What Can Platform Workers Tell Us about the Nature of the Social Contract and Labour Relations?

Platform work has received a great deal of research attention. In social policy literature, much of this research has focused on the effects on workers' vulnerability. However, in contexts with widespread unemployment, platform work is also seen as a potential panacea. It also offers work that is accessible to and flexible for many who are otherwise excluded from the labour market – youth, women, people with disabilities, and migrants. How, then, can the very legitimate concerns about how platform work undermines decent work be balanced with the potential it holds to encourage employment growth? Much has to do with the nature of the social contract and how that continues to be negotiated by the state, companies that own the platforms, and workers that use the platforms.

An exploratory qualitative research design was employed to investigate how the social contract needs to be reconceptualised in the context of platform work. Twenty platform workers (ten place-based and ten web-based) participated in semi-structured interviews concerning how they understood their relationship to the platform, wages, access to benefits, and thoughts about social insurance. These interviews were complemented with key informant interviews with platform representatives and policy makers.

The findings demonstrate the complexity of how temporary employment practices intersect with platform work, evidence of confusion over worker identification, which undermines the ability of workers to advocate for better work conditions, how workers value the work and wages, despite being excluded from the benefits that formal employees enjoy, and workers' views on the importance of social insurance.

The findings demonstrate how there is a need for innovative social and labour policy thinking that both supports platform work, but also ensures that workers enjoy greater security and benefits. The study both draws on and contributes to the research on expanding social protection to informal workers.