France and Brazil Compared Through the Lens of the California’s Proposition 22

Rodrigo Carelli^[1] and Donna Kesselman^[2]

Abstract

This is a comparative study of the role of gray zones in the institutionalization of new norms of work and employment. It looks at the cases of France and Brazil with reference to the Proposition 22 ballot initiative in California, which first introduced a distinctive status for app-based drivers, depriving them of the protections of labor law they would otherwise have been entitled to. We thus use the term “App-Based Driver Template” to designate both a process and the objective it is intended to achieve, i.e. the institutionalization of an uberized app-based work status in local passenger transportation markets worldwide. We argue that Proposition 22 was a mechanism to shift the regulation of employment from its traditional (Fordist) institutional context to another context where the radical change sought by Uber and other platforms could be more easily achieved. This, though, was the second step in the process, the first being Uber’s launch of operations in defiance of customary norms of regulation with the deliberate intention of doing away with them—this, we argue, was the real disruption. We also use the term “Uber norms” to designate the new norms the platforms sought and seek to impose, in terms of both regulatory process and work status. We show, then, how both France and Brazil have drawn on and adapted the example of California, introducing the same distinctive status through the different modality of ad hoc tripartite concertation between government, platforms and workers. The end point of the process may be reached piecemeal, with different elements of the California model introduced at different stages, while novel adaptations circulate internationally—one being the sectoral bargaining for independent contractors introduced in France and in Brazil. The result in every case is that the regulation of work is shifted out of the traditional regulatory order, in the form it takes in each country, with pay rates, working conditions and social protection left to private sector arrangements and the market forces mediated by the algorithmic ecosystem. 
     
Keywords: Work; employment; gray zone; uberization; app-based drivers; platform work; sectoral bargaining; Proposition 22; Post-Fordism; ARPE; Grupo de Trabalho tripartite.

---

Introduction^[3]

This chapter considers current transformations of the labor market in terms of gray zones in work and employment. More specifically, it undertakes a comparative analysis of how the special status of “app-based driver” is being institutionalized in France and Brazil, both of these cases drawing on the example of California’s Proposition 22 in introducing its model in some form. That ballot proposition—which exempted app-based transportation and delivery companies from having to provide employee benefits to most drivers—was shaped and massively funded by the digital platforms under Uber’s leadership. It was this formula that the platforms would then seek to introduce elsewhere.

In both France and Brazil, the one a major actor among the nations of the Global North, the other a leading force in the Global South, governments have brought digital platforms and platform workers together to devise new regulatory frameworks for platform work. The bodies established for the purpose were presented as innovative iterations of the established tripartite model, under which government and the two sides of industry jointly negotiate social and economic matters. Comparison of these pioneering institutions and their operation reveals both similarities and differences in the regulation of platform work between the two countries. Common to both, however, is the tendency to shift matters of collective bargaining and social protection away from public institutions in favor of more commercial, market-based arrangements.

Our analysis of these institutions—the Autorité des Relations Sociales des Plateformes d’Emploi (ARPE – Employment Platform Social Relations Authority) in France and the Grupo de Trabalho Tripartite (GTT – Tripartite Working Group) in Brazil—aims to shed light on the role of digital platforms in redefining the institutions that regulate work in the sector. We look at how “uberization”, which turns workers into subordinated self-managers, permanently available and mobilizable on demand (“just-in-time”), and stripped of the rights and protections associated with employment (De Stefano 2016; Abílio 2020), has become a global phenomenon. We trace how the model pioneered in California is being reproduced across the United States and the rest of the world, sometimes as a complete package, sometimes element by element. In particular, our research reveals a pattern whereby digital platforms follow Uber in creating gray zones in work and employment as a means to impose this sui generis employment status of their own design, sometimes with the willing complicity of governments.

The current efforts of location-based digital platforms to institutionalize this status represent, in our view, a new phase of uberization. Led by Uber, they are seeking to establish themselves as policy makers, fully embracing a role as political actors capable of shaping labor regulation and advancing their own vision of work and society (Azaïs et al. 2017; see, too, the Introduction to this volume). We recognize that, where governments or public opinion offer stronger resistance, platforms may adopt alternative strategies, as illustrated by the cases of Spain and Denmark (Valdez 2026), and even Germany. In some instances, certain platforms have gone so far as to recognize platform workers as employees. This, however, does not invalidate the key point of the present chapter: the existence of a strategic template that has a political and institutional impact, even if that impact varies with the specific national context.

For us, the process of uberization can be thought of as the deliberate creation and exploitation of gray zones in work and employment to strategic ends. Viewed in this way, “disruption” (Dubal et al. 2018) is not an end in itself but a means to changing the principles that structure the regulation of work. It represents the first stage of a broader effort to institutionalize this new category of worker, tailored to the needs of the digital economy and governed by its own rules. Here we use the term “Uber app-based driver template” to designate the blueprint followed in pursuing this, encompassing both the process and the objective it is intended to achieve. We use “Uber norms” for the new norms the platforms seek to impose, in terms of both regulatory process and employment status. Among them are the constituent elements of the app-based, ride-hail driver model promoted by the platform—elements that can be, as it were, smuggled in separately, and gradually—and intended, precisely, to replace existing, applicable, labor-market norms. These two notions allow us to trace the engineered diffusion of the model of the app-based worker across regulatory institutions and transportation systems worldwide. Although this process and the gray zones it engenders has not advanced as far in France and Brazil as it has in the United States, the concept nonetheless proves valuable in comparing the transformation of the regulation of labor markets in Global North and South (an exercise whose requirements are explored in detail in Giraud and Rey’s contribution to this volume).

1. What Do We Mean by Gray Zones?

By gray zones we mean features of work and employment that cannot be grasped through the binary categories that defined work under Fordism: employed vs. self-employed, formal vs. informal, precarity in the North as against informality in the South . . . (Bouffartigue and Busso 2009). Abandoning these and looking at how conditions of work and employment are really rather than ideally or theoretically determined, reveals a space of socio-political contestation and makes it possible to map new configurations of work and employment that emerge; these may be institutionalized to widely varying degrees and so may or may not perdure (Kesselman 2024). This chapter, then, takes its place among a whole body of research on such gray zones (Bellemare et al. 2024; Bureau et al. 2024; Bureau et al. 2019; Bureau and Dieuaide 2018; Boulin and Kesselman 2018; Azaïs and Carleial 2017; Siino and Soussi 2017) that we drew on in an earlier study of the platform economy (Carelli, Cingolani, and Kesselman 2022).

