This workshop was organized by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee - CGI.br and had the focus on how digital labor around the world are aligned with international frameworks for decent work. The session was moderated by Prof. Rafael Evangelista, and had the following participants:

• Angeliki Moraiti, Intergovernmental Organization, International Labor Organization, Eastern European Regional Group

• Rafael Grohman, Technical Community, DigiLabour/UNISINOS, Latin American and Caribbean Group

• Uma Rani,Intergovernmental Organization,  International Labor Organization, Asia-Pacific Group

The workshop also would count with the following participants who unfortunately had unforeseen events and could not attend. They were:

• Yaseen Aslam, Civil Society, United Kingdom Uber Driver’s Union, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

• Thomas Anning Dorson, Technical Community, Fairwork Foundation, African Group

The session started with a brief explanation of the problem to be addressed in the debates. The moderator, explained the emergence of platform-based business models and how it has contributed to the increase and even to the normalization of informality and deterioration of employment conditions. As said, the increasing fragmentation of production processes, a direct consequence of technological advancement, has led to more unstable employment and income. Digital platforms created marketplaces allowing real-time hiring of labor to meet a large spectrum of social demands that go far beyond transportation services. On these platforms, workers living across multiple time zones offer businesses the possibility of completing projects at any time, day or night. In practice, what we are facing is a global labor supply chain mediated by proprietary algorithms of digital platforms. Additionally, digital labor platforms typically classify their workers as self-employed, thereby denying them labor protections and employer-provided social security. In most cases, the terms and  conditions of working through the platforms are laid out unilaterally by the platforms, which state how and when crowd-workers will be paid, how their work will be evaluated, and what rights workers have when they need them.  The International Labor Organization (ILO) has developed frameworks and partnered with local and international organizations to contribute with policy-making in order to ensure decent digital work. However, there are mismatches between international and local policies, in terms of both digital and labor regulations, that must be identified and addressed.

Panelists agreed with the analysis adding that the increase of cloud infrastructure  and the interest of venture capitalists investing in it can lead to monopolization of the market all around the world. Also, they are largely dominated in USA, Europe and China while other Global South countries accounts for only 4% of those platforms ownership. These platforms are transforming the world of work and this is a new phenomenon for both labor and Internet policymakers. There are a whole set of new practices being introduced by these platforms that are quite different from what we traditionally have experienced. Against the promoted flexibility, when a worker like a taxi driver get an order they have  from15 to 40 seconds to decide if they want to take it or no. There is a punishment if one does not accept it and the worker may be deactivated, being unable to get new rides for a while and jeopardize her ratings. Moreover, these workers do not have direct access to a human being to discuss their problems. All the transactions are made by algorithms. These also mean an important change for the definition of performance.

The fact that the platforms establish the criteria to measure performance creates a duality based on the fact that they became a mediator in actually getting the job done. This means that they should be classified as employers. There is a huge debate around the world about that and in some countries they have already been classified as employers. This is a fundamental issue of misclassification. It has been mentioned that there are principles, frameworks and analysis produced by ILO that can be adopted in countries to help protecting workers and to foster decent working conditions social security, safety, employment and that apply to all kind of workers.

Panelists went further in pointing out the maleficent effects of work plataformization. The misuse of the terms is something that may conceive the real situation of workers in the Global South. For instance the term “Gig Economy”, which is an euro-centric expression, since “gig” has been historically the normal condition of the working class in the Global South where millions of people need to find any activity to earn a living. This is an attempt to generalize some specific conditions of a few groups in the Global North to the whole world. Also, researchers on the political and ethical realms have labeled workers as “invisible”. This is also an eurocentric perspective given that they can barely see this platform workers. The speaker said we may move beyond this idea of invisible work considering that these labor are not invisible for Global South countries.

