Platform-mediated work, whether location-based, as in the case of Uber, or cloud-based, as in the case of Amazon Mechanical Turk, poses severe challenges to effective occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation. While the work performed in the platform environment is not usually very different from work performed in more traditional employment settings, the platform environment often exacerbates those risks by, for example, increasing stress and incentivizing long hours and work intensification. Regulating these hazards is impeded by ambiguities surrounding the legal relationship between platform operators and platform workers that make it uncertain whether the OHS regime even applies. As well the regime itself was not designed to address the conditions of platform work or many of the risks and exacerbating factors it produces. Drawing on existing studies, this article explores the structure of platform-mediated work, examines its incidence in Ontario, Canada, summarizes its associated OHS risks, and provides a detailed analysis of the obstacles to effective regulation under Ontario’s OHS regime.

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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.

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Rather than being new, platform work extends pre-existing trends: greater control and surveillance, greater job precarity, and greater worker isolation and workplace fragmentation. Nevertheless, platform work distinguishes itself by its unique usage of algorithmic management software to constantly monitor, organize, and evaluate workers. These two features of platform work adversely affect both workers’ physical and mental health. Platform workers are exposed to layers of risks: traditional risks and risks due to the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) at the workplace. Even if these risks are preventable, the widespread misclassification of platform workers as independent contractors shifts the legal and financial responsibilities to prevent the risks onto these workers, even if they do not have the organizational means and powers to do so. After providing a mapping of the risks that platform workers are exposed to, and the challenges they are facing in practice due to their fragmented employment setting (often combining offline work with platform work), this article examines the recent European Union (EU) initiatives affecting platform work—the Directive to improve working conditions of platform work, and the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). Thus, using a socio-legal methodology, the article aims to contribute to on-going debates on the platform economy and AI by providing a critical analysis of whether these two recent EU initiatives to regulate platform work address a minima the challenges previously raised by the increased use of digital platforms, and, in particular, whether they contain provisions that will effectively empower and protect platform workers. The article argues that the proposal for a Directive on Platform Work represents a potential step forward by recognizing the impact of AI management on workers’ health and safety, including by addressing psychosocial risks. This Directive, however, has its weaknesses and does not address all relevant issues—for example, it doesn’t distinguish between psychosocial risks factors, work-related stress, and how to address them, and, in practice, there is a risk that only a limited number of workers will be able to benefit from these provisions. Meanwhile, the AI Act imposes additional requirements on the user of the AI (the labor platforms) but does not provide additional rights for the end-users (the workers). Further, because the AI Act is a form of product safety regulation (horizontal regulation), it does not take into consideration the specificities of the employment dynamic (e.g., the imbalance of power, subordination, etc). The article concludes that these two EU initiatives show awareness on current issues arising from platform work but fail to address them in an effective way.

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This paper addresses health and safety regulation and working time in platform work, with a focus on food delivery services. In recent years, platform work has highlighted many challenges in legal debates, and health and safety is one of the “hot topics” informing academic discussion. The paper reviews existing literature on working time and health and safety in platform work and draws on qualitative research on delivery riders’ working experiences to identify some of the pressing issues. It then presents the current legal regulatory framework, from European Union and United Kingdom perspectives, identifies challenges, and establishes the importance of working time regulation to improving riders’ health and safety protection.

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