The blurring of the binaries that characterized the Fordist Welfare State has seen the emergence of countless gradations of gray area extending between standard employment and its counterpart in self-employment. Yet these binary categories still structure not only popular, institutional and social-scientific understandings of work and employment but also the key mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth in capitalist countries. In particular, the blurring of the (legal) distinction between the canonical figures of the subordinated employee and the self-employed independent contractor has clouded or disrupted the criteria regulating power relations at work and access to social protection. We see this too in the Global South, where the social state emerged belatedly, bringing with it genuine though fragile rights, albeit for only part of the workforce. It did, however, play an important role in the construction of the idea of citizenship upon the restoration of democracy in countries such as Brazil (Carvalho 2021; Comparato 2019).

2. The Creation and Exploitation of Gray Zones as Strategy

It is this conceptual framework that has allowed us to identify a working strategy and an associated set of practices developed by location-based ride-hailing and food delivery platforms, with Uber in California at the forefront. In creating and exploiting gray zones, they aim to normalize their disruptive operational model. When first introduced, as the first step in the process, disruptive practices result in an “institutional instability” that undermines the existing regulatory architecture, an instability that Grillo and Soares explain in their chapter here. Based on empirical studies in Brazil, their concept highlights the combined effects of neoliberal austerity policy and the acceleration of legal production, which lead to legal uncertainty and the consequent erosion of established rights. In California, the introduction of the new urban passenger transportation model would lead to overt political crisis.

The exploitation of this disarray represents the next step in the process of securing institutional change, whose aim is not a change in law or regulation alone. For Dirringer (2021) the regulation of work and the allocation of social rights is governed by a dominant normative framework or order: the socio-political order of public institutions, the socio-occupational order of workplace relations and collective bargaining, or the commercial order of economic rationality, the market, and competition, this last represented here by the platforms. Shaped by the twentieth-century social struggles that laid the foundations of the Welfare State, the non-market orders are now being put into question by the digital platforms, which seek to replace them by one that better serves their interests.

This is the political background against which the instituent phase of the process plays out, a phase characterized by what we describe as regulation in the gray zone of public space (Azaïs et al. 2017). By public space we mean here the loosely institutionalized space of public debate and contestation, as opposed to the legislative, regulatory, and industrial relations institutions inherited from the past. In California, the gray zone of public space was the 2020 ballot on Proposition 22 promoted by the digital platforms. By removing the question of regulation out of the customary (socio-occupational) institutions of labor relations to a forum they believed would be more advantageous to them, they escaped the power and influence of organized labor.

Here, the notion of the Uber norms allows us to trace the gradual and sometimes piecemeal diffusion of a coherent and identifiable “app-based driver” model across the US states and the rest of the world. Drawing on the typology developed by Christian Azaïs (see his chapter here) and treating the app-based driver as an “emergent figure in the gray zone” allows us to tie this in with drivers’ own experiences in local transport markets, and through this, too, map the circulation of the “Uber norms”.

The state, acting through the executive or legislative branches, or even the judiciary, may not function as an arbiter or mediator merely; rather, as in the cases studied here, it can act as an active agent in the construction of gray zones (Carelli 2022; Kesselman 2022; Bisom-Rapp and Coiquaud 2017).

We will now look at the Uber template for the institutionalization of app-based driver status in comparative perspective, in terms of institutional instability, the displacement of orders of regulation, and regulation by new stakeholders effected in public space. We will conclude by tracing this process through the progressive introduction of the Uber norms.

3. Institutional Instability in California, France and Brazil

The practice of disruption is essential to uberization. The normalization of disruptive practices through the engendering of institutional instability represents the central dynamic of the first phase of the Uber app-based driver template. This is being implemented in a context where globalization has brought about a decline in the state’s capacity to fulfill its historic welfare function (Supiot 2015), the neoliberal state has actively reorganized institutions, law and public policy (Dardot and Laval 2007), and competition has consequently become the guiding principle of social life following the destabilization and dismantling of the previous regulatory framework (Brown 2015). Coined by legal scholars Sayonara Grillo and José Luiz Soares, the concept of institutional instability captures one of the ways in which the neoliberal agenda undermines the established framework of labor protection (see their chapter here). Against this backdrop, the erosion of workers’ rights takes new forms, as platform companies increasingly rely on novel forms of “illegalism” (Foucault 1975) to circumvent employment legislation.

3.1. From Disruption to Institutional Instability in California and Elsewhere

Uber’s app-based ride-hailing model and its political strategy for reshaping the regulatory environment of California’s passenger transportation market have since been reproduced, together, in urban centers worldwide. The strategy involves challenging any attempt at regulation by government agencies, notably by appealing court decisions—most particularly those concerning the reclassification of drivers as employees—that would hinder the implementation of its blueprint for disruption. The systematic and strategic nature of this practice was made clear by the French parliamentary inquiry into Uber’s lobbying practices, headed by Danielle Simonnet, which revealed the existence of a manual to that end, for the use of the company’s executives. This included guidance on overcoming regulatory obstacles to market entry by obtaining exemptions or reforms; the treatment of fines as costs of expansion; the mobilization of drivers and users to pressure public authorities; the intensive lobbying of political decision-makers; and the strategic exploitation of conflicts with regulators and incumbent industries (Simonnet 2024).

3.2 Uberization and Institutional Instability in France and Brazil

An existing institutional instability in both France and Brazil was particularly conducive to the “uberization” of the institutions of work and employment. French policy since the beginning of the new millennium has been marked by a doctrinaire commitment to the decentralization of industrial relations, prioritizing company-level over sectoral agreements on a growing number of issues (as notably exemplified by the so-called El Khomri employment law of 2016 and the Macron government’s industrial relations legislation of 2017). This can go so far as to allow such “lower-level” agreements to derogate from the sectoral agreements—negotiated within tripartite bodies that bring together employers’ associations and trade union confederations under government aegis—relating to such issues as minimum wages and conditions, which covered 98% of French employees in 2024.^[4] In Brazil, the 2017 labor law reform followed a similar pattern, weakening national regulation by prioritizing contract over law and promoting the expansion of outsourcing, as well as many other legislative changes intended to weaken labor protections and make it more difficult to access the rights associated with employment (Casagrande and Carelli 2018; Carelli 2019). Legislative reform has been complemented by reinterpretations of established law by the Brazilian Supreme Court that tend to the same effect (Casagrande and Carelli 2025), and the recent period has thus seen an unprecedented loss of workers’ rights (Cardoso and Azaïs 2019).

In both France and Brazil, these developments were accompanied by political unrest. In France, the Loi El Khomri and the subsequent pension reforms of the Macron government triggered waves of social protest, while in Brazil the 2017 labor law reform was introduced amid an economic and political crisis linked to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the ensuing removal from office of the democratically elected president.

