The Pitfalls and Promises of Successfully Organizing Foodora Couriers in Toronto

Gig economy workers, particularly those on platforms such as Foodora and UBER, do not have a clear legal status in Canada, and unionization has largely escaped them. One obstacle is that union certification presupposes a stable employment relationship and a relatively fixed workplace. It does not lend itself easily to a decentralized organization of work, let alone one that is merely "facilitated" by a digital platform. Another obstacle is their dual status of being extremely dependent on the platform for everything from payments to scheduling, while being legally considered as "independent contractors." In response, Canadian labour unions have pushed tribunals to adopt a new legal status: that of "dependent contractors." Based on the successful unionization drive among Foodora couriers in Toronto in 2020, our contribution argues that the involved actors resorted to "institutional experimentation" to open traditional frameworks of collective bargaining and labour law to workers of the gig economy.