Browsing by Author "Fredman, Sandra"

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    Fair work for platform workers: lessons from the EU directive and beyond
    (Oxford University Press, 2025) Du Toit, Darcy; Fredman, Sandra; Bertolini, Alessio
    The adoption of an EU Directive on Platform Work in March 2024 signals a crucial acknowledgement of the need for legal regulation of a burgeoning form of work which defies traditional conceptions of the employment relationship. In the past decade, platform work has been one of the fastest growing forms of work globally, and Europe has been no exception. It is estimated that, as of 2022, there are over 28 million people performing platform work in the European Union alone, with the number likely to rise to 43 million by 2025. Although it promises flexibility, autonomy and lower barriers to entry compared to more traditional forms of work, platform work has been shown to foster precarity and insecurity for many. Platform work combines the challenges of casual work, which have already strained the boundaries of labour law, with those of algorithmic management, in which managerial power is increasingly mediated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The EU Platform Work Directive (PWD) is potentially a blueprint not just for regulating platform work, but for wider regulation of both casual work and algorithmic management systems. This paper analyses the PWD from the perspective of our extensive on-the-ground research as part of the Fairwork project and uses this experience to suggest ways forward for the proposed ILO Convention. The project works along three axes: to understand the conditions of platform workers better so that we can shape appropriate decent work standards; to achieve change through annual ranking of platforms based on compliance with the Fairwork principles; and to use this evidence to craft legal standards and explore avenues to achieve their formal adoption. The paper begins discussing who should be the subject of legal protection. The paper then turns to the substantive rights which have been formulated and tested by the Fairwork project. The paper concludes with recommendations for a future proposal for an ILO Convention on Platform Work.
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    International regulation of platform labor: A proposal for action
    (Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, 2021) Fredman, Sandra; du Toit, Darcy; Graham, Mark
    Platform-mediated work is a source of livelihood for millions of workers worldwide. However, because platforms typically classify workers as ‘independent contractors’, those workers are generally excluded from the scope of labor rights. This has a corrosive effect on working standards of platform workers, creating the need for an international regulatory framework to prevent a race to the bottom. To address this situation, the article proposes an outline for an International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention for the regulation of platform work going beyond the employee/independent contractor dichotomy. It identifies five core issues in the platform economy – low pay, poor working conditions, inaccessible and unreasonable contracts, unfair management, and a lack of representation – and demonstrates how existing ILO standards could be adapted to address these issues.
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    Thinking Out of the Box: Fair Work for Platform Workers
    (Routledge, 2020) Fredman, Sandra; Du Toit, Darcy; Graham, Mark; Howson, Kelle; Heeks, Richard; Van Belle, Jean-Pau; Mungai, Paul; Osiki, Abigail
    The burgeoning gig economy largely operates outside of existing labour standards, mainly because in most countries workers are classified as self-employed rather than as employees. Until now, much legal effort has been focused on bringing platform workers within the scope of labour law by proving that they fit the definition of employee or worker, which functions as the gateway to employment rights. This has yielded some positive outcomes, particularly in exposing sham self-employment. However, this approach is limited, not least because platforms are adept at reconfiguring their conditions of work to avoid the legal definition of employee, or at fragmenting their corporate structure to evade the jurisdiction of courts in the region where workers in fact find themselves. By contrast, not enough attention has been paid to how labour law standards, fashioned for the ‘employee’ paradigm, should be reshaped to meet the needs of platform workers regardless of their employment status.