Paying for Free Delivery: Dependent Self-Employment as a Measure of Precarity in Parcel Delivery
研究包裹递送中为控制成本而导致的合同分化，揭示依附性自雇司机如何被用来消除非生产时间，并分析其与标准合同工人的相互依赖关系。
This article explores supply chain pressures in parcel delivery and how the drive to contain costs to ‘preserve value in motion’, including the costs of failed delivery, underpins contractual differentiation. It focuses on owner-drivers and home couriers paid by delivery. It considers precarity through the lens of the labour process, while locating it within the supply chain, political economy and ‘instituted economic process’ that define it. Focus on the labour process shows how ‘self-employment’ is used to remove so-called ‘unproductive’ time from the remit of paid labour. Using Smith’s concept of double indeterminacy the article captures the dynamic relationship between those on standard and non-standard contracts and interdependency of effort power and mobility power. It exposes the apparent mobility and autonomy of dependent self-employed drivers while suggesting that their presence, alongside the increased use of technology, reconfigures the work-effort bargain across contractual status.