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The burgeoning gig economy largely operates outside of existing labour standards, mainly because in most countries workers are classified as self-employed rather than as employees. Until now, much legal effort has been focused on bringing platform workers within the scope of labour law by proving that they fit the definition of employee or worker, which functions as the gateway to employment rights. This has yielded some positive outcomes, particularly in exposing sham self-employment. However, this approach is limited, not least because platforms are adept at reconfiguring their conditions of work to avoid the legal definition of employee, or at fragmenting their corporate structure to evade the jurisdiction of courts in the region where workers in fact find themselves. By contrast, not enough attention has been paid to how labour law standards, fashioned for the 'employee' paradigm, should be reshaped to meet the needs of platform workers regardless of their employment status.It is these challenges that the Fairwork project in South Africa aims to address. It brings together social scientists and lawyers to establish novel means of developing

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This article examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work conditions of domestic workers in Nigeria. We use four indicators -earnings, access to social protection, working conditions and labour protections to provide a nuanced assessment on the impact of the pandemic on domestic workers. Domestic work is an important aspect of productive labour and an indispensable factor that contributes to the well-being of households and the economy. Indeed, the enormous contribution of this sector to societies has been further exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while domestic workers are lauded as essential workers, their work remains extremely vulnerable to exploitation and human rights violations, and the pandemic has aggravated this situation. In the results, we find that while many domestic workers did not lose their jobs, their earning power dropped because of low wages in the sector. Furthermore, only 6% of survey respondents reported having access to the government's social protection measures. The findings of this study emphasises the need for the development of a regulatory model which considers the realities of the domestic work sector. Data used in this article draws from questionnaires administered on 220 domestic workers across four geo-political zones of Nigeria.