Judicial Identification of Labour Relationships in Platform Work in the Digital Economy
The development of the digital economy has reshaped the way labour is organised. Platform-mediated work - food delivery, ride-hailing, live streaming and on-demand freight - has expanded rapidly. Platform enterprises typically present themselves as providers of technical services, information matching or cooperative contracting, yet in practice they shape the labour process through algorithmic dispatching, service ratings, pricing rules, reward and penalty mechanisms and account control. The central judicial question that arises is whether a labour relationship exists between the worker and the platform or its partner enterprise. The traditional identification of labour relationships rests on personal, economic and organisational subordination, but platform work combines formal flexibility with substantive control, which gives rise to inconsistent standards across courts. Taking the notion of ‘dominant labour management’ as its point of departure, this article examines the doctrinal basis, the practical difficulties and the adjudicative approach to identifying labour relationships in platform work. It argues that the digital economy has not altered the essential structure of domination and subordination within the labour relationship; it has merely transformed labour management from direct commands into rule-based, algorithmic and evaluative forms of control. Judicial practice should adhere to a fact-first principle and assess, in combination, the contractual label, the work rules, algorithmic dispatching, the source of remuneration, business integration, the allocation of risk and the parties’ evidential capacity, so as to balance the protection of workers’ rights against the vitality of the platform economy.
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