In recent years, the growth of digital platform businesses has destabilised traditional labour relations globally. Workers in this sector are typically categorised as independent contractors and lack basic protections, such as limits on working hours, access to social security, and income stability, among other conditions. In response to this precarity and challenging the individualised nature of this work, platform workers have utilised social media to forge connections, support one another, and mobilise to demand their rights from the state.

The emergence of mutual aid communities in response to the challenges faced by these workers has been the focus of numerous studies (e.g. Malik et al., 2021; Parth et al., 2021; Stewart P et al., 2020; Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020). Explaining how such solidarity has emerged and enabled collective action, this body of research has contested the pessimistic view framing the decline of traditional trade unions as a sign of the disappearance of workplace collectivism (Beck and Brook, 2020: 4). Furthermore, it has questioned the idea that workers are entirely powerless in the face of technological change (Joyce et al., 2023). Nevertheless, the literature on labour solidarity is marked by theoretical ambiguities (Morgan and Pulignano, 2020). As we will demonstrate, many studies conflate solidarity with contentious activity, reducing the role of workers' communities in the labour process to a simplified narrative of resistance against the platforms' labour control.

This article challenges this perspective. It argues that workers' solidarity not only cultivates a critical collective consciousness that contests the rules imposed by platforms but also aids in generating consent, meaning the active agreement and participation of workers in conditions that facilitate their exploitation (Burawoy, 1985, 2012). We propose distinguishing between two processes through which workers' communities foster this consent. The first, which we term “assimilation,” involves transmitting or reinforcing norms, beliefs, and knowledge among community members, either explicitly or implicitly promoted by the platforms, thereby enhancing productivity. The second, called “accommodation,” occurs when communities help modify the norms, beliefs, or behaviours openly endorsed by companies while reinforcing workers' productive disposition and acceptance of platform conditions. We propose that the balance between both functions and resistance is situated and contingent. Labour solidarity should be understood as a contested terrain.

We develop this argument by analysing the cases of delivery platform workers in Chile and Argentina. The study involved 89 interviews, 14 virtual shadowings, and 864 surveys of Santiago and Buenos Aires couriers.