Flexibility unbound: understanding the heterogeneity of preferences among food delivery platform workers

Abstract

This article investigates the preferences of food delivery platform workers regarding their employment status and working hours. We focus on the relationship between flexibility and protection, both of which can be understood—from a worker’s perspective—as a means towards increased autonomy and control. The analysis is based on a case study of Deliveroo in Belgium, which hired riders as employees through an intermediary, SMart. Despite their flexible working lives, most riders preferred employee status to self-employment. However, riders were divided in their preferences regarding working time flexibility, with many in favour of more regular working time patterns. To explain this divergence, we develop an embeddedness framework that relates worker preferences to the degree of their dependency as shaped by labour market and institutional factors. We thus link divergence in preferences concerning flexibility to workers’ scope for exercising control, their labour market vulnerability and economic attachment to the platform.