FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG – Organising ­YouTube THE YOUTUBERS UNION: A NOVEL CASE OF WORKER ORGANISING In the last decade, YouTube has established itself as the largest video sharing platform worldwide. Used by more than 2 billion people regularly today, YouTube is not just a crucial profit engine and data resource for its parent com­pany Google(Alphabet 2020). It also serves as a source of income for more than 100,000 YouTubers, who produce the majority of content that users consume and engage with on the site every day(Alphabet 2020; Funk 2020). 1 The working conditions of YouTubers differ starkly from conventional forms of employment and resemble a type of ›platform work‹: an activity based on self-employment, with flexible scheduling and coordinated through a data-heavy, algorithmic environment. Even more than most platform workers, YouTube’s globally dispersed workforce of content creators is facing a fragmented work environment, which makes the mutual association of workers seem highly diffi­cult. However, in 2018, a group of YouTubers managed to successfully organise for their collective interests and formed a ›YouTubers Union‹(YTU) to challenge corporate changes on the platform. The group eventually joined up with the German trade union IG Metall to enter into negotiation with YouTube and Google. This interesting and uncommon case of worker organising on a large-scale platform raises the question how successful organising in this new environment might be conducted. Since the emergence of the ›platform economy‹ and compa­nies like Google, Amazon and Facebook, labour activists and scholars alike have wondered how workers’ collective action in this new field might look(Lehdonvirta 2016). Unclear distinctions between unpaid and paid work(embodied in the ›sharing economy‹ narrative), forms of false self-employ­ment and new possibilities of control and surveillance have made questions about the composition of power resources for workers and their strategic employment a pressing issue. Our research aims to contribute to this discussion by laying out the case of the YTU, a so far unseen case of collective action in the platform economy. We would like to lay out how YouTubers have constituted the YTU and what power resources the group could mobilise. The argument we put forward in this article is that collective action on YouTube could not build on conventional forms of labour organising such as work stoppages, but instead was viable through (1) fast-pace mobilisation using online platforms,(2) the exercise of public pressure against the company and(3) the coalition with a traditional trade union. These tactics, along with the groups’ invocation of many unclear legal issues, made it possible for the group to establish itself as a col­lective actor against YouTube(Dolata/Schrape 2018). While 1 Our research concentrates on the work of professional content cre­ators, who earn their living through YouTube. The number 100 000 is based on our own(conservative) estimate on the basis of Funk (2020). Beyond its role as full income-source, YouTube also serves as a side income for a much larger group of people. Several million peo­ple alone were registered in the last years with the YouTube Partner­ship Program, through which channels can generate earnings on the platform. the organising success was limited, we argue that the case can offer helpful insight into the possibilities and obstacles within platform-based worker organising. By describing the collective efforts of content creators on YouTube, this research presents a contrast to most prior research on collective action in the platform economy, which has been focused on location-based gig work ar­rangements in the transport or delivery sector(Tassinari/ Maccarrone 2017). Besides some»embryonic form[s] of collective action«(Wood/Lehdonvirta 2019: 28) described so far, successful organising has not appeared viable in this field. Considering the fact that most workers in the platform economy work in the remote sector, new devel­opments in this field are of substantial importance. Just like with other ›tech giants‹ that have spearheaded economic developments in recent years, the labour dynamics on media platforms are likely to proliferate into the broader economy as well. Ellmer and colleagues argue that despite the still marginal size, the paradigms of platform labour are »certainly challenging established labor market institutions and may serve as a blueprint for redesigning work organi­zation in other industries and domains«(Ellmer et al. 2019: 8). The same might also be said for workers organising on these platforms, a phenomenon that has started to grow in the last years. The research we present is based on the triangulation of three methods, each of them looking at the case from a different angle(Flick 2011). Knowledge about the motivations and actions of individual members was gathered through six problem-centred interviews with YTU members(Witzel 1985, 2000). Data on collective processes was gathered through online ethnography of the YTU’s Facebook group and their joint campaign with the trade union IG Metall. Both research angles were complemented through expert interviews with the group founder and a representative of IG Metall. Most research data were coded through a Qualitative Data Analysis software tool(Kuckartz 2010) and categories were developed through a grounded theory approach(Corbin/Strauss 1990). The field research took place between October 2018 and October 2019. YOUTUBE AS A PLATFORM AND THE LABOUR OF CONTENT CREATION To understand labour on YouTube and the conflicts within it, a consideration of the company’s business model is required. Like its parent company Google, YouTube is structured as a platform firm(Srnicek 2017). Instead of producing goods or services, platform firms provide marketplace infrastruc­tures that enable different actors(producers, consumers, employers) to communicate, trade or establish contracts. As a video sharing service, YouTube connects advertising firms, consumers and content creators(›YouTubers‹) through its platform, a business model that sets the company apart from the two-sided market model of conventional publishers and 2