Oriol Alfambra (Mensakas) on Sommobilitat as Part of Who Owns the World? PCC Conference at the New School 2019
Summary
Oriol Alfambra (Mensakas) on SomMobilitat at Who Owns the World Conference, convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School in November 2019. Oriol Alfambra is a guest speaker for the Platform Co-ops & the Green New Deal panel discussion. No issue is more pressing than the climate crisis! Digital technologies can either help ameliorate this crisis or they can worsen it. Can co-ops be an alternative to extractive capitalism that refuses to acknowledge the impending catastrophe? How do we democratize the digital economy in the time of the Green New Deal?
In May 2017 Barcelona couriers from companies such as Deliveroo, Glovo or UberEats created the RidersXDerechos (Riders4Rights) union campaign to defend our rights. We have demonstrated and gone on strike against the situation of falsely self-employed workers. As a consequence, we have suffered dismissals, which we have already reported to the courts. Mensakas is an app for online ordering and home delivery. In April 2018 we created the Mensakas SCCL cooperative company. It is self-managed by its own workers. Everyone has an employment contract, not false freelance contract, and therefore taxes and social security contributions are being paid. We offer an alternative model of consumption, one that allows people to consume in a socially responsible manner through their smartphone. The cooperative helps strengthen self-organization among riders so that they can continue struggling against precarious work, as well as providing real experience of collectivization and economic sovereignty.