The gig economy and labour regulation: an international and comparative approach
| Autor | Valerio De Stefano |
| Páginas | 11-17 |
caPítulo 1
The Gig Economy and Labour Regulation:
An International and Comparative Approach
Valerio De Stefano(1)
(1) BOF-ZAP Research Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Leuven; Master degree in Law, at Bocconi University in Milan;
Ph.D. at Bocconi University in Milan; Postdoctoral researcher at Bocconi University in Milan; Post-doctoral member at Clare Hall
College at the University of Cambridge (2013); Visiting academic at the University College of London (2012); Technical Officer on
Non-Standard Forms of Employment of the International Labour Office (ILO) (2014-2017). The opinions expressed in this article are
the Author’s only and do not necessarily reflect the position of the International Labour Office.
This paper deals with the main labour implica-
tions of the so-called “gig-economy”. The gig-economy
is usually understood to include chiefly two forms of
work: “crowdwork” and “work on-demand via apps”
(De Stefano, 2016a; Smith and Leberstein, 2015, Sun-
darajan, 2016).
Crowdwork is work that is executed through on-
line platforms that put in contact an indefinite number
of organisations, businesses and individuals through
the internet, potentially allowing connecting clients
and workers on a global basis. The nature of the tasks
performed on crowdwork platforms may vary con-
siderably. Very often it involves “microtasks”: extre-
mely parcelled activities which still require some sort
of judgement beyond the understanding of artificial
intelligence (e.g. tagging photos, valuing emotions
or the appropriateness of a site or text, completing
surveys) (Howe, 2006; Irani, 2015a). In other cases,
bigger works can be crowd-sourced such as the crea-
tion of a logo, the development of a site or the initial
project of a marketing campaign (Kittur et al, 2013;
Leimeister and Durward, 2015; Kuek et al., 2015). In
“work on-demand via apps”, jobs related to traditio-
nal working activities such as transport, cleaning and
running errands, but also forms of clerical work, are
offered and assigned through mobile apps. The busi-
nesses running these apps normally intervene in set-
ting minimum quality standards of service and in the
selection and management of the workforce. These
forms of work are growing in numbers and importan-
ce. In 2016, a study of the University of Hertfordshire
and UNI Global estimated that almost 5 million UK
workers and 8 million German workers have worked
for companies in the gig-economy (Huws and Joice,
2016a; Huws and Joice, 2016b). The growth of the-
se forms of work is also clearly recognisable in the
United States (Hathaway and Muro, 2016; Smith and
Leberstein, 2015).
These forms of work, of course, present some
major differences among each other, the more obvious
being that the first is chiefly executed online and prin-
cipally allows platform, clients and workers to operate
anywhere in the world, whilst the latter only matches
online supply and demand of activities that are later
executed locally. Nonetheless, various arguments also
exist to treat them jointly.
Despite the many dissimilarities that exist between
the two, in fact, these forms of work share several featu-
res that make a common analysis opportune. First and
foremost, they are both enabled by IT and make use of
the internet to match demand and supply of work and
services at an extremely high speed. This, in general,
allows minimising transaction costs and reducing fric-
tions on markets. As such, these work practices show
the potential of resettling the boundaries of enterprises
and challenging the current paradigm of the firm and
of granting a level of flexibility unheard in the past for
the businesses involved (Cherry, 2016; Finkin, 2016).
Workers are provided “just-in-time” and compensated
on a “pay-as-you-go” basis; in practice they are only
paid during the moments the actually work for a client,
paving the way to a sheer commodification of labour
(De Stefano, 2016d).
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