Do Titans Tumble? Unveiling Platform Workers’ Institutional Power Across the World

Although the mobilization of workers attempting to address the challenges arising from platform work dates back at least to 2015, strategies adopting institutional mechanisms – e.g., litigation, collective bargaining, legal reform – logically took longer than other forms of labour unrest to produce results. Today, these strategies have led to significant outcomes. This article aims to review their development in a global perspective, which is essential to achieving understanding beyond national institutional settings, especially in the current political context in which the International Labour Organization (ILO) has indicated its commitment to adopting an international labour standard on decent work in the platform economy.This article comes at a time when regulatory initiatives, court rulings and collective agreements, which played a limited role in the early stages, have begun to have a significant impact across geographical boundaries. It conducts a global mapping of jurisprudence, social dialogue and legislative reforms in the platform economy, based on an extensive review of academic and grey literature, institutional and research databases and media, including developments relating to misclassification. Building on an analysis of this compilation, the article provides insights into the present state of affairs, while identifying the dominant trends.