Working on platforms: legal innovations for growing challenges

• Main Author: Miguel Rodríguez-Piñero Royo
• Format: Article
• Language: Catalan
• Published: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya 2019-02-01
• Series: IDP
• Subjects: working on platforms; freedom of association; market for professional services; precariousness; subordinate work; self-employment
• Online Access: https://idp.uoc.edu/articles/3180

<p>The emergence of platforms for the exchange of goods and services has posed a challenge for the Law of Economy and particularly, within this law, for the Labour Law. It has shown that some of the bases on which the regulation of the provision of services has been built have ceased to be valid, such as the radical separation of regimes between salaried work and self-employment, or the low level of protection attributed hereto. Platforms can also place people in a precarious situation in which they are dependent on multiple subjects, up to levels of "hyper-dependence". Meanwhile, they have reduced the regulatory and control capacity of the State over the services market. In the face of this, innovative approaches are needed, which go much further than developing specific contractual figures (which, admittedly, can be useful). This paper proposes two lines of action: first, thinking in terms of professional service markets instead of traditional labour markets; second, encouraging these employees to act as a collective. Finally, certain measures are proposed that allows the State to recover its functions in this particular market.</p>