Introduction

Collective action by workers and the role of social media have received increasing attention in the recent years (Lazar et al., 2020; Garelli, 2020; Maffie, 2020). This research is embedded in a larger literature about the logics of connective action (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012) which are distinguished from an earlier logic of collective action (Offe & Wiesenthal, 1980) with connective action exhibiting a specific organisational dynamic.

In this article, we address the experiences of delivery workers and truck drivers in Brazil with social media as an instrument of workers’ organising and an element of collective action. We will ask more specifically about the role of social media in the 2018 truckers’ strike and the 2020 national strike of app-based delivery workers, Breque dos apps (Apps Brake). We explore both the possibilities and limits of the use of social media for worker action.

In the literature on workers’ use of social media, there is a consensus about the fact that Internet 1.0 did not have a huge impact on collective action by workers (Heckscher & McCarthy, 2014; Saundry et al., 2012), while Internet 2.0 with the emergence of social media did indeed have an impact (Pasquier & Wood, 2018; Wood & Lehdonvirta, 2019; Wood et al., 2018; Maffie, 2020). Internet 1.0 had an impact on forms of communication and the circulation of ideas, but Internet 1.0 did not have as a profound an impact on the forms of communication of the working class as Internet 2.0 had given the latter’s common, personal, and everyday use. Furthermore, the move from the computer to the smartphone increased the possibility of access for the working class.

While there have been quite optimistic ideas about the possibilities of connective action for power from below (Castells, 2015; Bennett & Segerberg, 2012), the visibility of workers on social media can also be dangerous for them. Unlike social movement activists in general, for workers, workplace activism comes with the danger of dismissal by their present employer and the reluctance of future employers to hire (Lazar et al., 2020, p. 440). Thus, one of the four affordances of social media identified by Treem and Leonardi (2012), “visibility,” is a two-edged sword for workers. Fake profiles or profiles of collectives can provide some cover against this danger.

Our first hypothesis in this text is that both theses – the efficacy of Internet 2.0 for workers activism and visibility as an ambivalent aspect of social media for workers mobilisation – apply to varying extents depending on the specific type of workers mobilisation, such as

1. street protests and occupation of squares as in the Indignados movements in Europe and the June 2013 protests in Brazil;

2. protests that mainly take place at workplaces or at one specific company;

3. joint protests of workers of various companies and workplaces.

While protests of category a., which we call “street protests” here, are usually the example of more optimistic accounts (Castells, 2015; Bennett & Segerberg 2012), protests of category b., which we call “workplace-focused protests,” are the main object of research on the role of social media for the mobilisation of workers (Lazar et al., 2018; Maffie, 2020). Our two examples of mobilisations of truck drivers and app-based delivery workers belong to category c., for which the role of social media has not yet been explored. The protests of category c. which we call “general workers protests” share some of the characteristics of category a. like the broad public that is addressed by calls to action and the positive value of anonymity, but also some of the characteristics of category b. like certain limits concerning the topics addressed in the protests and a certain danger coming with the aspect of visibility.

Our second hypothesis is that there might be limits to social media as an instrument of mobilisation. Social media might be useful for initiating mobilisations, but it might also be of less help in consolidating workers’ mobilisations in the mid- to long-term perspective. Therefore, the question is if we are dealing with connective action in the full sense, providing communication and organisation, or if we are rather talking about collective action which is organised partly with the help of electronic communication, having more an agitprop role of communication and dissemination of information than a proper organising effect. Maffie (2020) detects that interaction of workers in online communities with other workers leads to more positive views about trade unions and enhanced interest in getting organised as a worker. Thus, social media might have a teasing function, but we assume that the second step will have to be done offline to a larger extent at least. Taking this into account, to which extent is there a tactical complementarity between collective and connective action? (Khalil & Storie, 2020).

It is also a shortcoming of the connective action literature that it does not fully investigate how and if the initial large mobilisations in which social media was instrumental have led to subsequent activism and by which means this may have been maintained. Bearing in mind Lazar et al.’s findings (2018), the use of social media by workers' movements needs to be investigated, taking into account that (1) it is not without tensions and (2) while workers use social networks, movements have their actions shaped by the logic of social networks. It must always be remembered that these social network platforms are developed according to neoliberal market logics.

This article will focus on an analysis of recent mobilisations of two professional categories in Brazil: truck drivers and app-based delivery workers. The truck drivers' strike broke out in May 2018 and practically stopped the country for ten days. Autonomous truck drivers protested against the increase in fuel prices and the unpredictability of these increases, but in favour of the abolition of fuel taxes and legally guaranteed, minimum freight prices. As far as our analytical interest is concerned, this strike can be considered an important milestone for the use of social media in workers' strikes in Brazil. The second movement was the Breque dos apps [apps break] carried out by the app-based delivery workers on July 1 and 25, 2020. In the midst of the COVID-19 health emergency, workers stopped their delivery activities demanding better rates and working conditions. This movement was also marked by the strong use of social media in different ways.Networked social movements and digitally networked action

Written in the heat of the protests that swept the globe in the 2010s, especially Occupy and the so-called Arab Spring, Castells (2015) presents a very optimistic look at the use of technologies by what it calls “networked social movements”. They could be seen as presenting “new paths of social change in our time” (2015, p. 4). Initiated in the autonomous space of social networks, they would need to materialize their rebuttal of the given social order in public space, i.e., produce free communities in the public space. Castells (2015, p. 10) argues that

Since the institutional public space, the constitutionally designated space for deliberation, is occupied by the interests of the dominant elites and their networks, social movements need to carve out a new public space that is not limited to the Internet, but makes itself visible in the places of social life. This is why they occupy urban space and symbolic buildings.