3.2.1. The Key Role of the State in the Construction of the Gray Zones in France and Brazil

The platforms capitalized on the weakening of traditional regulatory institutions to push back boundaries to the point of no return. The advent of Uber strained relations between the executive and judicial branches, and between national and local government in both countries (Carelli and Kesselman 2019). The dynamics, however, have been different in the two cases: in Brazil, the senior judiciary has played a leading role in challenging municipal measures to regulate ride-hailing and platform work generally (Carelli and Seferian 2019), while in France, it is the highest instances of the executive that have undermined the judiciary’s efforts to enforce existing regulations.

3.2.2. The French Model of Platform Work

The French model of platform work has been shaped by a government strategy, shared by successive administrations, of combining the modernization of passenger transportation through Uber-style technological innovation with the creation of jobs, while maintaining the core protections of the French social model. However, the enactment over a decade of three laws on platform work, and two other laws—one on employment, the other on transport—containing measures related to the sector, together with a range of government decrees regarding their implementation, have failed to settle the employment status of platform workers or issues of drivers’ conditions and social protection.^[5]

3.2.3. The Gray Zone of Platform Social Responsibility in France

The proposal to replace state regulation of employment by a system based on corporate social responsibility provoked extensive resistance. The French constitutional court struck down as unconstitutional the legislative provisions enshrining it.^[6] Having declared platforms’ responsibility for the treatment of their workers, the legislation provided that they could formally codify in so-called “social charters” the principles by which they chose to operate. These public documents once in place, workers engaged under them would be barred from seeking reclassification as employees, being rather independent contractors whose rights and obligations were there laid down. The court ruled, however, that the existence or not of an employment relation was a matter for the courts, not the legislature. Unions rejected the social charter system, unanimously insisting on public, government-enforced standards applicable to all workers as a safeguard against “social dumping” (CFDT 2019).

The government, however, decided to ignore the judiciary and disregarded an ensuing ruling by the French supreme court, the Cour de Cassation, that Uber drivers were employees. The Uber judgment of March 4, 2020 declared their supposed independence to be bogus, given that all the criteria for subordination (and hence employment) were present and none of those indicative of independence (and self-employment).^[7] Yet the French President, later revealed as having been sympathetic, as a minister, to Uber’s attempts to bypass employment law (ICIJ 2023), refused to give effect to the ruling. Uber took advantage of the intervening “time of non-regulation” to adapt its model so as to escape the scope of the judgment, so that five years later the same court could declare that no relation of subordination, and hence no employment relationship, existed. This took place just as the European Union introduced a presumption of employment for platform workers, though the French government and others had eventually managed to muddy the waters, creating yet another gray zone, by ensuring that its implementation was left to Member States (see Claire Marzo’s chapter here).

The French case highlights the government’s inability—despite its commitment and its willingness to adopt deliberately disruptive courses of action—to establish any kind of social or political consensus around the model of the app-based driver by means of a top-down approach. The resulting gray zone of institutional instability shows how uberization requires the hijacking of the state to Uber’s own ends, even to the point of breaking the law, all this with the complicity of government (Simonnet 2024). President Macron himself would not deny this: when challenged on the secret deal he was reported to have made, as finance minister in the Hollande government, to ease Uber’s illegal entry into the French market, he said of himself that “I’m extremely proud . . . , it’s very difficult to create jobs without businesses, without entrepreneurs. I’d do it again tomorrow, and the day after that”.^[8]

3.2.4. Brazil: The Judiciary vs. Municipal Regulation

The platform economy disrupted the local regulation of transport in Brazil, and put the Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal, STF) at the heart of a conflict that opposed national norms to the municipal regulations upheld by the lower courts (De Sousa Júnior 2025; Carelli and Seferian 2019). Addressing attempts at regulation by a number of municipalities, the STF declared that that “the prohibition or restriction of app-based driver transport services is unconstitutional, as it violates the principles of free enterprise and free competition” (Freitas 2019). In Brazil, then, it was the judiciary that overturned political regulation as Uber management intervened forcefully in the country’s politics.

The way having been cleared by the Supreme Court, national legislation favorable to platforms was introduced, following a direct intervention by Uber’s CEO and a petition that mobilized a mass of users in support of the service in what was the company’s second-largest global market (Carelli and Seferian 2019). The law largely confined local authorities’ powers to taxation, while according operators much freedom in the setting of prices and exempting platforms from many of the requirements imposed on taxi services. As in France, this situation exemplifies the institutional instability described by Grillo and Soares, uberization undermining long-term legal and political certainty and disrupting established frameworks of employment regulation.

Furthermore, in a series of non-binding decisions, the STF has repeatedly overturned Labor Court rulings that recognized the existence of an employment relationship between workers and platforms. As discussed below, the Court is now poised to decide a case that will bind the lower courts, most likely prohibiting judges from determining the existence or not of an employment relationship by applying the reality test. This would effectively result in the regulation of platform work through judicial action rather than legislative intervention.

4. Platform Advantage Secured Through the Displacement of Orders of Regulation

The bypassing of existing legal constraints sets the scene for the next phase of the Uber template: the process of institutional change discussed by Streeck and Thelen (2005) and later revisited by Bureau and Dieuaide (2018). For them, the recognition of gray zones avoids a falsely binary conception of the boundary in analyzing the shift from one institutional regime to another; their focus falls rather on the discoherence (décohérence) that sees an increasing disconnect between regulation and its object and between the various spaces of regulation.

Our own deployment of Dirringer’s notion of “displacement of orders and spaces of regulation” (2021) in aid of comparative analysis takes this elaboration further. The institutional architecture of the regulation of work and the allocation of social rights under capitalism is determined by the character of the normative order: either a socio-political order embodied in public institutions—as in France and most European countries, or a socio-occupational order rooted in company-level collective bargaining between employers and their (subordinated) employees—as in the United States and Brazil, with, in Brazil’s case, certain constitutional guarantees in addition. The foundations of these national welfare states derive from the class struggles of the twentieth century and the particular form of social contract arrived at. The platforms’ consistent aim is to undermine these two tripartite regulatory orders and to replace them with a market order that serves them better. This entails the commodification of social protection and a market-driven regulation of work mediated by the algorithm.

5. Regulation in the Gray Zone of Public Space

5.1. Proposition 22: Pioneering Regulation in the Gray Zone

In orchestrating the passage of Proposition 22 in 2020, the major California-based ride-hailing and food delivery platforms—with Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Postmates following Uber’s lead and sponsoring the proposition—shifted the locus of the regulation of work in the United States. By moving the issue into the political sphere of the ballot initiative—a legislative proposal to be put to referendum—they bypassed the company-based industrial relations regime associated with the New Deal, in which trade unions wield workplace power to negotiate favorable conditions for their (employee) members. The object of Proposition 22 was declared in its formal description: “Exempts App-Based Transportation and Delivery Companies from Providing Employee Benefits to Certain Drivers . . .”. It was specifically contrived to exempt location-based platform workers—ride-hail drivers and food delivery workers—from the provisions of California’s Assembly Bill 5 that had come into effect at the beginning of the year, intended to shore up the prevailing regulatory order by classifying those workers as employees. The shift into the political arena put workers and their unions on the defensive. Platforms would henceforward take full advantage of the “direct democracy” of the ballot initiative (Andrias 2023) to create the gray zone they wished to establish.

