Digital platforms continue to fail workers in Brazil

Working conditions for Brazil’s 1.7 million gig workers are still far from decent, according to the latest Fairwork Brazil report released this week.

The report, entitled “Still Pursuing Decent Work in the Platform Economy,” shows that the main gig economy apps are still failing to achieve even the bare minimum when it comes to guaranteeing fair pay, fair working conditions, fair contracts, fair management, and fair representation for their workers.

There has been very little progress from a year ago, when the first edition of the Fairwork report highlighted the shortcomings of working conditions in Brazil’s gig economy, a situation that had already been laid bare by the Covid pandemic.

“The results show that little has changed in the scenario of work for platforms in the country, and much remains to be done to reach the minimum parameters of decent work,” the report reads, adding that some positive changes in companies’ policies and practices were often not enough to be reflected in the report’s ranking.

Fairwork — a project based at the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford — ranks Brazilian apps according to the five principles of...