Thus, we would have the articulation between the real and the virtual in the construction of a new type of public space. This space, linking the digital space and the public space, would be an autonomous communication space. This autonomy of communication would be at the essence of the development of social movements and would enable their relationship with society in general, beyond existing controls, including communication. They are networks of counterpower that work against networks of power. The communication process here has a fundamental role in the face of a situation considered unsustainable by social actors. They transform their anger into action, overcoming fear, through a more radical form of anger--outrage--when they know of an event, of an unsustainable occurrence affecting others with whom they identify.

Also written amidst the movements of the 2010s, the article by Bennett and Segerberg (2012) “examines the organisational dynamics that emerge when communication becomes a prominent part of organisational structure” (2012, p. 739). The authors believe that in order to understand this process, it is necessary to distinguish two logics: one referring to collective action and the other referring to connective action. Although they can occur in the same ecology of action, they need to be analytically separated. The difference between the two is not the use of communication technologies per se but the way in which these technologies are used. In the case of collective action, one can use technologies and communication networks without necessarily changing “the action dynamics by altering the fundamental principles of organizing collectivities. By contrast, digital media networking can change the organisational game [and], given the right interplay of technology, personal action frames” (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, p. 748).

In this sense, in the logic of connective action, the use of communication networks is not restricted to the mere reduction of the financial costs of organisation and mobilisation, nor to its dimension of a quick circulation of information. What the authors are defending is that, based on the formative axis of sharing, communication networks play a central role, even with regard to the organisational dimension. They would be organizing agents, organisational structures in themselves. At the heart of the connective action, defining it, is the Digital Networked Action (DNA). The connective action model would be appropriate for current societies in which formal organisations “are losing their grip on individuals, and group ties are being replaced by large-scale, fluid social networks” (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, p. 748). Thus, thinking about connective action would be important at a time when political action itself would be changing for individuals and collectivities.

Anastasia Kavada (2018) underlines an analytical distinction between online crowds and offline social movements, as two intersecting tendencies which nonetheless exhibit different characteristics. For her, the online crowds as the general phenomenon are a new arena for the action of social movements, and there would be no strict separation of collective and connective action. Fominaya (2020, p. 305) detects a one-sided view ascribing too much mobilizational capacity to connective action, which invisibilizes the existing structures of collective action that maintain social movements and are also the backbone of most online mobilization.

Zeynep Tufekci, in her 2017 book Twitter and Tear Gas, emphasizes that the use of social media allows movements to grow rapidly - by enabling people to organise without joining an organisation. But she also warns that this often means that actors do not learn the essentials of political action, comparing it with climbing a Himalayan mountain: “Everest remains Everest: supremely dangerous and difficult, especially if anything goes even slightly wrong” (Tufekci, 2017, p. xii). While networked mobilising may allow for a leap over the first stage of traditional organising, it often occurs “without [the] prior building of formal or informal organisational and other collective capacities that would prepare them for the next inevitable challenges they will face” (p. xiif.). Great scale and rapid growth might be accompanied by a lack of resilience in the long term. In the case of the social movements from 2011 on, Tufekci diagnoses the inability of those movements to adapt their tactics. For example, the US civil rights movement from 1955 to 1964 was successful because it went through various tactical innovations, while the post-2011 protest movements started with innovative tactics but were not able to adapt tactics to the second phase: “Thus, they often faced greatest peril in their infancy when they were both powerful and large, but also underprepared and fragile” (p. xiii). 

Tufekci claims that large marches and occupations that took place in a rather late phase in non-digital movements come right at the beginning in many digitally organised movements so that those movements exhibit a different trajectory. Tufekci (2017) uses the term adhocracy for the way that digitally organised movements mobilize without much planning, and the term tactical freeze for “the inability of these movements to adjust tactics, negotiate demands, and push for tangible policy changes” (p. xvi).

We claim that the research on the rapid organizing of large mobilisations via digital networks can be applied to those of labour movements which rally large groups of workers across various companies. While the occupational identity as delivery worker or as truck driver comes with a less obvious political identity than pro-democracy or anti-austerity movements, the mobilisation of those workers is also built on weak links between them due to the multiplicity of employers, agencies, and shippers, and to the variety of employment situations both in terms of the legal relationship and on the level of the labour process. Therefore, we claim that large worker mobilisations across different workplaces come with similar potentials and challenges for connected action as the ones analysed in the literature on street protests. Our questions are (1) to what extent does connected action change or modifie its overall character in the case of worker mobilisation as against street protests? and (2) to what extent is it affected by "adhocracy” and “tactical freeze” in the same way as street protests?