This was the ultimate goal of the Uber app-based driver template: the creation of an employment status that undermined the employed/self-employed distinction, creating a status without the advantages of either. In pushing through Proposition 22, Uber effectively acted as a “quasi-legislator” in institutionalizing a tailor-made status for app-based drivers that put them outside the established framework of labor law despite the real subordination found to exist by the courts and recognized by AB 5 (Kesselman 2025). Although pioneered in California, this status subsequently spread across the US and elsewhere, frequently adopted through the standard legislative process—subject here, as often, to significant anti-democratic manipulation. Washington became the first state to enact such a status by statute, while Massachusetts and New York reached compromises incorporating key elements. In each case, Proposition 22 served as the model.

5.2. Regulating in the Gray Zone in France and Brazil

One of the Brazilian government representatives on the Grupo de Trabalho Tripartite would write in his report that “This working group represented an initiative unprecedented in this country—and one of the first in the world—to bring representatives of government, workers, and businesses together in a tripartite body in order to regulate the complex issue of digital platform work” (Antunes 2024). It is the exceptional, pioneering character of this initiative and of the comparable initiative in France that makes it worth taking a closer, comparative look at the two experiences. In her analysis of the regulation of health care for platform workers in France, legal scholar Josépha Dirringer (2021) notes that this has been displaced from the socio-political order under which, as employees, workers would be covered by public healthcare provision, to the market-based order, where, as independent contractors, they would have to rely on private insurance at their own cost. She further notes that this displacement and commodification of social rights is echoed in the establishment of a special forum for the negotiation of platform workers’ conditions of work (dialogue social)^[9], the ARPE.

The purpose-built institutions set up in France and Brazil were to regulate work in place of the established system of collective bargaining. They themselves are loosely regulated, by design, but the terms of their mandate inexorably resulted in the creation of a third type of employment status endowed with fewer rights than the canonical employee.

In France, the then minister of labor, Elisabeth Borne, saw the new institution as a means to secure for platform workers certain social protections normally reserved for employees while maintaining their status as self-employed contractors. In this she aligned herself with the platforms, whose priority is to refuse any recognition of the subordination that would see their workers classed as employees. The constitution and mandate of the ARPE would ultimately further bolster the platforms’ power.

On March 4, 2024, at the presidential palace in Brasilia, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva introduced Supplementary Bill No. 12/2024 (PLP 12/2024), which addressed “the employment relationship mediated by companies running apps offering private, for-hire passenger transport in four-wheeled motor vehicles”. At this high-profile event—attended by members of the government, platform representatives, and union leaders—he emphasized that the bill represented a significant step forward, in “establishing a new form of work”. Minister of labor and employment Luiz Marinho likewise stressed the significance of the creation of a new “special category” of self-employed workers entitled to certain social rights. In essence, this amounted to a new status that would apply to app-based drivers—and potentially to others beyond that group as well.

6. Institutionalizing the App-Based Driver Model through the Promotion of “Uber Norms”

It is the idea of the Uber norms, explained above, that allows us trace the way in which the app-based driver model is being institutionalized, a process driven by the circulation and adaptation of its constituent elements. Despite those local adaptations, this is tending everywhere to the establishment of an identifiably uberized regulatory order. Here we look at the different elements or norms involved. First is Uber democracy, in which deliberation is removed to a space more open to manipulation: in California, from the realm of shop floor industrial relations to a ballot initiative supported by well-funded advertising and campaigning, in France and Brazil to ad hoc tripartite fora. This introduces new actors, new gray zone stakeholders in regulation. The object is the institutionalization of the new norms embodied in the figure of the uberized app-based driver, the just-in-time worker. Yet in the end, even the supposedly normative working conditions and rates of pay that emerge from manipulated public debate, specially contrived institutions, and lop-sided bargaining, get lost in the gray zone of implementation, being in many respects unenforceable by design.

6.1. Uber Democracy as Norm

6.1.1. The US: How to Buy and Bully Your Way to New Labor Legislation

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of California upheld the validity of the Proposition 22 initiative and the new employment status it had introduced for app-based drivers,^[10] rejecting the unions’ argument that it was unconstitutional. In doing so, it lent a certain de facto legitimacy to the campaign for its adoption. Yet the platforms’ notorious disregard for legal and ethical standards (Borkholder et al. 2018) had been even more flagrant in the case of Proposition 22. This first implementation of the Uber template thus undermined not only established labor-market norms but also the democratic process as such.

To secure approval of Proposition 22, the platforms spent more than $200 million on the most expensive ballot initiative in California history. In their extensive media and in-app campaigns, they promoted the image of the flexibly-working and protected independent driver, made misleading claims about drivers’ support for the initiative, and portrayed unions as self-interested actors. By inserting political messages directly into their work and consumer apps, they blurred the line between electoral campaigning and platform operation and use; targeted messages warned about potential job losses, notably for racial and ethnic minority drivers. These tactics would later be replicated in other states (Andrias et al. 2023; Felicity 2022).

The strategy proved effective: Proposition 22 was approved by 58.63% of those who voted, creating for the first time a distinctive legal status for app-based drivers. The campaign was so effective that many supporters believed the measure would improve drivers’ working conditions, despite evidence to the contrary (Mouron 2023; Siddiqui and Tiku 2023).

Democracy Under a Damoclean Sword

Platforms’ lobbying for such an app-based driver status in other states was backed by the explicit threat that they would launch a ballot initiative should it fail. The whole Proposition 22 process was thus used as a lever to secure the regulatory changes they sought.

In Washington State, the legislation of a novel status for app-based drivers followed an agreement between Uber and the Drivers Union (Stiffler 2022). Critics accused that association of independent (i.e., formally self-employed) drivers of abandoning its long-standing demand for employee status by accepting the independent contractor classification and compensation based on “engaged time”. Their negotiators defended the compromise by emphasizing the unprecedented level of pay and benefits secured and by acknowledging the platforms’ threat to pursue a Prop-22-style ballot initiative if negotiations failed (Khurana 2022). A similar dynamic emerged in Massachusetts. A broad coalition of unions and community associations formed around the AFL-CIO—aptly named “Massachusetts Is Not for Sale”, in itself a denunciation of the California campaign—successfully blocked a referendum on the issue. Their opponents, the Massachusetts Coalition for Independent Work, another broad coalition, supported by the main platforms—Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and DoorDash—spent vast sums on lobbying and in contributions to election campaigns, mostly directed against recalcitrant Democratic candidates for re-election.^[11] A later ballot initiative was withdrawn under a negotiated agreement with the Massachusetts authorities that established a separate driver status. The state attorney general explicitly welcomed the deal for its avoiding an industry-backed referendum that would have weakened driver protections. She declared that the agreement “puts a stop to the threat of the companies’ attempting to rewrite state employment law via a 2024 ballot initiative” (italics ours).^[12] This observation clearly supports our argument regarding the strategic use of the ballot initiative as an instrument of political leverage in negotiations over regulation.

