Labour status of digital workers: Experience of European countries

Abstract

The use of information and communication technologies in the work process introduced significant innovations, as well as the emergence of new occupations and professions. This digitalisation of work affects the increase of efficiency and easier performance of a number of jobs, but also the precarisation of labour and shifting the focus of employers from employment to other, atypical forms of labour relations. At the same time, employed digital workers exercise some of their labour rights in a specific way. In most cases, digital work implies physical separation from the employer, which raises a number of questions: how to organise working hours, how to supervise the work of digital workers, how they can exercise their collective rights, how the employer can arrange a safe working environment outside its premises, and similar. On the other hand, workers who work outside the employment relationship, among which platform self-employed workers and freelancers stand out, are in a significantly more difficult position when it comes to exercising basic labour rights. The emergence of false self-employment, which is expanding along with the growth of the use of ICT in the work process in various occupations, as well as the virtually unresolved status of the" freelancers" working exclusively in short-term employment for multiple employers simultaneously or successively, are some of the most pressing problems in modern labour law. The research is focused on the analysis of all these issues; it does not largely deal with the basic clarification of the concepts and development of certain categories of employment - these issues are treated only superficially - but it rather indicates the upgrade of the initial tendencies of changes in the understanding of labour and employment, with particular emphasis on returning to classical form of labour relation, which has been refined and modernised with new elements resulting from the digitalisation of work.

Keywords

• labour relation
• digital workers
• false self-employment
• freelancers
• platform workers