The truck drivers’ strike in 2018

Truck drivers in Brazil are a heterogenous occupational group, mostly divided between so-called “autonomous” truck drivers who own their trucks and drivers who are employees. Of the c. 1.5 million truck drivers, roughly 550 000 are registered self-employed truck drivers and 344 000 are truck drivers with formal employment contracts (CNT 2019a, 11; CNT 2019b, 22). Self-employed truck drivers have much smaller trucks than trucking companies, and so their average cargo capacity is about 10 times less than that of trucking companies. Nonetheless, shippers prefer to use autonomous truck drivers since they offer lower freight rates, unable as they are to pass higher costs on to the shippers. In contrast, transport companies enter into contracts that foresee that freight rates are adapted if, for example, the diesel price goes up. Self-employed truckers must shoulder any increase in costs between the time of finalizing the contract and the execution of the contracted-upon freight transport. This gap can often be a month or longer, making it difficult for autonomous truckers to effectively calculate costs.

The labour process is usually pretty solitary, and comes with tough conditions given the poor state of most Brazilian roads which include muddy routes in rainy periods, corrugated, unpaved roads, and poorly maintained paved roads. All of this leads to a high number of accidents and higher costs of vehicle repair. Other trying aspects--apart from short breaks and lack of sleep--include the scarcity of secondary transportation infrastructure such as repair shops, restaurants, and hotels. There is also a high incidence of robberies and freight theft. Still other challenges involve long waiting periods to obtain new freight contracts, congested roads, waiting lines at ports, all of which lead to loss of paid working time or come with penalties for late delivery. Research on freight prices for 2002–2018 reveals that the average self-employed trucker did not operate profitably during most periods of the year, except for harvest seasons (Lima Costa et al., 2018). Due to this price–cost gap, which has grown since 2014, many truckers are indebted.

The representation of truckers in Brazil is a notorious and problematic matter. The Confederação Nacional dos Transportadores Autônomos (CNTA) trade union integrated various organisations representing autonomous truckers in 2012, and then joined the corporatist body Confederação Nacional de Transporte (CNT), which is dominated by large transport companies, in December 2017. The employers in the transport sector who are also represented in CNT had lobbied successfully for the integration, and therefore neutralization, of CNTA into CNT (Huertas, 2021).

There are various organisations like Abcam (part of CNT) and CNTA which claim to represent 700 000 self-employed truckers, but numbers provided by the truckers’ organisations must be dealt with cautiously. Most truckers’ associations and trade unions operate on a regional basis, usually that of a state, or a sub-state , thus leading to considerable fragmentation of representation. The integration of CNTA into CNT already hints at the fact that the history of the representation of truckers in Brazil is haunted by the spectre of employers’ organisations, often mobilising self-employed truckers for the employers’ own interests, as in the strike in 2012, and partially in the strike of 2018. There is some overlap of interests between workers and employers in the road transport sector, i.e., the interest in better road infrastructure, low petrol prices, and in higher freight prices. It is also hard to distinguish clearly between workers and employers, since self-employed truckers have between one and three trucks, and some of them rent out their vehicles to other drivers.

Truckers in Brazil mobilized in larger strikes in 2012 and 2015. For example, in 2015, the strike involved 120 street blockades by truckers. In 2018, the truckers strike saw a much larger mobilisation with around 700 blockades and approximately 400 000 participants which lasted for eleven days (Nowak, 2021). Workers from other occupational groups including Uber drivers, app-based delivery workers, and school bus drivers joined the movement. Moreover, workers in the petroleum sector initially staged work stoppages during the truckers strike and then entered into a full-blown strike in the last two days of the truckers’ mobilisation. The overall context added to the discontent, given the low popularity of the Temer government, which was at eight percent during this period. This strike also had considerable support from some fractions of the employers in the transport sector, i.e., those who had a strong interest in lower diesel prices. The crucial difference from earlier truckers’ strikes was that the strike movement got out of hand due to its sheer size and that the demand for a law on minimum freight prices gained momentum, much to the dislike of some of the transport companies and their intermediaries. Their stance was influenced by the fact that minimum freight prices provide the self-employed truckers with more autonomy relative to the intermediaries and transport companies because self-employed truckers cannot conclude their own contracts and are legally dependent on those companies. Powerful groups in agribusiness and industry lobbied against the minimum freight prices law. They were finally able to block the implementation of the law after successfully launching a constitutional case against it in early 2020. The case is still to be decided at the time of writing in March 2023, and the Supreme Court suspended all penalties based on the law until it reaches a decision.

Although the truckers' movement of 2018 was large and able to escape the employers’ organisations agenda in 2018, it did not succeed in improving the conditions of truck drivers. Most effective measures were only valid for six months, and the legally determined freight prices were rarely paid, even before the Supreme Court suspended the penalties.

The relevance of WhatsApp, colloquially known as "Zap”, as a medium of mobilisation during the strike was frequently highlighted in the news media. Moreover, representatives of truckers’ organisations still entertain positive ideas about the effect of social media for easy and rapid mobilisation in 2018. If we look at the 2018 truckers´ strike with the two questions posed by Tufekci regarding adhocracy and tactical freeze, we see a contradictory result. Earlier mobilisations such as in 2012 and 2015 were also based on social media as a means of mobilisation. However, WhatsApp was only established as a mass medium during the 2018 strike. It had an enormous effect (as it also had on the presidential elections in October and November 2018). Since truckers’ movements were not new but already established, adhocracy was not so much a problem. Although there was alarge number of participating organisations, the most important ones had sufficient experience with mobilisations and profited from the entry of formerly unorganized truckers and workers from other occupational groups who joined the movement spontaneously. The positive aspect of the lack of adhocracy was accompanied by the negative aspect of tactical freeze: the practice of roadblocks is well established and highly functional and had long been used by truckers and has targeted some key areas like petroleum depots and ports. But the strike in 2018 did not develop new tactics and did not make use of the large number of allies including Uber and delivery drivers who demanded lower prices for gasoline or like the petroleum platform workers who maintained that Petrobras, the national oil company, should change its price policy and reflect some amount of independence from international prices.

