Hacia el trabajo decente: la protección social de los trabajadores digitales

The deployment of digitalization has stimulated new employment practices which result in a critical role for labor law in the process of digital transformation of industry and the economy. The technology interference has destabilized the system, weakening the foundations of how work relationships function, causing uncertainty and insecurity and a disruption between typical combinations of time, space and performance, since physical proximity disappears with the risk of losing functional proximity. One of the most obvious indicators of the present disruption is the phenomenon of work on the platform. Although these facilities have the potential to create benefits for their users – both consumers and workers - labor law questions the new parties of the working relationship. First, it therefore essential to understand if the relationships that the platforms contribute to creating can be characterized as real work activities and, as such, if and how they need to be protected. In this respect, a new set of rules seems necessary in order to allow the worker to remain at the center of the labour law system. The accelerated evolution of digital economy has also shown that technology is not only transforming structures and organizations (cooperativism, umbrella companies) but the sharing-economy models prove that today’s digital economy is shaped and driven by platforms and is necessary to create specific organization to protect social right ‘workers. In the same direction the European Pillar of Social Rights of 2017 has also been launched.