6.1.2. France and Brazil: Uberized Tripartism as Norm

The departures from standard procedure in the United States were echoed in the setting up of ad hoc sectoral bargaining forums in France and Brazil as a means to side-step the established institutions and procedures for the regulation of labor issues. The promotion of sectoral bargaining for platform workers has accordingly been added to the Uber template. This innovation is singularly disruptive of the established order in its effect, extending, as it does, to independent contractors a practice hitherto confined to the realm of employment. While the process is further advanced in those two countries, the new Uber norm has now been introduced into the United States with Massachusetts’ affirmative vote on Ballot Question 3 in 2024 (Kesselman 2025).

The character of this “uberized” form of tripartism would have major repercussions for workers’ rights. In the first place, it was explicitly stated, in both France and Brazil, that these special arrangements did not represent an extension of collective bargaining as it had been hitherto understood, notably in the role accorded to the state. Traditionally the active arbiter between capital and labor, in these new institutions it would make no proposals of its own, negotiation being left strictly to the two parties. The mandate of the ARPE is simply to “facilitate dialogue between platforms and workers”.^[13] Since its establishment in 2020, negotiations held under its aegis have led to the signature of three major agreements covering ride-hail drivers.^[14] In Brazil, the GTT was mandated to develop proposals for the regulation of services, passenger transport, goods transport, and other activities mediated by digital platforms. It was given 150 days, renewable for a similar period, to formulate draft regulations and submit its recommendations to the federal government.

In both countries there are limits on the subjects to be discussed. In France, the ARPE was notably prohibited from discussing social rights and protections or state regulation in general. In Brazil, the question of employee status and the rights associated with it was formally excluded from the agenda, while the requirement that the GTT should reach its final proposal by consensus effectively imposed limits on what could be discussed. The final outcome of these negotiations under the shadow of the non-negotiable would then be further vitiated by a “gray zone of implementation”, as we shall see below.

6.2. Regulation by New Stakeholders in the Gray Zone of Public Space

The non-traditional arena into which the struggle over regulation has now been displaced is an inchoate and very loosely regulated space of public debate in which socio-political compromises are arrived at, yielding more or less stable institutional arrangements. Here the customary actors of tripartism find themselves pitted against new participants, less normatively hampered and sometimes having access to great resources. Among them are independent driver collectives, some aligned with trade unions or organized as cooperatives, as well as broader coalitions bringing together local businesses, consumers, community groups, and environmental interests concerned with the externalities generated by platform activities, such as traffic congestion, parking pressures, the occupation of public space by delivery workers, and pollution. Examples are the mutually opposed coalitions in Massachusetts. Lawyers, experts, and advocacy organizations also play an active role in political lobbying and in shaping public debate around the consequences of “uberization,” as illustrated by organizations such as the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in the United States or Sharers & Workers in France. At the same time, local and regional public authorities have increasingly asserted themselves in the regulatory vacuum created by the weakening of national-level regulation, underlining the multi-scalar character of these processes of institutional reconfiguration. This proliferation of actors raises a fundamental question: to what extent do these new stakeholders legitimately represent the interests and constituencies they claim to defend?

The question of representation is contentious among U.S. ride-hail drivers. While organizations such as Rideshare Drivers United, the Drivers Union, and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance have aligned themselves with organized labor and campaigns against uberization, the Independent Drivers Guild (IDG), founded with Uber’s support and still financed by the company, advocates a model based on negotiated gains within independent contractor status (Scheiber and Isaac 2016). Affiliated with the IAM-AFL-CIO, the IDG’s approach is defended as a pragmatic alternative to litigation seeking employee reclassification, but critics argue that it requires workers to forgo employee status, labor protections, and the right to strike (Scheiber and Isaac 2016; Casagrande and Kesselman 2019; DeManuelle-Hall 2021). More broadly, the controversy reflects an ongoing debate over whether a revitalized labor should seek to strengthen or revise the New Deal industrial relations framework (Andrias et al. 2023; Cohen and Blanc 2023; Dubal 2022).

France and Brazil have seen a similar dynamic, with the emergence of new stakeholders in the platform economy, many of them promoting, in their own institutional contexts, a platform-centric vision of labor regulation and worker representation (Valdez 2022). As with the ballot initiative process in California, the special, anomalous frameworks represented by the ARPE and the GTT have profoundly transformed the socio-political landscape and the balance of social power among actors, notably by creating new channels of participation and legitimacy for platform-aligned representatives.

Numerous independent collectives of ride-hail drivers and delivery workers have however emerged and gradually strengthened their ties with the labor movement. In France, some have joined established unions, such as the Bordeaux Couriers Union (Syndicat des Coursiers à Vélo de la Gironde SCVG) within the CGT and the leading ride-hail union INV (Intersyndicale Nationale VTC) within Force Ouvrière, while prompting major union confederations to open membership to self-employed workers for the first time. In Brazil, the Aliança Nacional dos Entregadores por Aplicativos (ANEA), founded in 2022, has become a prominent actor in regulatory debates concerning platform work, often challenging the positions of long-established representatives of the sector, such as motorcycle courier and delivery workers’ unions.

Platform cooperatives have also emerged as alternatives to conventional platforms, either through ethically oriented delivery services or by combining social protection for drivers with a degree of flexibility comparable to that offered by commercial platforms.

The ARPE has actually tended to undermine its own legitimacy and that of the platform worker organizations represented on it. Its own standing is vitiated by abstention rates approaching 97%, while the representativeness of some participating organizations is contested, some being seen as backed by Uber (Palli 2023; Kesselman 2025). Similarly, in Brazil, the leading union confederations welcomed the establishment of the GTT and endorsed its composition, a position widely interpreted as aligning with the Lula administration’s approach to the regulation of platform work (NCST 2024). However, some independent grassroots organizations widely recognized as representative objected to their exclusion from the process. Others, courier representatives notably among them, stormed out of the hearings, when their demand to take engaged time off the agenda was refused (Antunes 2024).

