A Platform for Change: Gig-ification, Reclassification, and the Reorganization of California’s Grocery Industry

While precarity is increasing both for traditional employees and for contracted gig workers, little is known about how the growth of platforms is impacting non-platform employees. In this article, I examine how the proximity of traditional grocery stores in Southern California to platform firms is impacting job security and working conditions for employees. Using interviews with workers, union representatives, and industry experts alongside analysis of company filings and industry publications, I show how employers are using platforms to reorganize work first, through the creation of positions that organize work in the same way as platforms; second, through the gradual replacement of workers with platform workers; and third, through informal scheduling pressure that combines with platform technologies to push grocery workers to become platform workers. The result of this platformization is a form of hybrid firm that blurs the lines between platform workers and employees. These findings have broad implications for the threat of platformization across sectors but also present an opportunity for unions to adopt a more expansive vision for organizing.