ILPC 2027

The sharing economy is a recent phenomenon that has been growing rapidly. Although its development does not happen uniformly in the world, many activities are carried out according this pattern in different countries around the globe. The dynamics of the sharing economy impacts the world of work and puts in question important issues like the regulation of the labor market and the enforcement of labor law. Technology development offers opportunities for creating jobs and poses challenges in identifying if and how to apply labor standards to new situations. Currently, the main discussion on this issue is the workers’ classification as an employee or as an independent contractor, which has significant consequences on workers’ lives, such as the degree of social protection and the rights that they are entitled to. While the majority of companies argues that there is not an employment relationship in the sharing economy, workers do not always take this perspective. The size of companies may vary a lot, existing since enterprises whose estimated values are billions of dollars until others that are still looking for funding to be able to operate. Not only the overall companies’ values, but the number of workers in the sharing economy have also been rising: from May to September 2016, the number of workers hired for companies in the sharing economy increased 14% in the United Kingdom, 7.5% in Europe and 6% in the United States. The expansion of the sharing economy and its effects in workers’ lives shed light on the importance of the legal analysis of labor issues belonging to this subject, especially given the fact that current labor law was not designed to offer answers to this form of work. Most of the researches which delve into labor law fitness to this new reality were developed in the United States and in Europe and do not offer to this point, any consensus. In Brazil, this subject has been largely marginalized. There are different ways to classified and describe how work occurs in this economic sector. I choose to adopt Valerio de Stefano’s approach, for his didactic approach on the subject. According to the author, the sharing economy has two main forms of work: crowdwork and on-demand work. While the former occurs through tasks done on online platforms, the latter is related to traditional jobs and office tasks contracted by an application. This paper intends to present the development of academic discussion on the trade-offs between labor law and the sharing economy organized in five parts. First, it describes how labor is performed in the sharing economy. Second, it points out the perspective of debate between classifying the nature of work as employment relationship or autonomous work. Third, it analyzes what is needed to classify a worker as an employee and if this still fits in a scenario of relevant economic changes. Forth, it approaches the question if a new category to classify workers in the sharing economy is needed. Fifth, it shows how Brazil is dealing with the issue.