In Brazil, the GTT reached the end of the time allotted to it without producing either a consensus proposal or a final report. Following the platforms’ refusal to accept the demands put forward by delivery workers, the government continued negotiations with a select group of ride-hail drivers’ representatives and platform companies. This process ultimately resulted in the submission to Congress of a bill limited to the passenger transportation sector. This recognized drivers as self-employed workers while allowing platforms to exercise extensive forms of control and supervision over their work. On the other hand, it did grant them a limited set of rights, including access to the public social security system, a 12-hour limit on daily working time, and recognition of collective bargaining and collective representation. Although promoted by the government as a model of “self-employment with rights,” it was ultimately criticized as creating “subordinated workers without rights,” since it neither provided meaningful protections to ensure the effective enjoyment of those rights nor did it allow workers a genuine autonomy (Carelli 2024). The GTT that had been presented as a valuable institutional innovation ended up being denounced as unrepresentative and boycotted by some of its participants, and even then failed to come to a consensus conclusion. The proposals that emerged from the limited negotiations that took place in its wake similarly failed to find support, provoking nationwide mobilizations of ride-hail drivers and being opposed by 95% of respondents to a survey conducted by the Chamber of Deputies (Porto and Araújo 2024).

6.3. The Uberized App-Based Driver Norm: a Figure in the Gray Zone

From the California of Proposition 22 to urban centers the world over, the app-based driver is a precarious, “just-in-time worker” (Abílio 2020), the same features being found in both Global North and South (see Abílio’s chapter here). Among them are self-employment rather than employment and the algorithmic management of drivers (marked by the opacity of ride-allocation, customer ratings, etc.). The “hyper-externalization” (Srnicek 2017) of operating costs onto the driver has been recently exacerbated by the introduction of dynamic pricing,^[15] and increases in the commission charged to Uber and Lyft drivers, with 45% and sometimes as much as 70% having been documented in the United States and Great Britain, confirmed in France by our own field research (Azaïs et al. 2025; Ocampo 2025; University of Oxford 2025).

Alongside self-employment, i.e. independent contractor status, the other major feature of the app-based driver model is the calculation of working time based on “engaged time,” that is, from the driver’s acceptance of a trip to passenger drop-off. This task-based framework is diametrically opposed to the organization and remuneration of working time under the Fordist model with its fixed pay rates and its working hours and work week yielding the hourly wage or monthly salary, together with paid sick leave and paid holidays—a model promoted world-wide by the international labor movement.

While the principle of engaged time has been widely adopted, as evidenced by the cases studied here, it is far from enjoying consensus. We have seen the exceptional measures that platforms had to take to institutionalize the two major features of app-based driver status—self-employment and payment by engaged time—and how far they were willing to go in subverting the democratic process in states such as California, Wisconsin and Massachusetts. In France, most courier organizations initially represented at the ARPE left it in protest, the principle of engaged time being the main grievance. In Brazil, courier organizations withdrew from the GTT over the same issue. The final proposals that emerged from the post-GTT negotiations, covering app-based drivers only, adopted the principle of engaged time, faithfully adhering to the Uber template.

Outcomes have justified those concerns. The adoption of Proposition 22 in California resulted in lower earnings compared to the situation before—earnings notably lower than the minimum wage drivers would have been entitled to as employees, had AB 5 still applied, under which they would have been paid for waiting time (Jacobs et al. 2024).

In France, the two ARPE agreements on remuneration did not improve workers’ overall earnings and even saw them fall. The rate was below what drivers had asked for and payment by engaged time had a major impact. An ARPE study concludes that drivers across almost all platforms experienced a decline in hourly earnings between 2021 and 2024, a conclusion that accords with data from Uber. Both ARPE and Uber attribute this to longer waiting times between trips. These would seem to result from two related developments: an increase in the number of drivers competing in the same market and a significant rise in drivers’ rejection of trip offers deemed unprofitable (ARPE 2025; Srnec et al. 2025; Thomas 2024).

6.4. The Gray Zone of Implementing the Uberized Drivers Status

In France, as in California, implementation and enforcement of the agreements associated with the novel statuses is weak, however institutionalized the latter. No public authority is empowered to monitor compliance with them or to enforce their provisions.

According to the watchdog organization CalMatters, four years after California’s digital platform companies “wrote their own gig-worker law . . . no one is enforcing it”. Without access to their own data, drivers are unable to check the number of hours worked that would qualify them, once certain thresholds were met, for benefits formally provided for by Proposition 22, such as health insurance and workers’ compensation, in addition to pay^[16] (Sumagaysay 2024). Similarly, in France, while the third ARPE agreement covers account suspensions and avenues for appeal—platforms must inform drivers of the criteria (ratings, cancellations) and the factual basis for the decision, while ensuring data transparency—these provisions remain largely ineffective. Access to data is not guaranteed, and is anyway of little use given the difficulty of processing information from a multitude of individual drivers (Ben Ali 2025)—another instance of the gray zone, in the sense of formal provision that has minimal real purchase. Outcomes under the agreements are difficult to evaluate, due to the lack of data: platforms share only averages, of limited relevance, while trade unions—constrained by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)^[17]—can only verify implementation on a case-by-case basis, using data provided by individual workers. The agreements, in fact, simply formalized the arrangements for remuneration already adopted by the platforms (Srnec et al. 2025).

Much as in California, a new type of figure has emerged whose atypical status destabilizes existing regulatory frameworks and institutions. In California, even the benefits promised under Proposition 22 have not been delivered; attempts to file grievances regarding pay fail because no institution has the jurisdiction to handle them, as existing bodies are only empowered to address wage claims against employers or to oversee small business transactions (Sumagaysay 2024). A similar situation prevails in France; labor courts (the conseils de prud’hommes) say they lack jurisdiction to reclassify independent contractors as employees, while the employment inspectorate is unable to oversee their working conditions.^[18]

The new Uber norm of sectoral bargaining by independent contractors has been particularly productive of gray zones of different kinds. The experiences examined here highlight the limits of institutionalized social dialogue in which precarious and weakly organized independent workers are fictitiously treated as the equals of powerful digital platforms. This inequality has no counterbalance: in both the ARPE and the Brazilian GTT, the state lacks any real power to arbitrate or advance proposals. Moreover, because they fall outside the formal scope of negotiations, the aggressive and sometimes legally questionable strategies employed to influence decision-making, widely documented in the literature (Ben Ali 2025; Borkholder et al. 2018), have been effectively normalized in France, as in California.

In Brazil, outcomes have been even less favorable. When the proposal that emerged from the post-GTT negotiation was submitted to Congress as a bill, it faced criticism from both those who wanted recognition of employee status and those who sought real worker autonomy. Alternative bills, developed within Parliament and supported by worker organizations, soon displaced the government’s proposal. As the legislative process progressed, and the scope of the bills was expanded to include delivery workers, the protections afforded to workers were progressively weakened, compared to the original government bill. At present, the various bills remain stalled, none having secured sufficient political support to advance.

