LABOUR RELATIONS IN THE PLATFORM ECONOMY 1 María Luz Rodríguez Fernández Associate Professor in Labour and Social Security Law University of Castile-La Mancha http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0404-0275 Summary The advance of online platforms as work marketplaces is starting to have considerable effects on work relations. The link between consumption and work is becoming stronger, so that the consumption model adopted will ultimately shape the labour market model. The traditional boundaries between worker and business are also becoming fuzzy, with the creation of new figures and names in an attempt to achieve exclusion from labour law. The labour market is becoming polarised, as is society itself, which is becoming divided between “soft” engineers and “hard” labourers. The boundaries between personal life and working life are also becoming blurred, and algorithms are used as new control mechanisms by businesses. Because of this, training and minimum income are required to face the transition towards a digital economy, and the naive approach by which none of the traditional Labour Law concepts and instruments is useful any more should be rejected. Keywords Platform economy, Digitalisation, Virtual Work, Crowdworking, Work training, Minimum income We are all Uber The advance of digitalisation has brought digital platforms as the providers of services and jobs, what some call the "platform economy" and others "platform capitalism". The 1 In the European Agenda for collaborative economy, approved by the European Commission on 2 June 2016, available at http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2001_en.htm (accessed 13 November 2017), the EU insists on using the term "collaborative economy" to refer to online platforms for the provision of services and jobs. I believe that the use of this term is misleading, as most platforms to not facilitate any collaboration between potential users, but the provision of services or jobs, which generates significant economic profits for the platform. For this reason, I prefer the term platform economy to designate this phenomenon.