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The expansion of the platform economy has altered the spatial organization of work and employment relations, leading to deregulation and eroding workers' social power. However, despite the radical individualization and precarization of platform work, workers demonstrate agency. This article explores the political strategies employed by place-based platform workers, with a particular focus on the spatiality of their collective action. Using an ethnographic methodology, the article analyses the case studies of drivers' trade associations in Chile and the couriers' organization in Spain. The results show significant similarities between the two groups: (a) non-conventional forms of labour activism; (b) using social media to share experiences, foster solidarity and organize collectively; (c) organizing in large cities; (d) starting locally and progressing to higher scales, and (e) building national and international alliances. The article concludes that workers respond to the spatial organization of work by platforms in a multi-scalar way that is strongly influenced by both their imaginaries and the political and regulatory context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008 economic and political crisis produced a favourable opportunity structure for the emergence of new and innovative left-wing political projects and trade union strategies in Spain, especially in relation to remunicipalisation processes that sought to revert the neoliberal policy making at the local scale. The article deploys a Gramscian analysis on trade union discourse production in order to discern complex process of working-class formation and intra-class conflict in the beach cleaning units of the Andalusian city of Cádiz. Crucially, the oppositional stand defended by one of the largest trade unions in Spain towards remunicipalisation shows that trade unions can act as 'retaining walls' against political change in periods of social upheaval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]