A maquinaria digital e a extração do valor em tempos de crise estrutural : entregadores de plataformas digitais e precarização do trabalho em Aracaju

Abstract

This research analyzes the precariousness of the work of digital platform deliverers. The precarization of work has become evident as a predominant dynamic since the 1970s in Brazil, in response to the structural crisis of capital. The new expressions of the working class are increasingly tied to services, and labor, the only merchandise of the worker, remains subjugated in the digital era to meet the interests of capital, in the production of profit, in the compression of time via the acceleration of work and by the expropriation of the resultants. The analysis of the spatialization and contradictory movements of the work of digital app workers, in light of the changes in the world of work in the current framework of capitalist relations, guided this study, requiring the delimitation of specific objectives, such as: analyze the nature of the structural crisis and the conceptualizations of work in the contemporary world; reflect on the power of the ideology of non-work and entrepreneurship as a strategy of convincing, subordination and labor exploitation; understand the use of techniques and technology as part of the changes in the world of work, in the current stage of capitalism, and the contradictions of digital platforms of labor intermediation; analyze the Brazilian labor reform and its repercussions on the world of work, and understand the work profile and remuneration of app delivery workers from the case of Aracaju. From the perspective of historical and dialectical materialism, the research highlights the reality of app delivery workers in Sergipe as a starting point for understanding that the new forms of organization and production of work, in their content, are no different from wage labor. The strategy of capital to increase its power has made work more precarious and workers less likely to face exploitation, with the denial of labor rights, revealing an agenda of dismantling rights and massive precarization of work. The field research occurs in the city of Aracaju, justified by the significant presence of delivery men, revealing the structural unemployment and the high rates of labor informality in the state of Sergipe. Informality and/or deregulation, seen today, have always been elements present in capitalism. Instead of technologies being at the service of social welfare, they reinforce the instrumental and oppressive character of the logic of the capitalist mode of production, reducing the worker to the exact measure of the demands of capital and making him entirely available to work, even if he is not always paid for it.