Regulating the Autonomy of Gig Workers. A Paternalizing Look into the Consent-Based Platform Work Economy

Abstract

The role of the traditional labour market has been changed by globalisation and modern technology, particularly by the unprecedented and generalised use of smartphones. The platform economy, also called “gig economy” is radically changing the rights and duties of service providers, as it is associated with a high degree of flexibility and profit maximisation, which suppresses or significantly limits traditional workers’ rights, such as the right to paid holiday, maternity license or unemployment benefits.

This paper focuses on Uber, the current international market leader on online ridesourcing platforms, and the impact they have on gig workers that chose to enter the platform. Online ridesourcing platforms assign private drivers to rides booked and paid for by passengers through an app. The platform’s drivers may vary from ‘genuine’ freelance business owners, ‘multiple jobholders’, “moonlight” workers to workers who opted for working full-time as gig workers.

Among the latter are former professional riders or amateur riders who were unable to cope with the tight restrictions of a heavily regulated professional passenger transportation sector, high-priced licenses, inefficient work-life balance policies and lack of safety guarantees. A sector of the scholarship argues that the conditions offered by platforms to drivers encourage entrepreneurship across all segments of society and foster the decentralization of economic growth. In fact, on-demand ridesharing platforms adapt the drivers’ income to the market, providing for primetime pricing to meet increased demand. Additionally, by allowing for a flexible work schedule, they are deemed to promote work-life balance. Finally, by integrating technology they ensure a more efficient provision of services and a safer one as well, with passenger registration, money-free rides and GPS location as integral part of the operation. The wider majority of the scholarship, however, has been heavily criticizing these platform services for infringing workers’ rights.

If there is an almost consensus in the scholarship that gig workers have been opting for entering a labour economy which will affect them, their families and other parts of the working population in the mid or long-run, the question is asked whether it is justified for regulators to nudge such workers into taking decisions (or imposing these upon them) which are better for their own welfare and the decent living standard of other workers. In other words, what should be the balance between respecting the autonomy of ‘gig-workers’ in grasping their chances to access the ‘gig-labour market’ and taking paternalizing measures to protect ‘gig-workers’ against ‘self-exploitation ’?