In this series of the Fairwork podcast, we’ve looked at work in the planetary labour market, we’ve looked at the experiences and stories of workers who work via digital platforms, from Colombia, to Germany, the USA to the UK. But in each of these stories, not once have any two workers actually met. Think about that for a moment, none of the workers I’ve spoken to for this series have ever come into physical contact with their colleagues through doing their work. But in the final two episodes of this series, we'll to focus on an example of workers coming together to deny the isolation imposed on them, to look at an example of workers who have overcome the barriers placed between them to come together, organise and campaign for their livelihoods.
In December last year I was lucky enough to spend some time in Belgrade Serbia, where I met workers, journalists and researchers and spoke to them about the freelancer strikes and protests that occurred at the end of 2020 and throughout 2021, in which workers came together to protest against changes to how the government would tax income from overseas. Serbia has one of the highest proportions of workers working via digital platforms, with an estimated 2% of the national workforce using digital platforms, and as we’ll see, new government legislation threatened to shut the platform economy in Serbia down, forever.
In this two-part episode, we look at how freelancers from across the country came together to fight for their livelihood.
Here's the Wikipedia article about the parliment building (including some pictures of the horses we reference)
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