Digital network used to coordinate, with a greater or lesser extent of control, and in an automated way, the provision of on-demand labour services by individuals or corporate consumers, directly or indirectly, in the physical or online world.
Comment
- Digital labour platforms include:
- web-based platforms, where work is outsourced through an open call to a geographically dispersed crowd (‘crowdworking’);
- location-based applications which allocate work to individuals in a specific geographic area, typically to perform local, service-oriented tasks such as driving, running errands or cleaning houses;
- the implications of digital labour platforms for work and employment are ambivalent:
- on the one hand, they can lower the entry barriers to the labour market, facilitate work participation through better matching procedures and ease the working conditions of groups usually marginalised; they can support continuing skill development and learning of workers;
- on the other hand, digital labour platforms typically rely on a workforce of independent contractors whose conditions of employment, representation and social protection are at best unclear, at worst clearly unfavourable.
Source
Based on European Commission, 2021d; JRC, 2018; Cedefop 2020b; Eurostat.