ILPC 2026

The advent of the sharing economy enabled the emergence of new forms of work organization, in the context of the information society. The innovation provided by the Uber company in the field of urban mobility, it’s one of the most famous examples of this phenomenon. Uber introduced a new logistic to a sector previously occupied by taxi drivers, modernizing it, and creating in the process a new working class, known as app-based drivers. The labor relationship between drivers and Uber presents a high level of precariousness. While the Uber company considers itself a technology company, only an intermediary of services between drivers (or partners, as the company designates them) and passengers, stating that it does not employee any driver, these workers are left without legal protection, even though the work relationship presents indications of the existence of an employment relationship, by the Brazilian labor legislation. In this working relationship, the risks of the activity lays with the workers, favoring the exploitation of their labor force by the Uber company, in a clearly precarious and asymmetrical relationship. Therefore, as these workers have no legal protection, they do not have access to basic labor rights, such as minimum wage, paid overtime and limitation of their working hours. For these reasons, the objective of the ongoing study, which has the support of São Paulo Research Foundation - Grant #2017 / 04850-0, is to analyze the needs and vulnerabilities to which these workers are exposed, through a qualitative approach, using as methods of procedure, the bibliographical research and interviews with app-based drivers of the City of São Paulo. The aim is to point the most problematic points in this form of work, that needs to be addressed by regulatory policies that grant protection to the app-based drivers in Brazil, in attention to the fundamental rights of work and human dignity, as stated in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988. In the interviews performed so far, the most significative vulnerability found was the absence of a working hours control, that limits the maximum daily working hours of the Uber drivers. This could lead to risks to these workers health and to passengers’ safety, since there are drivers working excessive daily hours, resulting in the consolidation of the precarious work scenario.