The Centre for Law at Work invite you to attend a Book Panel Discussion on 28th November 2023

Discussants:
Manoj Dias-Abey, Senior Lecturer, School of Law
Devika Narayan, Lecturer, Bristol Digital Futures Institute and Business School
Alex Wood, Senior Lecturer, Work, Employment, Organisation and Public Policy Group, Business School
Eva Kocher (in reply), Professor, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)

Chair:
Jule Mulder, Associate Professor, School of Law

Book Details
Professor Kocher’s recent monograph, Digital Work Platforms at the Interface of Labour Law (Hart, 2022), shows how to design labour rights to effectively protect digital platform workers, organise accountability on virtual workspaces, and guarantee workers’ collective representation and action. It acknowledges that digital work platforms entail enormous risks for workers, and at the same time it reveals the extent to which labour law is in need of reconstruction.

The book focusses on the conceptual links between labour law’s categories and its regulatory approaches. By explaining and analysing the wealth of approaches that deconstruct and reconceptualise labour law, the book uncovers the organisational ideas that permeate labour law’s categories as well as its policy approaches in a variety of jurisdictions, in particular the EU Member States. These ideas reveal a lack of fit between labour law’s traditional concepts and digital platform work: digital work platforms rarely behave like hierarchical organisations; instead, they more often function as market organisers.

The book provides a fresh perspective for international academic and policy debates on the regulation of digital work platforms, as well as on the purposes and foundations of labour law. It offers a way out of the impasse the debate around labour law classification has reached, by showing what labour law could learn from digital law approaches to platforms - and vice versa.

This event is open to all Law School Staff and PGRs and is an in person event only. 

Further Information
If you would like to know any further information about this event, please contact the Centre Executive Assistant, Paige Spicer.