Collective Action in the Digital Reality: the Case of Platform‐Based Workers

Abstract

The article explores the challenges of collective action in the digital reality and focuses on the efforts of platform-based workers to unionise and their legal right to do so in accordance with UK law. Using sociological scholarship, the article elaborates on the emergence of flexibility and individualisation in the digital reality, in particular in platform-based work, and on the way it hinders the creation of collective action. The article then describes how platform-based workers currently organise themselves. It demonstrates how these current collective actions are characterised by the same individualisation and flexibility typifying the digital reality and why they do not enjoy the protection of the law. Based on this reality, the article proposes making several accommodations to the right to unionise for platform-based workers, by adjusting some of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 clauses, thus enabling some platform-based workers to enjoy its protection. * Postdoctoral Fellow, The Labor and Work-life Program, Harvard Law School (recipient of Fulbright-ISEF fellowship and Rothschild fellowship). I would like to convey my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Guy Davidov, for his devoted guidance, for many helpful discussions and suggestions and for his constant support. I would also like to thank Guy Mundlak, Einat Albin, Faina Milman-Sivan, Alan Bogg, Virginia Mantouvalou, Miriam A. Cherry, and Benjamin I. Sachs for their useful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Finally, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and insightful comments and suggestions.

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