The digital transformation gives rise to new ways to perform work that often fail to meet the traditional criteria for the classification of workers as subordinate employees. This is the case with the multifaceted occupations in the “Gig-economy”, that include phenomena such as on-demand work via app, platform work and crowdwork. In those circumstances businesses take a “dematerialized” shape, that consists of making available via app a virtual market place on which providers and costumers can satisfy their reciprocal interests and needs, under the supervision and with the guarantee of the company owning the platform.

Specific objectives of this strand of research are:

• to identify the main risks and interests faced and expressed by platform workers in the framework of their work relationship, also with regard to health and safety (including assurance aspects), privacy, performance control and performance assessment, profiles and rating portability, access stability to platforms;
• to identify Union strategies and other experiences of organisation of platform workers (national and transnational level);
• to collect and conduct an analysis on collectively agreed regulations of platform work, deepening various aspects such as actors, procedure and contents of the bargaining;
• to investigate how platform work affects interest representation and the existence of new forms of representation;
• to identify the main constraints faced by social partners as regulatory agents in this field and to find ways to remove them;
• to investigate the legal classification of platform workers and its impact on interest representation.