Regulating Health and Safety in Work for Digital Labor Platforms in Australia: The Example of Food Deliverers

抄録

This article aims to examine how the health and safety of platform workers can be protected through legal regulation, in the context of the significant regulatory challenges posed by critical connections between subcontracting, low pay, unregulated hours, and work health and safety (WHS). The article applies a legal analysis of the contemporary Australian approach to WHS regulation to platform work, and examines regulatory initiatives to protect the WHS of food deliverers. It finds critical deficiencies in the application of WHS laws to this sector, and identifies the need for a broader refashioning of labor regulation to such highly articulated and geographically diffuse work arrangements.