Thus, in spite of the fact that adhocracy was not so much of a problem for the truckers, they were much affected by tactical freeze. One problem was that the 2018 strike became so enormous and uncontrollable that it was hard to establish any tactics at all across such a large and dispersed movement with many organisational nuclei. The only notable tactical innovation was the demand of some truckers for a military intervention. This was probably picked up widely by news media since there were no other major novelties to report, and it fitted well with the ascending candidacy of Bolsonaro as a candidate for president. The actions of the truckers and their allies did not target or name any adversaries apart from the federal government, but there were also no actions that targeted the government in any immediate fashion. Thus, one can assume that the key facts of the strike—it was massive, hard to control but effective due to hundreds of thousands of people blocking streets--also made it resistant to tactical innovation. 

After 2018 there were nine initiatives to repeat the strike in a similar fashion.  All failed due to a lack of participation although some of the truckers’ representatives established closer links with the unions of petroleum workers and app-based drivers. Apart from the failure of mobilisation as such, there have also been few tactical innovations since then. In fact, the news media and the general public associate a truckers strike with street blockades and, if truckers do not succeed with street blockades, the news media reports that the strike failed.

The delivery workers’ “apps brake”

Workers in the delivery sector already have a long history in Brazil. In more recent times, it can be traced back at least to the 1970s and 1980s (Lapa, 2021). The moment of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a great quantitative amplification and a qualitative transformation. In general, this occupational group is composed of workers who deliver products, documents, and merchandise or goods, with an identity traditionally constructed as a “motoboy”. They can either be formally or informally associated with a company – from local restaurants and pharmacies, for example, to large companies – or they can have their services contracted by outsourced intermediaries. In various parts of the country these workers have unions.

In the context of high unemployment rates, the hegemony of the entrepreneurial ideology, the availability of the so-called “platforms” or digital apps (IFood, Rappi, Uber Eats, Loggi, etc.) with their propaganda of quick-and-easy earnings, ensured that the platforms serve as one of the central options for large numbers of workers in the search for some form of paid activity. In the pre-pandemic period, the number of people looking to work for these “apps” grew exponentially.

With the arrival of the health emergency in 2020, the closing of many economic sectors, and the policy of social isolation, the home delivery sector became more than a practicality – it offered a form of security. The demand for home deliveries, especially for food, drastically increased. And, associated with the increase in unemployment figures, the number of workers who connected to digital applications also grew enormously. Furthermore, unlike other sectors, these workersremained working in the streets under the risk of contamination, becoming, even if not officially considered, an “essential sector”.

The numbers of app-based delivery workers for 2020 make this expansion clear and shed light on the profile of these workers. In November 2020, the sector had around 680 000 delivery workers (Lapa, 2021). They are men (95%), young (38% are 20–29 years old) and black (60%). Despite representing only five percent of the workforce, the entry of women in the sector seems to be growing. Due to these new additions, intensified by the pandemic, the change in the transport modalities used by workers to carry out their activities is also significant. In addition to the already traditional motorcycles, there were large numbers of workers using bicycles – sometimes “rented” from an urban mobility project linked to a bank – and even delivered on foot. Throughout this process, the identity of “delivery worker” (entregador in Portuguese) gained relevance, in addition to that of “motoboy”.

In any case, the workers are connected to one or more app platforms that monitor and subordinate them. Even though they deny any responsibilities toward the workers and pass themselves off as mere intermediaries between services and consumers, these platforms, in fact, determine the activity of workers linked to them from beginning to end. They trigger the process, define execution times, and pay compensation, in addition to resorting to non-transparent disciplinary methods. This entire process is mediated by the platform’s algorithms. By exempting themselves from legal and other social bonds, the applications attempt to evade labour rights and exploit a large, fragmented, individualized, and precarious workforce.

It is in this context of the pandemic that quantitative and qualitative changes in the sector and precariousness of work that the two so-called #brequedosapps or Breque dosApps emerged. They were the culmination of a series of isolated movements and stoppages that have already been taking place in different parts of the country. The outcome of the two “brakes”, carried out on July 1st and 25th, 2020, reveals both the success and the limits of this movement.

The app-based, delivery workers constituted a collective subject with the #brequedosapps, making their demands explicit, and organizing and mobilizing in the public scene. Concretely, the movement effected, to varying degrees, stoppages and demonstrations in many Brazilian cities, reaching important state capitals. It had a clear impact on delivery service and, particularly noteworthy, there was a reduction in orders during the first “brake” that may be evidence of support from consumers. The companies, despite minimizing the impacts, felt the consequences of the mobilisation.

Those who were completely or practically unprotected, the most vulnerable part of the working class, were faced with the tragic choice between exposure to the COVID-19 virus and going hungry. At the beginning of the pandemic, faced with negligible emergency aid from the government, these workers needed to go out onto the streets to earn a living, and face the risk of contamination and death. As the popular song Rap dos Informais [Informal workers’ Rap] notes, “Now there are two options for those who are poor, to die in the street of corona or in a house starving. Between dying at home and dying on the street, I prefer neither”.

