Legally Self-Employed but De Facto Worker: Motor Couriers’ Working Conditions and Work-Life Balance in Zonguldak, Türkiye

Year 2025, Issue: 71, 121 - 139, 27.06.2025

İsa Demir , Aydın Olcay Özkan

https://doi.org/10.26650/JECS2024-1597125

Abstract

This article investigates the working conditions and work-life balance of couriers in Zonguldak, Türkiye. The study aims to determine whether there is any differentiation in working conditions and work-life balance between self-employed platform couriers and employed platform or non-platform couriers. The “Survey on Socio-demographic Data and Opinions on the Working Conditions of Motor Couriers” which consists of close-ended questions prepared by researchers and the “Work-Life Balance Scale” developed by Fisher, Bulger, and Smith, was used as a data collection tool. The purposive sampling method was employed in the selection of a sampling group, and the snowball sampling method was used for data collection. In the field study, 195 couriers were surveyed out of a total of 250-275 couriers. According to the data, self-employed platform couriers work longer than salaried platform and non-platform couriers, and their work-life imbalance is higher than others. Although they make more money than all other couriers, their life satisfaction is not much higher than that of salaried and weekly-waged couriers. In the SPSS analysis, it was found that self-employed platform couriers are not in a more advantageous position than other fixed-wage employed couriers in terms of income, work hours, seniority, flexibility, and work-life balance.

Keywords

Food delivery workers, couriers gig economy, gig workers, platform workers, flexibility, work-life balance

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