Platform Worker

Platform work describes labor mediated by a digital platform that connects workers directly with clients or customers. The platform sets the terms, collects payment, and takes a commission, but classifies workers as independent contractors rather than employees. Uber launched in San Francisco in 2009 as UberCab, connecting riders with drivers through a smartphone application.1 Within a decade, the model had spread to food delivery, cleaning, freight logistics, graphic design, software development, and dozens of other sectors.

The International Labour Organization estimated in 2021 that the number of digital labor platforms had grown from roughly 142 in 2010 to more than 777 by 2020, a fivefold increase in a single decade.2 The workers on these platforms occupied a category that existing labor law had not anticipated. They were not employees in the traditional sense, with set hours, benefits, and protections. They were not freelancers in the older sense either, because the platform controlled pricing, ratings, and access to work.

The European Commission estimated in 2021 that 28 million people in the European Union worked through digital platforms, and projected that number would reach 43 million by 2025.3

Legal battles over the classification of platform workers became a defining labor dispute of the 2010s and 2020s. In 2021, the UK Supreme Court ruled in Uber BV v. Aslam that Uber drivers were workers entitled to minimum wage and holiday pay, not self-employed contractors.4 California voters passed Proposition 22 in 2020, exempting gig companies from a state law that would have required them to classify drivers as employees.5

In 2024, the European Union adopted the Platform Work Directive, requiring platforms to reclassify workers as employees when certain conditions of control were met.6 The directive applied to an estimated 5.5 million workers across the EU who were classified as self-employed despite functioning, in practice, under platform control.