As in other areas, the companies running the applications took advantage of the pandemic to increase their profits and control over workers. They received a large influx of new workers, which increased the earnings of companies and reduced those of the workers. The numbers rose from 250 000 in 2019 to 645 000 in June 2020, The vast majority saw their pay and income drop during the pandemic. Thus, the situation of the workers in the sector worsened even more rapidly during the pandemic. The app-based workers started to demand “the basics of the basics” as they said. Demands for better pay, personal protective equipment, ablution facilities, insurance for motorcycles and accidents, an end to unjustified punishments ("blockages" preventing workers from receiving orders), were most prominent. Looking at the delivery workers’ claims, it is clear that this was a movement for recognition and dignity at work.

In the face of the two stoppages, the companies did not stand still. They entered the field, directly or indirectly, to put pressure on to impede or, at least, deflate the movement. Some went public, disclosing what their actions would be regarding working conditions, which were replicated by the movement through social networks. There were pressures from the Logistics Operators (OL), which outsourced these workers to companies, threatening to fire workers trying to prevent the movement. Platform companies blocked some participants of the movement, especially those who stood out in organizing the mobilisation and got visibility through social media appearances, from using the applications.

Even though it receives support from other diverse groups of workers, this movement is still far from resembling a stricter union form of organisation. There are, as we have said, unions in some places. But there are also many organized associations and independent collectives that compete in this space of representation defending quite different perspectives. As with other experiences around the world (Cini et al., 2021), we see a diversity of organisational and mobilizing forms working simultaneously. This professional group is widespread across the country and acts through its groups and associations. These are expressed through and articulated in social networks and groups on WhatsApp. This network-based articulation, of course, guarantees the potential and strength of mobilisations. In any case, the movement itself was already a success for the sake of its own organisation, for making its demands public, and even for an important process of politicization of sectors of the occupational group such as the political group Entregadores Antifascistas (“anti-fascist deliverers”). 

The movement's use of social networks was intense and extensive . In this sense, despite being in current use by workers in terms of their daily lives, in the specific case of the brakes, it was used to achieve political organisation of the occupational group through digital activism. Undoubtedly the most used was “zap”. The most varied groups, both local and national, and even with international connections and participants, were created to exchange information, communicate, and conduct debates among the participants. The groups are almost always marked by many controversies, mainly due to the different positions that exist within the sector. One of them, for example, concerns the question of the types of labour legislation defended by the different groups. Some defend the same standards as the general labour law (CLT), others consider these standards to be outdated and demand new and specific legislation, while still others reject any legislation as they consider regulationsa as limiting their work and earnings.

On the other hand, in addition to the use of “zap”, another medium that was widely explored were posts on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. These media were used both by unions, associations and collectives of workers, but also by individual workers – on their pages and/or channels on the social networks. There were also videos from several cities in Brazil, from the north to the south of the country, in which workers, individually or collectively, described their living and working conditions, denounced abuses by “apps” companies, called for mobilisation, portrayed their organisation in their locality, etc.

A highlight of these uses of social media was the creation of pages, during the first “brake”, of consumers’ solidarity with the movement, indicating the workers’ harsh employment situation and urging consumers to support the “brake” and not use the “apps” during the strike. Some videos posted by Uber app drivers called for solidarity and engagement in the “brake” in a way to include their own demands, which seemed not that successful. [Where’s the data for this analysis? What is “success”?]

There was a clear combination of collective and digital action. There was space for in-person organisation at the meeting points of delivery drivers throughout the cities, actions at the doors of shopping malls, as well as the concentration and circulation of large groups of workers on their motorcycles in specific urban areas. These were tactical innovations that varied in terms of where the movement was being developed. All of this was recorded and posted on social networks in real time, enabling wide dissemination both for workers who could not join the movement and for a wider audience outside the professional group. This ensured thatthe mobilisation was very present on the public scene.

In a certain sense, the activity on the networks also had some guidelines and organisation that ranged from the discussion of the name of the movement and the choice of the term “brake”, instead of the traditional “strike”. The term brake was chosen in order to make a symbolic distinction, even in the sense of management and articulation of the movement itself with monitoring of actions during the day, calling for support in certain areas at picket lines or blockades, etc.

As a new movement, in a sort of adhocracy, many things were being created spontaneously, at the same moment of the actions and therefore these did not follow previously determined paths. New performances – for example, the stacking of backpacks in front of the action sites and the dozens of motorcycles parading together through areas of the city – helped to build a repertoire for future actions.

Thinking about the repercussions of the 1st and 25th of July movements requires looking at different levels and dimensions. The institutional legislative machine was activated at the municipal and state levels in legislative houses. For example, in Rio and São Paulo, there were attempts to deal with the demands for some type of labour regulation from sectors of the movement. At the federal levels, with the meeting between the president of the Chamber of Deputies and representatives of contingents of the app-based delivery workers, attention was drawn to the approximately twenty bills being processed in the Brazilian parliament. Thus, one can see the attempt, at least by part of the movement, to try new spaces of action and to seek channels for negotiation and policy implementation, escaping from or at least reducing what could have instead become a tactical freeze. 

These movements did not lead to immediate changes, as companies also brought pressure to bear against regulating their forms of management and labour exploitation, which are central to their business strategies.

