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Ambiguities And Absences: Occupational Health And Safety Regulation Of Platform-Mediated Work In Ontario, Canada, Eric Tucker

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Platform-mediated work, whether location-based, as in the case of Uber, or cloud-based, as in the case of Amazon Mechanical Turk, poses severe challenges to effective occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation. While the work performed in the platform environment is not usually very different from work performed in more traditional employment settings, the platform environment often exacerbates those risks by, for example, increasing stress and incentivizing long hours and work intensification. Regulating these hazards is impeded by ambiguities surrounding the legal relationship between platform operators and platform workers that make it uncertain whether the OHS regime even applies. As well …