“There are now over seven million digital platform workers that live all over the world, doing work that is outsourced via platforms or apps. Platform work provides essential income and opportunities to many. However […] many platform workers face low pay, precarity, and poor and dangerous working conditions.” It is against this backdrop that the FairWork project, which is supported by the Oxford Internet Institute, a department of the University of Oxford, has been launched. Its aim is to evaluate (and perhaps one day certify) platforms, using indicators defined by experts from English and South African universities as well as concrete data provided by workers through its website.
The project focuses on five principles: pay, which should at least be equivalent to the local minimum wage, once workers’ expenses have been deducted; working conditions, whereby workers should be protected from related risks and platforms should strive to improve these conditions; contracts, which should be transparent and concise and should identify the party contracting with the worker; management, whereby workers should be informed of decisions affecting them, be treated fairly, and have...
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