There also many unresolved issues in terms of the groups and organisations of workers’ representation. These include autonomous organisations, unions, and associations that compete for the representation of workers and that have increased presence and activity levels since the launch of the movement. In this sense, the internal divisions were also apparent. The drop in engagement between the two “brakes” was noticeable. A few days before the July 25th start date set for the second, the São Paulo workers’ union called for an isolated action and did not formally adhere to the “brake”. The organisational and political challenge is how horizontal organisations (the so-called "collectives") could work together with the more hierarchically organized ones (such as the unions), More broadly, it remains to be seen if such a cooperation is viable. 

The “apps” companies, which bet on the failure of the movement, worked hard to achieve that, felt the impact, and have sought, via public notices and advertising campaigns, to produce an alternative version of the sector’s employment conditions in the public debate. Millions were invested in trying to preserve the image of the brands that were now tarnished due to the public exposure won by the brakes. Even though this does not mean that they accepted the workers’ demands, they were forced to negotiate. Even though it did not mean that they accepted the workers' demands, they were forced to negotiate and abandon their denial of sector-wide grievances and their claims that their "partners" (i.e., their workers) enjoyed the best of all worlds.

The brakes shifted public opinion; people became aware of the working conditions of those who are seen visually but who remained socially invisible in our urban landscapes and on the doors of houses and buildings in all our cities. The political and organisational gains and the repercussions of #brequedosapps are quite important. The sector´s business relationships are not yet fully established; it is still a field in dispute. After these two mobilisations, the sector is very much subject to contention and the outcomes, to a large extent, will depend on labour, political and organisational choices.

Comparing the experiences: Limits and possibilities of social networks

If we compare the national strike of truck drivers in 2018 and the #BrequedosApps of app-based delivery workers in 2020, the tactically complementary combination of traditional collective action and of connective action (Khalil & Storie, 2020) is obvious in both cases. While, in the truck drivers’ strike in 2018, earlier repertoires of action were used without any novel tactics, the use of social media amplified the mobilisation to a considerable extent and was instrumental in taking the mobilisation out of the hands of the initial organisers. In some respects, it was quite similar to the radical left street protests of June and July 2013 against fare hikes in public transport, which morphed into a large movement with a variety of demands. A tactical novelty that did occur during the truck drivers’ strike was the wide participation of other professional groups who were also affected by high prices of fuel, and the joint action with petroleum workers. The enormous mass of protesters and participating organisations, however, became a weakness, paradoxically, since there was no overall coordination of the movement and no representative organisation. In this way, it was hard to channel demands and establish a sound base for the alliance with petroleum workers and other groups. There was no national forum representing the strike, but rather a diversity of organisations with different agendas and demands, some of which represented transport companies.

While some truckers’ organisations joined together into a national coalition after the strike, its representative character is in question and truckers proved unable to launch a larger strike movement in 2021 - even with at least three initiatives to do so and massive media amplification. These initiatives found only timid responses from truckers. In November 2021, only a local mobilisation at Brazil’s biggest port, Santos, saw success and subsequently led to a collective agreement, but this victory was not replicated elsewhere. Nonetheless, choosing a specific logistical choke point, such as a major port, can be seen as a successful move to overcome the tactical freeze of the truckers movement. Another tactical innovation of truckers in Santos was to directly negotiate minimum freight prices with about 70 transport companies in a public meeting, instead of appealing to the government, and the transport companies were held to account.

In contrast to the use of social media as an amplifier for traditional collective action, app-based delivery workers relied on social media from the beginning. Their movements on a larger scale, however, only became visible when delivery went online and onto the application platforms. In contrast, the truckers’ movements in the form of roadblocks had a longer history before their social media connective actions. Delivery workers existed before food applications entered the scene but rarely mobilised in broader collective actions. In this way, connective and collective action emerged jointly, and the #BrequedosApps as the first national mobilisation was a tactical innovation after a series of local protests by the end of the 2010s. It was also the first large strike in Brazil during the pandemic. The use of food applications during the pandemic provided momentum to the strike, too. But it was also significant that the two days of national mobilisation in July 2020 have remained the only national mobilisations so far. Leaders of those movements tried to mobilise to the federal capital in Brasília in order to lobby Congress in September 2020, i.e., to move into the legislative area. This was an initial attempt to break the tactical freeze after the national mobilisations, but the initiative was not met with much success. It was only in the autumn of 2021 that food app-based delivery workers launched a new tactic, which seems to be a sort of return to earlier stages of the movement before the national strike. Occurring primarily in mid-sized cities in the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, these consisted of strikes and blockades of applications at the local level, sometimes alongside local demands. With some of them lasting for several days, these took place in about ten cities and led the largest food delivery application, the company Ifood, to announce increased remuneration for delivery. A few weeks later, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Labour Court (TST) declared app-based drivers for Uber to be in regular employment in December 2021; that will probably be extended to other companies. It reinforced a tendency established by courts in Spain, Italy, and the UK.

Conclusion

In this article we explored the possibilities and the limits ofthe use of social media for workers’ action. We analysed two movements of different professional groups, with different trajectories and histories, in different contexts, but whose organisations and mobilisations used social media extensively, each in its own way. Our cases show that the impact of Internet 2.0 for worker activism and visibility is ambivalent. Social media’s efficacy for workers’ mobilisation applies to a varying extent, depending on the specific type of workers mobilisation. We see that social media was useful at igniting an initial mobilisation, but it presented challenges for consolidating workers’ mobilisations in the medium-to-long-term perspective. However, the tactical complementarity between collective and connective action is also apparent from the examples.

