Browsing by Author "Van Belle, Jean-Pau"

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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.