunes, professor at Unicamp and sociologist of work, the work is a collection of articles that explores the themes of digital work, the uberization and platformization of work and the phenomenon of Industry 4.0 and its consequences for the world of work and for the life of workers. The book features nineteen articles by important researchers, Brazilian and foreign, who investigate, in different sectors, the social impacts resulting from the expansion of the machine-informational-digital universe. Uberization, a concept addressed, defined and expanded in the work, is a process of individualization and invisibilization of work relationships, which take on the appearance of “service provision”, obliterating wage and exploitation relationships. The book investigates how the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the productive world works to increase the scenario of precarious work – waiving wages and reducing payments, increasing control over and competition between workers – through analyzes from different productive sectors impacted by digital work and Industry 4.0, such as the work of app delivery people, the automobile industry, the banking sector and the telemarketing and call-center sectors. The articles also emphasize the importance of resistance movements to precariousness, of which the “Breque dos Apps”, the national strike of app delivery people that occurred on July 1, 2020, is the most recent example.