Therefore, we can conclude that the parallel development of collective and connective action in the case of app-based delivery workers mirrored the ability of those workers’ attempt to overcome an initial tactical freeze that they faced when national strikes did not work as a permanent tactic despite initial success. By contrast, in the case of the truck drivers’ action, the relationship between collective and connective action was different: an established tactic of road blocks was amplified with the use of social media but earlier weaknesses of truckers in the political realm, i.e., the mingling of employers’ and workers’ interests was accentuated. The lack of coherence in the set of demands and their implementation persisted. The mass of protesters was effectively mobilized through connective action but it could not provide solutions to the prior incoherence.

We can therefore conclude that connective action is not a silver bullet for workers’ movements and that it can reinforce unresolved problems despite a seemingly successful mobilisation. The specific relationship between collective and connective action does seem to be important for labour movements’ success. Problems that persist on the level of collective action cannot be resolved simply via connective action, but tactical innovation may provide opportunities to use connective action in new ways.

Thus, it becomes visible that problems for the organisations of both groups of workers, app-based delivery drivers, and truckers reside in the political and ideological arena. There is a lack of clarity in both groups about their desired legal status. Do the workers prefer to remain self-employed, or do they aim to become formally employed in the framework of the CLT, with the rights and duties associated with this framework? A second issue on which both professional groups remain divided is the type of organization: do they prefer to join a corporatist form of union or organisation, or a more politicised and combative type of organisation? Both tendencies are strong in both professional groups, so there will be probably some co-existence of both tendencies for some time, perpetuating another division in the workforce. The independent collectives and associations of workers that are especially important for delivery workers also exhibit some weaknesses, including the possibility of fragmenting the representation of workers.

Another interesting question concerns the relationship between both professional groups. Some app-based delivery workers joined the truck drivers’ strike in 2018. During the rather small strike of truck drivers in November 2021, there were also some common public assemblies of truck drivers and app-based delivery drivers. In the end, despite differing empirical situations, there are many common issues impacting both professional groups. These connections remained ephemeral but are suggestive of future possibilities. The use of social media after all turned out to be a crucial instrument to literally connect workers who are territorially dispersed by the process of work – i.e., they lack a common workplace. The formulation of each professional group’s demands and therefore its political orientations are crucial issues that remain to be resolved. Thus, the problem of adhocracy raised by Tufekci (2017) is less relevant for the two case studies dealt with this in this article, but her concern about the tactical freeze turns out to be a symptom of unresolved political issues. To rely exclusively on connective action can therefore potentially reinforce this tactical freeze.

References    

Abílio, L. (2020, July 30). Breque no despotismo algorítmico: uberização, trabalho sob demanda e insubordinação [Brake in algorithmic despotism: Uberization, work on demand and insubordination]. Boitempo Blog. https://blogdaboitempo.com.br/2020/07/30/breque-no-despotismo-algoritmic...  

Abílio, L. C., De Almeida, P. F., Amorim, H., Cardoso, A. C. M., Da Fonseca, V. P., Kalil, R. B., & Machado, S. (2020). Condições de trabalho de entregadores via plataforma digital durante a COVID-19 [Conditions of work of delivery workers via digital platforms during COVID-19]. Revista Jurídica Trabalho E Desenvolvimento Humano, 3. https://doi.org/10.33239/rjtdh.v.74 

Bennett, L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action. Information, Communication and Society, 15(5), pp. 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661 

Campos, A., Galvão, A., Lemos, P., & Trópia, P. (2021). Ação sindical de trabalhadores em serviços essenciais na pandemia de covid-19 no Brasil [Union action by workers in essential services during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil]. In J. D. Krein et al. (Orgs.). O Trabalho pós reforma trabalhista de 2017. CESIT.

Castells, M. (2015). Networks of outrage and hope. Social movements in the internet age (2nd ed.). Polity.

Cini, L., Maccarrone, V., & Tassinari, A. (2021). With or without u(nions)? Understanding the diversity of gig workers’ organizing practices in Italy and the UK. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 28(3), pp. 341–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801211052531 

    CNT (Confederação Nacional de Transporte), 2019a: Anuário CNT do Transporte 2019. CNT

CNT (Confederação Nacional de Transporte), 2019b. Transporte em Números, December. CNT.

Costa, L., E., Da Rocha, F. V., & Caixeta Filho, J. V. (2018). Transporte Rodoviário de Grãos no Brasil: Comportamento do Mercado de Fretes e Endividamento do Setor [Grain Road Transport in Brazil: Behavior of the Freight Market and Sector Indebtedness]. 56º Congresso SOBER, Transformações Recentes na Agropecuário Brasileira, 29 de julho a 1º de agosto 2018.

Dutra, R., & Festi, R. (2020, July 11). A greve dos entregadores [The delivery workers strike]. GGN. https:/ /jornalggn.com.br/artigos/a-greve-dos-entregadores-por-renata-dutra-e-ricardo-festi/

Escoto, A., & Gonsales, M. (2021). Responses of app-based delivery workers at Covid-19 crisis in the largest Latin American cities: São Paulo and Mexico City. Socioscapes: International Journal of Societies, Politics and Cultures, 2(2), pp. 135–156. http://www.socioscapes.org/index.php/sc/article/view/115 

    Filgueiras, V., & Antunes, R. (2020). Plataformas Digitais, Uberização do Trabalho e Regulação no Capitalismo Contemporâneo. Revista Contracampo, 39(1). https://doi.org/10.22409/contracampo.v39i1.38901

Fominaya, C. F. (2020). Democracy reloaded: Inside Spain´s political laboratory from 15-M to Podemos. Oxford University Press.

