IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/18641_6.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The platform economy at the forefront of a changing world of work: Implications for occupational health and safety

In: A Modern Guide To Labour and the Platform Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre Bérastégui
  • Sacha Garben

Abstract

At first glance, working conditions in the platform economy may be regarded as 'atypical' due to the innovative technology involved. When subjected to closer scrutiny, however, it appears that the structural characteristics of platform-mediated work are not entirely new but rather constitute radical extensions of pre-existing trends: greater control and surveillance; greater job uncertainty and volatility; and greater worker isolation and workplace fragmentation. It has long been acknowledged that these trends have the potential to give rise to multiple risk factors, ultimately affecting occupational health and safety. Nevertheless, the extent to which platforms have built their entire business model around these dimensions, and with the aid of technologies which compound the resulting precarity, has lifted the overall set of problems to a higher level. In this chapter, we analyse how these three trends translate to the platform economy and the risks they entail for platform workers' health and safety.

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre Bérastégui & Sacha Garben, 2021. "The platform economy at the forefront of a changing world of work: Implications for occupational health and safety," Chapters, in: Jan Drahokoupil & Kurt Vandaele (ed.), A Modern Guide To Labour and the Platform Economy, chapter 6, pages 96-111, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:18641_6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788975094/9781788975094.00015.xml
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:18641_6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Darrel McCalla (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.e-elgar.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.