Do Titans Tumble? Unveiling Platform Workers’ Institutional Power Across the World: Reflections from a Global Mapping of Case Law, Collective Bargaining, and Legislative Reform in the Platform Economy

Although the mobilization of workers attempting to address the challenges arising from platform
work dates back at least to 2015, strategies adopting institutional mechanisms– e.g., litigation,
collective bargaining, legal reform– logically took longer than other forms of labour unrest to
produce results. Today, these strategies have led to significant outcomes. This article aims to
review their development in a global perspective, which is essential to achieving understanding
beyond national institutional settings, especially in the current political context in which the
International Labour Organization (ILO) has indicated its commitment to adopting an inter
national labour standard on decent work in the platform economy.
This article comes at a time when regulatory initiatives, court rulings and collective
agreements, which played a limited role in the early stages, have begun to have a significant
impact across geographical boundaries. It conducts a global mapping of jurisprudence, social
dialogue and legislative reforms in the platform economy, based on an extensive review of
academic and grey literature, institutional and research databases and media, including develop
ments relating to misclassification. Building on an analysis of this compilation, the article
provides insights into the present state of affairs, while identifying the dominant trends.