Galvão, A. (2020a, July 3). A greve, o breque, o trampo: a luta dos entregadores é a luta dos trabalhadores [The strike, the brake, the job: The struggle of the delivery workers is the struggle of the workers].  Esquerda Diario.  http://www.esquerdadiario.com.br/A-greve-o-breque-o-trampo-a-luta-do-ent...

Galvão, A. (2020b, July 14). O movimento dos entregadores [The movement of the delivery workers]. A terra é Redonda. https:/ /aterraeredonda.com.br/o-movimento-dos-entregadores/https://aterraeredonda.com.br/o-movimento-dos-entregadores/

Garelli, R. (2020). Educators United Online. In E. Kolins Givan & A. Schrager Lang (Eds.), Strike for the common good (pp. 102–111). University of Michigan Press.

Heckscher, C., & McCarthy, J. (2014). Transient solidarities: Commitment and collective action in post-industrial societies. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 52(4), 627–657. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12084 

Huertas, D. (2021, September 10). O bolsonarismo dentro das boleias [Bolsonarism inside of the truck cabins]. Outras Palavras. https://outraspalavras.net/direita-assanhada/o-bolsonarismo-dentro-das-boleias/ 

Kavada, A. (2018). Connective or collective? The intersection between online crowds and social movements in contemporary activism. In G. Meikle (Ed.), The Routledge companion to media and activism, pp. 108–116. Routledge.

Khalil, A., & Storie, L. K. (2020). Social media and connective action: The case of the Saudi women’s movement for the right to drive. New Media & Society, 23(10), 3038–3061. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820943849  

Lapa, R. S. (2021). O trabalho em plataformas digitais e a pandemia de COVID-19: análise dos dados da PNAD/IBGE [Work with digital platforms and the COVID-19 pandemic: An analysis of PNAD/IBGE data]. Mercado de trabalho & Conjuntura, 71, IPEA. https://repositorio.ipea.gov.br/handle/11058/10658 

Lazar, T., Rivka, R., & Davidson, R. (2020). Mobile social media as platforms in workers’ unionization. Information, Communication and Society, 23(3), 437–453. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1510536 

Maffie, M. D. (2020). The role of digital communities in organizing gig workers. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 59(1), 123–149. https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12251

Manzano, M., and Krein, A. (2020, July 13). A pandemia e o trabalho de motoristas e de entregadores por aplicativo no Brasil [The pandemic and the work of app-based drivers and delivery workers in Brazil]. Remir Trabalho. Cesit/Unicamp. https://www.eco.unicamp.br/remir/index.php/condicoes-de-trabalho/186-a-p...

McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., and Tilly, C. (2009). Para mapear o confronto político [To map contentious politics]. Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política, 76, pp. 11–48.  https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-64452009000100002 

Nowak, J. (2021). Do choke points provide workers in logistics with power? A critique of the power resources approach in light of the 2018 truckers´ strike in Brazil. Review of International Political Economy, 29(5), pp. 1675–     1697. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2021.1931940

Offe, C., & Wiesenthal, H. (1980). Two logics of class action: Theoretical notes on social class and organizational form. Political Power and Social Theory, 1, pp. 67–115.

    Pasquier, V., & Wood, A. (2018). The power of social media as a labour campaigning tool: Lessons from OUR Walmart and the Fight for 15. In ETUI Policy Brief, 10, European Economic, Employment and Social Policy.     European Trade Union Institute.    

Praun, L. (2020, July 4). Breque dos Apps: a ocupação das ruas reinventa o sentido de coletividade [Apps Break: The occupation of the streets reinvents the sense of collectivity]. Esquerda Diario. https://www.esquerdadiario.com.br/Breque-dos-Apps-a-ocupacao-das-ruas-reinventa-o-sentido-de-coletividade     

Reis, J. J. (2019). Ganhadores: a greve negra de 1857 na Bahia [Gainers: The 1857 strike of Black workers in Bahia]. Cia das Letras.

Santana, M., & Braga, R. (2020). #BrequeDosApps: Enfrentando o uberismo. https://blogdaboitempo.com.br/2020/07/25/brequedosapps-enfrentando-o-uberismo 

Saundry, R., Stuart, M., & Antcliff, V. (2012). Social capital and union revitalization: A study of worker networks in the UK audio-visual industries. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 50(2), pp. 263–286. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2011.00850.x

Treem, J. W., & Leonardi, P. M. (2012). Social media use in organizations: Exploring the affordances of visibility, editability, persistence, and association. Communication Yearbook, 36, pp. 143–189. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2129853 

Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas. The power and fragility of networked protest. Yale University Press.

Wood, A., Graham, M., Lehdonvirta, V., & Hjorth, I. (2018). Good gig, bad gig: Autonomy and algorithmic control in the global gig economy. Work, Employment and Society, 33(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017018785616 

Wood, A., & Lehdonvirta, V. (2019). Platform labour and structured antagonism: Understanding the origins of protest in the gig economy. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3357804