Platform-based work is finding a place in legislative instruments in India in recent years, under the Code on Social Security, 2020, as well as state-level legislations. In this paper, I argue that these efforts to extend protections to gig or platform work are limited in their understanding of the way work is shaped by digital technologies both within and outside of platforms. Platform-based work regulation seems to have skipped a step: the regulatory discourse has moved on to a welfare-focused model present in informal work, without examining existing jurisprudence on worker rights relevant to digitally mediated work. These legislative instruments exceptionalize work performed on digital platforms and lose an important opportunity to address fundamental issues not only in gig and platform work, but also in algorithmic/technological control extended over workers outside platforms. Drawing on the work of Veena Dubal, who argues that ‘digital labour platforms’ should be seen not as new forms of employment but as ‘digital machines’ that are part of the labour process and used as a method of labour control and discipline, this paper argues that labour law protections for platform work need to shift focus to the role of algorithmic control of work, and its impact on workers. Regulation should be based not on the existence of the digital platform, but on the digitally mediated elements of the relationship between the gig or platform worker and aggregator that affect workers’ rights and working conditions.
Jasoon Chelat (Mon,) studied this question.