The challenge of on-demand work

Gordon Anderson (), Douglas Brodie () and Joellen Riley ()

Chapter 4 in Employment Law for a Brave New World, 2025, pp 48-69 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: ‘On-demand’ work has tested the scope of employment protections. Each of our jurisdictions has long recognized the concept of ‘casual employment’ and provided some regulation of working conditions for casual employees. More recently, the engagement of workers through digital platforms has challenged even the concept of casual employment. On-demand work, mediated through digital platforms managed by algorithms, has created a particular challenge for labour law in each of our jurisdictions. The platforms have sought to characterize their engagements as commercial contracts offering technology services to self-employed people to enable them to attract their own clients. Each of our jurisdictions has tackled this question and arrived at different answers. In the United Kingdom, Uber drivers have been found to be ‘workers’; in New Zealand, ‘employees’; and in Australia a new form of regulation has been invented to treat digital platform work as a form of self-employed but nevertheless ‘regulated’ work.

Keywords: On-demand work; Casual employment; Digital platform work; Uberisation; Self-employed work; Precarious work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781800379923
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