Main Takeaways Urgent measures are necessary to provide sufficient income to millions of people who cannot work due to pandemicrelated restrictions, so that they can still meet their basic needs. Many of these workers lack social and labor protections.  Basic income schemes vary in type, design and implementation. Those...

Technology is an important means of implementation for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, SDG Targets 17.6,1 17.72 and 17.83 highlight the importance of transferring and diffusing technology and skills from developed to developing countries. The research, development, deployment and widespread distribution...

The gig economy – in which digital platforms link workers with the purchasers of their services – is growing globally. Yet there has been little research to date on its impacts in low- and middle-income countries or on gendered experiences of gig work. This lack of knowledge critically limits...

Social protection systems around the world face challenges to provide full and effective coverage for workers in all forms of employment, including those in “new” forms of employment. While some emerging work and employment arrangements may provide greater flexibility for workers and employers, they may lead to significant gaps...

Digital labour platforms connect workers with consumers of this work and provide the infrastructure and the governance conditions for the exchange of work and its compensation. Yet the architecture, or business model design, of digital labour platforms has important consequences for workers, affecting whether they are empowered or exploited...

Inequality in Asia and the Pacific is on the rise. Many countries, including those held up as models of dynamism and prosperity, have experienced a widening of existing gaps, accompanied by environmental degradation. Market-led growth alone is not sufficient to deliver a prosperous, sustainable future for all. This report...

Social protection systems around the world face challenges to provide full and effective coverage for workers in all forms of employment, including those in “new” forms of employment. While some emerging work and employment arrangements may provide greater flexibility for workers and employers, they may lead to significant gaps...

The first part of this article provides a brief litigation update on various worker lawsuits within the gig economy. While the O’Connor v. Uber case has received the lion’s share of attention and analysis, similar lawsuits on labor standards have been filed against other on-demand platforms. Analysis of the...

The Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal is publishing a collection of papers on the “gig” economy and labor law, edited by Valerio De Stefano of the International Labor Organization. This paper places what is seen as an innovation in a larger historical context. It compares “gig” work to the putting-out...

One of the key assumptions underpinning the rise of ‘crowdsourced work’ – from transport apps including Uber to online platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk – is the assertion put forward by most platforms that crowdworkers are self-employed, independent contractors. As a result, individuals might find themselves without recourse to worker-protective...

In the framework of the so-called “sharing economy”, the number of on-demand companies matching labour supply and demand is on the rise. These schemes may enlarge opportunities for people willing to find a job or to top up their salaries. Despite the upsides of creating new peer marketplaces, these...

In November 2005, Amazon launched Mechanical Turk (AMT), a website where “requesters” can post tasks, called “Human Intelligence Tasks” or “HITs”, for workers to complete for pay. Workers are required to agree that they are independent contractors, not employees, and that they are therefore not entitled to minimum wage...

The so-called “gig-economy” has been growing exponentially in numbers and importance in recent years but its impact on labour rights has been largely overlooked. Forms of work in the “gig-economy” include “crowd work”, and “work-on-demand via apps”, under which the demand and supply of working activities is matched online...

The Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal is publishing a collection of papers on the gig-economy and labor law, edited by Valerio De Stefano (International Labour Office and Bocconi University). This collection, entitled “Crowdsourcing, the Gig-Economy and the Law”, gathers contributions from several labour lawyers and social scientists to...

Fast evolving cloud-computing platforms that enable new business models, combined with a rapid uptake in digital technologies by consumers and a change in consumer behaviour and preferences have enabled the emergence of a so-called “sharing economy”. With new start-ups offering all kinds of services springing up every day, there...

This critical and scoping review essay analyses digital labour markets where labour-intensive services are traded by matching requesters (employers and/or consumers) and providers (workers). It focuses on digital labour markets which allow the remote delivery of electronically transmittable services (i.e. Amazon Mechanical Turk, Upwork, Freelancers, etc.) and those where...

This article assesses the validity of many of the assumptions made about work in the on-demand economy and analyses whether proposals advanced for improving workers’ income security are sufficient for remedying current shortcomings. It draws on findings from a survey of crowdworkers conducted in late 2015 on the Amazon...

As ever more policy-makers, governments and organisations turn to the gig economy and digital labour as an economic development strategy to bring jobs to places that need them, it becomes important to understand better how this might influence the livelihoods of workers. Drawing on a multi-year study with digital...

This paper examines the relationship between rapid technological change, inequality and sustainable development. It asks how development processes can be shaped to provide decent, sustainable and inclusive work opportunities in low-income developing countries. In discussing this policy challenge, the paper seeks to stimulate thought and debate among a broad...

This paper examines challenges to freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining for workers in the gig economy, and explores the broad range of strategies that gig-economy workers are using to build collective agency, and to promote effective regulation of gig...

Developing Asia is forecast to expand by 6 percent in 2018, and by 5.9 percent in 2019. Excluding Asia’s high-income newly industrialized economies, growth should reach 6.5 percent in 2018 and 6.4 percent in 2019. With oil prices edging up and robust consumer demand continuing, inflation is poised to pick up...

New technologies are changing how we organize our societies and our lives. Often called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and broadly understood as the emergence and adoption of new and often disruptive technologies that combine elements of the digital, material and biological, this shift both poses challenges and creates opportunities...