Work platformization is creating a growing dependence on digital platforms and their mechanisms for datafication, algorithmic management, surveillance and so on. The diversity of platforms business models and mechanisms creates a constantly growing dependency for workers on digital platforms. The association of labor with some of this platforms like the clicking farms, and people working with content moderation all around the world create a connection between platform labor, political struggle and disinformation. Thus, we can see this dependency spreading over new areas of work, for instance in political communication. In this scenario, articulating regulation, public policy and the promotion of fair work becomes the central challenge. The Fairwork project is an initiative to face this challenge creating a set of principles and measurement mechanisms to foster decent work more suitable for platform capitalism (stimulating the understanding of fair contract, health working conditions provided by platforms and fair management which is related to the ability of workers to engage in due process to decisions that affect themselves).

Then the speakers talked about the gaps emphasizing that there is a dispute over fair work principles. Platforms are working with think tanks to produce their own charters of principles and using it to promote their agenda among parliaments. In this sense, ILO should have a role in acting in this disputes. Another gap is the capacity of the working class to organize and produce their own technology to strength their capacity to meet their goals.

Aiming at exploring and exposing the diversity of policies in this field, the following intervention touched upon the issues of regulations that are crucial in ensuring decent work in platform work. The speaker highlighted some of these forms of regulatory intervention.

One is the need to universalize certain standards and principles aforementioned to promote inclusive regulation. The Indian case of adopting a code for social security that applies to all workers in 2020 was given as an example. Another specific example from Australia and New Zealand policy and regulatory sphere, where they are shifting from calling “employer and employee” to “person conducting a business” and a “worker” instead.

Another is the importance to adopt measures specific to platform workers, this can  happen either through state regulation or judicial decision. As provided examples, in France, the French Labour Court allows self employed workers to engage in collective workers and also invite platforms to  engage in methods that may allow workers to obtain decent prices for their services. In addition, In São Paulo, Brazil, a labor tribunal recognized that delivery workers had their health risks reduced through health and safety regulations, recognizing the platform liability in this area. In spite of that, the main limitation of this specific measures is that for instance they fail to address broader trends  such as misclassification and the structural issue of informality.

Additionally, other possibility is to reclassify platform workers as employees, embedding them into previous labor and social protection regulations. In Spain there was a Law as well as several courts all around the world increasingly reclassifying workers by adapting the constitutive employment relationships. Among some elements to characterize the employment relationship (direction and control) are  the platforms’ GPS tracking of workers, and their determination of crucial aspects such as setting the price, matching the users, deactivating them . All of this are indicative of a lack of true entrepreneurial activity hence are indicative of an employment relationship. It was highlighted that judicial decisions may conflict with each other and promote regulatory uncertainty, nonetheless they are gradually leading to more inclusive definitions of workers and this will be crucial to ensure decent work to emerging forms of work.

Furthermore, the speaker pointed out that social partners and platform companies are also taking action to ensure decent work. In Germany, trade unions have established crowd-sourcing initiatives to support workers conditions and developed redress of grievances channels to resolve disputes between workers and platforms.

With regards to data protection law, it was emphasized the relevance of it to platform workers due to two main reasons: the fact that data is the core of platform’s business models; and that the law applies to workers regardless of their employment status. Some individual rights mentioned  are usually present in data protection regulations such as data access, data portability and data leisure. However, the most important one is that platform workers shall not be subject to automated decision-making, considering this also as a key for platforms operations (e.g. for de-activating users, setting prices, etc.). A way to move forward is to promote the right to obtain information and principle of explainability to understand the logic of an automated system. For instance, in Brazilian Data Protection Law there is the right to review automated decisions.

Another important aspect brought relates to collective data rights. What happens in platforms is that we shall guarantee  ownership of data for the workers.  As a concrete outcome of that is the ability of workers to leverage the intelligence of their own data to promote the quality of their own work. This requires specific data governance frameworks. As an example of regulatory recommendations, in India a regulatory committee  has proposed a collective ownership of community data with measures of  mandatory data sharing.

This talk also pointed out that laws to regulate AI application are very important since platforms use automated algorithms. It was argued that laws that directly regulate technology fairness and transparency may have an important role. For instance, European Commission’s regulatory proposal from the beginning of 2021 determines certain requirements to AI systems poses a high risk for the employment context. There is a need do advance in human oversight, reporting obligations, among other aspects.