E pluribus union(s)? : Assessing the diversity of organisation among food delivery couriers across Europe

Food delivery couriers have been at the forefront of workers’ mobilisation within the platform economy in Europe. Their organisation, however, has considerable variability across countries – ranging from autonomous collectives to grassroots and mainstream unions. This chapter aims to analyse the reasons behind this heterogeneity in organisation through a study of Germany, Ireland, Italy and the UK. It argues that these different trends in couriers’ organisational practices can be explained by looking at the agential aspects (labour actors’ capabilities) as well as the contextual features (institutional aspects of national industrial relations frameworks which favour/obstruct labour organising, and the presence/absence of supportive communities in which workers are embedded). Even if the rise of platform labour produces common pressures on industrial relations, these are likely to result in uneven trajectories of regulation and of workers’ organising.