Platform work as potential labour: algorithmic management and everyday uncertainty in Deliveroo and Uber

This paper examines and consolidates the concept of ‘potential labour’, focusing on the everyday life of food-delivery and ride-hailing workers of Deliveroo in Italy and Uber in Argentina. Drawing on Marx’s concept of ‘industrial reserve army’, the authors argue that platforms rely on a quantitatively indeterminate workforce, in which potential labour–unlike the traditional reserve army which sits outside production–is central to how platforms operate. With this we mean that socio-technical arrangements of algorithmic management, such as free login, semi-automated onboarding, and opaque account control, are designed to produce and maintain a dynamic surplus workforce essential to the functioning of the labour process. The result is a potential workforce activable in real-time with digital technologies, which is essential not only in providing services but also in stimulating competition, ensuring disposability and shrinking workers’ agency. Consequently, the paper offers a new lens to understand emerging platform labour regimes.