At the same time, a major case remains pending before the Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court: Tema 1291, which seeks a definitive resolution of the question of the status of platform work. The final ruling will bind all Brazilian courts and may have a greater impact, in practical terms, than statutory reform. The judgment initially scheduled for June 2026 was postponed until August that year following the ILO’s adoption of Convention No. 193, on Decent Work in the Platform Economy.

Although the justice acting as rapporteur in the case, who is also the current chief justice of the STF, has expressed support for extending labor protections to platform workers and convened a public hearing that largely featured evidence favorable to the recognition of employment status, the majority of the court has been consistently inclined to deny employee status to platform workers. As a result, despite the new ILO Convention, the overall outlook remains largely unfavorable to workers seeking recognition as employees.

In Brazil, then, there is, in fact, nothing to implement, in the face of regulatory vacuum and the institutionalization of gray zones through legislative inaction and Supreme Court decisions.

Closing Considerations

Comparing uberization in France and Brazil through the lens of the Uber app-based driver template and the Uber norms pioneered in California allows us to see the emergence of the new model of the app-based driver as part of a coherent strategy on the platforms’ part, and to consider its political implications. The rise of this uberized worker requires a process that operates “outside the norm.” The establishment of a new standard employment status—one diametrically opposed, in every respect, to the standard employment characteristic of the Welfare State—has only been made possible by the undermining of political democracy. What we call the Uber app-based driver template and the model of work it seeks to institutionalize through the disruptive deinstitutionalization of the alternatives reflects the neo-libertarian ambition of Silicon Valley: the creation of a labor market, if not an entire world, “according to Uber” (see the Introduction to this volume).

The comparison of gray zones has revealed a distinctive pattern: they are created and exploited in furtherance of this strategy. The Uber model was itself born in a gray zone, when the platform put its drivers into direct competition with taxis while classifying them in the more loosely regulated category of private hire vehicles. It was this founding ambiguity, which also involved the blurring of employment status and even driver identities, that set the whole process of uberization in motion. The deliberate disruption of the existing institutions of labor regulation clears the ground for the creation of new, less norm-bound regulatory institutions operating in an inchoate space of public debate where platforms are better positioned to impose their own rules. References to the “tripartism” of these new fora are far from innocent: the new order displaces the old, along with the social relations that underpinned it. What we have seen is the imposition of Uber norms across Global North and South. In both France and Brazil, as well as their counterparts among the US states, drivers’ pay and benefits have been consistently worse than what they could have expected in traditional waged employment. This is the key feature, indeed, the very rationale, of the app-based driver model promoted by Uber.

Neither the ARPE in France nor the GTT in Brazil succeeded in creating an app-based driver status that met the publicly voiced expectations of the authorities. Both initiatives, in fact, saw the state implement a framework that bypassed the existing institutions and norms of labor-market regulation, foreseeably resulting in lower standards than initially held out. In none of the three national cases looked at here has it been possible to achieve social and political consensus on the introduction of a special status for platform drivers. Legislating the regulation of work in the gray zone of an inchoate and opaque public space cannot achieve consensus regarding the institutions of work and employment; that cannot be the result of a top-down initiative, necessarily resulting from a much longer historical process. In France, the top-down approach ultimately served only to erode hard-won social protections and the institutional compromises embedded in the Welfare State, opening the way for a regulation increasingly shaped by platform interests, or what might be called the “law according to Uber”. The same is true in Brazil. A ruling by the Supreme Court is unlikely to enjoy broad legitimacy, especially if it denies labor rights to platform workers. In that case, workers are likely to continue advancing their claims through collective mobilization, including strikes, demonstrations, and other forms of protest, as they have done repeatedly in recent years.

Could this gray zone of non-democratic, non-consensual regulation actually be part of a government policy aimed at clearing the way for uberization? In France, many believe that Emmanuel Macron’s policies favoring platform-based models are intended to weaken traditional labor institutions, a view supported by the President’s own statements (Palli 2023). In Brazil, platform work is seen as a Trojan horse enabling the Supreme Court to put labor law itself into question, a concern reflected in an open letter signed by academics and researchers across the world (Carelli and Kesselman 2024).^[19] At the same time, Uber would seem to be consolidating its ability to undermine labor and democratic norms in the United States.

The comparative analysis of Brazil and France in light of the processes underway in the United States shows analysis in terms of the gray zone to be an essential key to the phenomenon of uberization, both there and across the world.

References

Abílio, Ludmila Costhek. 2020. “Uberização: a era do trabalhador just-in-time?” Estudos Avançados 34 (98): 111–26.

Andrias, Kate. 2023. “The Perils and Promise of Direct Democracy: Labour Ballot Initiatives in the United States”. King’s Law Journal 34 (2): 260–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/09615768.2023.2253593.

Andrias, Kate, Sharon Block, and Benjamin I. Sachs. 2023. “A New Path for Unionizing Uber and Lyft.” Commonwealth Beacon, December 2. https://commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/a-new-path-for-unionizing-uber-and-lyft/.

Antunes, Diogo de Carvalho. 2024. “O Grupo tripartite brasileiro e os desafios de compor uma proposta de regulação do trabalho coordenado por plataformas digitais.” Mercado de Trabalho: Conjuntura e Análise, 30 (77): 215–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.38116/bmt77/pdrt3.

Autorité des Relations Sociales des Plateformes d’Emploi (ARPE). 2025. Analyse 2025 des indicateurs publiés par les plateformes de VTC. ARPE, April 11. https://tinyurl.com/mr6yzevz.

Azaïs, Christian, Patrick Dieuaide, Corinne Gaudart, and Donna Kesselman. 2025. “Ubérisation, espace public et parties prenantes : vers une nouvelle configuration des relations d’emploi et de travail dans les territoires ?”. IRES. https://tinyurl.com/3w6j7t47.

Azaïs, Christian, and Liana Maria da Frota Carleial, eds. 2017. La zone grise du travail: Dynamiques d’emploi et négociation au Sud et au Nord. P.I.E. Peter Lang.

Azaïs, Christian, Patrick Dieuaide, and Donna Kesselman. 2017. “Zone grise d’emploi, pouvoir de l’employeur et espace public: une illustration à partir du cas Uber.” Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations 72 (3): 433–56. https://doi.org/10.7202/1041092ar.

