Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/326761 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
UNU-MERIT Working Papers No. 2021-002
Publisher: 
United Nations University (UNU), Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), Maastricht
Abstract: 
The need to extend social protection to include new forms of employment has progressively been recognised by policymakers in the last decade. Several countries introduced new schemes particularly for this group or made provisions to existing schemes to cover new forms of employment. In order to get a better overview of the different measures applied, this paper systematically reviews the existing literature with a focus on European countries and a subset of OECD countries, by focusing first on how non-standard, and in particular platform workers are classified and legally protected. Secondly, the paper reviews the extent to which platform and other non-standard workers have access to the different forms of social security provisions. While there is a clear conceptualisation of how platform work can be classified, the challenge lies in the legal construct underlying the work activities. Differing practices prevail between countries and only a few have thus far explicitly recognised platform work or crowd work as a form of employment. The lack of statutory and effective social protection coverage of platform workers can be addressed in various ways. These include adjusting existing schemes in terms of eligibility criteria, portability of transfers, incorporating digital innovation, and providing flexible security. Current shifts in policies have the potential to decrease socio-economic differences between different employment statuses. Ultimately, these shifts promote the transferability of individuals' social rights between employment statuses and ease the use of individual social protection accounts.
Subjects: 
platform work
platform workers
social security
social protection
non-standard workers
workers rights
JEL: 
H55
J20
O33
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-sa Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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