The Nightshift

Glovo, Uber, or Bolt are just some of the names that have become known in Romania in a very short time, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. But a less discussed phenomenon is what it means to be a delivery person or a courier when your manager is an algorithm that monitors your every move and checks you at every step. In other words, what does it mean to be a worker on a digital platform and part of the “platform economy”? Are these workers really their own bosses? And do they really work when and as much as they want? In this text and podcast, I talk about the lives of night workers hired by online ordering platforms and transport and courier services in big cities like Bucharest, Brașov, Cluj, Iași, and Timișoara, the so-called “siliconised cities.” Bolt or Uber drivers are the people who work “behind the scenes” 24/7 (twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week). But those who work in a different temporal rhythm, nocturnal, are invisible to the majority of society who work during the day. That is why nightshift workers have a low sense of the value of their services compared to workers in professional jobs in Romania, and they feel a lack of respect from consumers who use their services. In other words, I will tell you about the inequalities that appear and deepen in the social fabric of the “siliconised cities."