Vulnerable Workers: Gig Economy, Platform Labour and 'Smart Data' (Comments on the Smart Data Review)

Abstract

Our comments focus on the particular case of gig workers, also known as ‘dependent contractors’, ‘the self-employed’, ‘platform labour’ etc. We would like to express our concerns about their daily struggles and suggest how Smart Data could improve their conditions. Our research project, entitled ‘How the GDPR Can Be Leveraged to Ensure Protections for Gig Workers’, takes Deliveroo riders in Edinburgh as a case study, drawing sociology, computer science, and legal studies together to understand and answer gig worker concerns about data processing, automatic decision-making, and fair work.

In light of the fact that Smart Data retains an inclusive scope of application, and that it has vulnerable groups as its prime focus, we suggest Smart Data extend to the markets of platform labour and prioritises the case of gig workers as ‘vulnerable workers’.

Keywords: Smart Data, Data Portability, Gig Economy, Platform Labour, Deliveroo Riders, Data-Driven Innovation