A consortium of researchers from nine institutions across Europe, including members of GREDS-EMCONET (Research Group on Health Inequalities, Environment, and Employment Conditions) of the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences, recently met to launch the project  GIG-OSH (New challenges for occupational safety and health in times of the digital transformation in Europe: the role of digital labour platforms), which aims to increase knowledge about the new challenges for occupational safety and health in the field of digital platforms.

Digitization is transforming markets and labour relations, which has laid the foundations for the proliferation of digital platforms, which have the potential to become one of the most disruptive phenomena in this environment: they connect labour supply and demand, and include a group of workers called “gig workers” (workers hired to perform a work or project).

The goal of GIG-OSH is, on the one hand, to examine occupational safety and health risks and platform work regulations; and on the other, to provide recommendations to foster a healthy, safe working environment for platform workers in Europe and other regions.

Although the growth of these platforms has created opportunities for workers around the world to generate income, it has also led to many challenges for employment and occupational health: several characteristics of this area (such as algorithmic management, working hours or income) can affect workers’ safety and health, which is a problem that has so far been little studied.

Joan Benach, director  of GREDS-EMCONET and principal investigator of the project at UPF, emphasizes that “the importance of studying this type of worker is that while there are plenty of studies on platform work, such as research on its extent, business models, job quality, worker characteristics, etc., the implications of occupational safety and health have remained unexplored”.

Joining forces to improve the occupational safety and health of platform workers

The “GIG-OSH” project, within the framework of CHANSE (Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe, a joint initiative of 27 research funding organizations from 24 countries) will run for 3 years and has a budget of some 1.7 million euros.

The project has two main aims: on the one hand, to examine occupational safety and health risks and platform work regulations; and on the other, to provide recommendations to foster a healthy, safe occupational environment for platform workers in Europe and other regions.

The nine participating institutions are: Karlinska Institutet (coordinating centre), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Copehaguen, Warwick, Lodz and Tampere universities, together with UPF and the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute.

Participation by workers from seven different countries and platform directors

The project, which will involve platform workers living in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK, will adopt a mixed method study design. It will be organized into three work packages (WP). According to Joan Benach, “UPF will participate in all three packages, although in particular we will focus most on the third, due to the expertise of our group in the field of public policies”.

A first block will consist of a cohort of at least 500 workers in each country (in total, some 3,500 online platform workers as a base). The researchers will analyse how platform work is associated with occupational safety and health (OSH) risks and poor health, as well as the workers’ experiences of OSH in their workplace.

A second block will include individual interviews with workers, who will be asked to answer questions at two different points in time, after the first and last waves of the survey, to explain the changes in their experiences during this period.

A third block aims to investigate ways to promote changes for healthier, safer work environments. It will include interviews with platform directors of the two types of work studied (online and onlocation), labour inspectors and union representatives. In addition, it will include a qualitative analysis within each country to investigate the main challenges in terms of occupational safety and health posed by the different types of platform work. Finally, an analysis of comparative patterns will be conducted, to find similarities and differences between countries.

It is hoped that the results of this project will provide a new and original scientific understanding of this little-studied and evolving challenge for the future world of work. The results are expected to provide new guidance for policy makers, businesses and trade unions to protect the health of the European workforce.