Digital labor platforms as machines of production

Veena Dubal e Vitor Araújo Filgueiras

Fonte: Yale Journal of Law & Technology, New Heaven, v. 26, n.3, 2024, p. 560-594.

Resumo:

Debate about the regulation of “digital labor platforms” abounds globally among scholars, legislators, and other analysts concerned about the future of work(ers). In 2024, the European Parliament passed a first-of-its kind “Platform Work Directive” aimed at extending and growing protections for workers who labor for firms that utilize “automated systems to match supply and demand for work.” In this Essay, we consider the problematics of regulating the digital labor platform as a distinct subtype of firm and “platform work” as a novel form of employment. We propose that digital platforms are not firms, but rather labor management machines. Thus, the Directive is vastly underinclusive in its extension of much-needed rights to workers who toil under algorithmic decision-making systems.

Using extant empirical evidence from both the United States and Brazil of occupational injuries faced by workers who interact with platforms (as disciplinary machines, not as firms), we show that, like early-Twentieth-Century industrialists who employed new mechanical systems for production, contemporary firms using platforms cause workers to suffer high rates of physical and psychosocial injury. Accordingly, lawmakers across the globe should consider how firms in many sectors use these digital machines to increase control of the labor process and how this heightened control impacts worker health and safety. By recognizing the contemporary social relationship between firms and workers, legislators can regulate algorithmically managed work to make it safer, more tolerable, and more dignified.

Sumário:

Introduction | I. Ford Is Not a Conveyor Belt, Uber Is Not a Platform: Regulating the Social Relationships of Production | II. Historically Situating “Platforms” for Labor Regulation | III. Dangerous Digital Machines: Labor Platforms and Occupational Death and Injuries | Conclusion: A Digital Machines at Work Directive for
the Future of Labor Regulation

Globally, regulatory and juridical debates about the “future of work” are replete with discussions about “digital platforms” or even “labor platforms.” The European Union’s “Platform Work Directive,” for example, is the first comprehensive legislative attempt in the world to address the labor conditions of workers across “digital labor platforms.”1 The Directive, which estimates that 43 million workers across Europe will be working for labor platforms by 2025, aims to do two main things: to (1) “help[] determine the correct employment status of people working across digital platforms” and (2) “establish[]the first EU rules on the use of algorithm systems in the workplace.”2 In delineating rules to accomplish both goals, the Directive uses the term “digital labor platforms” to refer to firms that utilize “automated systems to match supply and demand for work” and that use algorithms for human resource management.

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Veena Dubal is Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine; Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University; Ph.D. 2014, University of California, Berkeley; J.D. 2006, University of California, Berkeley School of Law; B.A. 2003, Stanford University.

Vitor Araújo Filgueiras is Projects Manager, Fundacentro (Brazilian Ministry of Labor); Professor of Economics, Federal University of Bahia; Visiting Professor, Complutense University of Madrid; Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Campinas & School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; Ph.D. 2012, Federal University of Bahia; M.A. 2008, University of Campinas; B.A. 2005, Federal University of Bahia.

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