Background: The gig economy, facilitated by digital platforms, has reshaped modern labour markets, offering unprecedented flexibility while raising significant concerns about worker exploitation. Central to this dynamic are the digital employment contracts—often embedded in terms of service—that govern the relationship between platforms and their workers. These contracts exist in a legal grey area, frequently challenging traditional definitions of employment and eroding established worker protections.
Aim: This article conducts a socio-legal analysis of digital employment contracts on gig economy platforms to deconstruct the tension between the promise of flexibility and the reality of worker exploitation. It aims to examine how these contracts, coupled with algorithmic management, are associated with worker misclassification and undermine labour rights, and to evaluate emerging regulatory responses.
Methods: The study utilizes a socio-legal methodology, integrating a normative legal analysis of statutes, case law, and regulatory proposals with a critical review of academic literature and institutional reports. The analysis draws on international legal frameworks, with a particular focus on developments in the European Union and comparative insights from other jurisdictions.
Results: The analysis indicates that digital contracts are strategically designed to classify workers as independent contractors, thereby shifting economic risks and avoiding employer responsibilities. Algorithmic management systems function as a proxy for direct managerial control, dictating tasks, monitoring performance, and enforcing compliance, which further blurs the line between contractor and employee. This contractual and algorithmic architecture is systematically associated with precarious working conditions, limited access to social protections, and suppressed collective bargaining power.
Conclusion: Digital employment contracts are pivotal instruments in a model of precarious work that operates under the guise of flexibility. Existing labour law paradigms appear ill-equipped to address these challenges. The findings suggest an urgent need for regulatory innovation, including a rebuttable presumption of employment status and robust rules for algorithmic transparency, to rebalance power and ensure decent work in the digital age.
