Abstract
Platforms like Uber, Deliveroo, and Upwork have disrupted labor markets around the world. These platforms vary enormously in form and function, but generally contain three parts: digital platforms, which set the rules and intermediate communication and transactions between the other two parts, consumers and platform workers. Platform work is a diverse type of labor that developed around these platforms, and it has great potential to increase citizen participation. However, it is under intense scrutiny in light of widely publicized protests and court cases. This report attempts to disentangle the rhetoric surrounding platform work by discussing its emergence and conceptualization, key challenges, and how it may increase participation in the socio-economic sphere. The conclusion discusses how most policy proposals to regulate platform work fail to address the core issues, while potentially stifling innovative practices. Instead, the author suggests more tailored and proportionate regulatory responses.
TopThe platform economy is new, fast-growing, and has great potential to change how citizens work and consume. Still, ‘platform economy’ and related terms remain poorly defined, and definitional clarity is the topic of considerable ongoing debate (Codagnone, Biagi and Abadie, 2016; Codagnone and Martens, 2016; Drahokoupil and Fabo, 2017; Maselli, Lenaerts and Beblavý, 2016; Riso, 2019). The background and underlying motivations for the platform economy are worth closer examination.
The related term ‘collaborative economy’, often used by authors and EU institutions, seems to have evolved from Rachel Botsman’s 2010 Ted Talk, where she introduced the idea of collaborative consumption (Kilhoffer, Lenaerts and Beblavý, 2017). The idea behind collaborative consumption is that new communication tools allow us to change the way we consume, which means ownership is no longer imperative, and we can be more efficient and less wasteful. To illustrate the point, Botsman asked her audience how many of them own a power drill, and most of the audience raised their hands. Botsman quipped,