Trade union responses to platform work: An evolving tension between mainstream and grassroots approaches

This chapter examines the contrasting approaches of mainstream and grassroots unions to organising platform workers. The advent of platform work posed a series of challenges to trade unions, and many commentators predicted that organising such workers would be impossible. Nevertheless, collective organisation has grown rapidly among platform workers - although, often outside established, mainstream trade unions. Instead, a wave of radical, grassroots unions have made the running with impressive energy, determination and "organisational creativity" (Vandaele 2021). Where mainstream unions have had success, it has tended to be where platform workers have legal status as employees. Yet, it is still early days, with union organisation still evolving. We argue that if mainstream unions are to make greater progress in organising platform workers - as with other types of precarious employment - it will require a process of learning from the organisational innovations and methods of grassroots unions.