Bellemare, Guy, Marie-Pierre Boucher, Martine D’Amours, Patrick Dieuaide, Donna Kesselman, and Sid Ahmed Soussi. 2024. Zone grise du travail et de l’emploi : de quoi parle-t-on ?. Special issue of Les Cahiers du CRISES, Études théoriques et méthodologiques ET2401. Centre de recherche sur les innovations sociales (Montréal). https://crises.uqam.ca/cahiers/zone-grise-du-travail-et-de-lemploi-de-quoi-parle-t-on/.

Ben Ali, Brahim. 2025. General Secretary of the Intersyndicale Nationale VTC (INV). Interview by the authors, 1 October.

Bisom-Rapp, Susan, and Urwana Coiquaud. 2017. “The Role of the State Towards the Grey Zone of Employment: Eyes on Canada and the United States”, Interventions Economiques / Papers in Political Economy (58). https://doi.org/10.4000/interventionseconomiques.3555.

Borkholder, Joy, Mariah Montgomery, Miya Saika Chen, and Rebecca Smith. 2018. Uber State Interference: How TNCs Buy, Bully, and Bamboozle Their Way to Deregulation. National Employment Law Project. https://www.nelp.org/insights-research/uber-state-interference/.

Bouffartigue, Paul, and Mariana Busso. 2009. “Précarité, informalité: une perspective Nord-Sud pour penser les dynamiques des mondes du travail.” Les Mondes du travail 9 (10): 27–39.

Boulin, Jean-Yves, and Donna Kesselman, eds. 2018. “Work and Employment Grey Zones: New Ways to Apprehend Emerging Labour Market Norms.” Special issue of Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 24 (3).

Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Zone Books.

Bureau, Marie-Christine, Antonella Corsani, Olivier Giraud, eds. 2024. Les Zones grises des relations de travail et d’emploi: Un dictionnaire sociologique, Vol. 2. Buenos Aires : Teseo. https://www.teseopress.com/dictionnaire2/.

Bureau, Marie-Christine, Antonella Corsani, Olivier Giraud, and Frédéric Rey, eds. 2019. Les Zones grises des relations de travail et d’emploi: Un dictionnaire sociologique, Vol. 1. Teseo. https://www.teseopress.com/dictionnaire/.

Bureau, Marie-Christine and Patrick Dieuaide. 2018. “Institutional Change and Transformations in Labour and Employment Standards: An Analysis of Grey Zones.” Transfer 24 (3): 261–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/1024258918775573.

Cardoso, Adalberto Moreira, and Christian Azaïs. 2019. “Reformas trabalhistas e seus mercados: uma comparação Brasil-França.” Caderno CRH 32 (86): 307–24. https://doi.org/10.9771/ccrh.v32i86.30696.

Carelli, Rodrigo. 2019. “La réforme du droit du travail de 2017.” Chronique Internationale de l’IRES 166 (2): 29–37.

Carelli, Rodrigo. 2022. “L’ubérisation et la création des zones grises: la subordination numérique, la requalification juridique et le rôle du judiciaire.” In Les travailleurs des plateformes numériques: Regards interdisciplinaires, edited by Rodrigo Carelli, Patrick Cingolani, and Donna Kesselman. Teseo. https://www.editorialteseo.com/archivos/21109/les-travailleurs-des-plateformes-numeriques/.

Carelli, Rodrigo. 2024. “Subordinação sem direitos: o projeto de lei Nem-Nem do governo federal.” Jornal GGN, March 5. https://jornalggn.com.br/economia/subordinacao-sem-direitos-o-projeto-de-lei-nem-nem-do-governo/.

Carelli, Rodrigo, Patrick Cingolani, and Donna Kesselman, eds. 2022. Les travailleurs des plateformes numériques: Regards interdisciplinaires. Teseo, https://www.teseopress.com/lestravailleursdesplateformesnumeriques/.

Carelli, Rodrigo, and Donna Kesselman. 2024. “Open Letter in Defense of Brazilian Labour Law.” TRAB21, February 26. https://trab21.org/2024/02/26/solidarity-letter-brazilian-labour-law/.

Carelli, Rodrigo, and Gustavo Seferian. 2019. “Brésil: le rôle clé du pouvoir judiciaire dans la régulation des plateformes VTC.” Chronique Internationale de l’IRES 168 (4): 88–100. https://ires.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/C168_6.pdf.

Carvalho, José Murilo de. 2021. Cidadania no Brasil: O longo caminho. 27th ed. Civilização Brasileira.

Casagrande, Cássio, and Rodrigo Carelli. 2018. Reforma Trabalhista. Lumen Juris.

Casagrande, Cássio Luís, and Donna Kesselman. 2019. “À l’origine des plateformes de VTC, à la pointe de la protection des chauffeurs.” Chronique internationale de l’IRES 168 (4): 123–35.

Casagrande, Cássio Luís, and Rodrigo de Lacerda Carelli. 2025. A Suprema Corte contra os Trabalhadores: Como o STF Está Destruindo o Direito do Trabalho para Proteger as Grandes Corporações. Venturoli.

CFDT. 2019. “Projet de loi mobilité: Péril sur les travailleurs des plateformes.” May 17. https://tinyurl.com/fvepch2s.

Cohen, Larry, and Eric Blanc. 2023. “Should the Labor Movement Prioritize the Push for Sectoral Bargaining?”, The Nation, March 20/27. https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/sectoral-bargaining-labor-unions/.

Comparato, Fábio Konder. 2019. A afirmação histórica dos direitos humanos. 12th ed. Saraiva.

Conseil Constitutionnel. 2019. Decision No. 2019-794 DC of December 20, 2019. https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/decision/2019/2019794DC.htm.

Cour de Cassation. 2020. Judgment No. 374 of March 4. (Appeal No. 19-13.316). http://legifrance.gouv.fr/juri/id/JURITEXT000042025162.

Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval. 2009. La nouvelle raison du monde : Essai sur la société néolibérale. La Découverte.

De Sousa Junior, and José Geraldo. 2025. “O acordo tripartite para regulamentação do trabalho em plataformas de transporte remunerado de passageiros.” Jornal Brasil Popular/DF, March 12. https://tinyurl.com/3u6jpe2k.

De Stefano, Valerio. 2016. “The Rise of the “Just-in-Time Workforce: On-Demand Work, Crowdwork, and Labour Protection in the “Gig-Economy.” Conditions of Work and Employment Series No. 71. International Labour Office.

Dirringer, Josépha. 2021. “Le travail de plateforme entre ordre social et marché: Des espaces de régulation en construction.” Droit Social 7/8: 580.

Dubal, Veena. 2022. “Sectoral Bargaining Reforms: Proceed with Caution”, New Labor Forum, January 1. https://newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2022/01/20/sectoral-bargaining-reforms-proceed-with-caution/.

Dubal, Veena B., Ruth Berins Collier, and Christopher L. Carter. 2018. “Disrupting Regulation, Regulating Disruption: The Politics of Uber in the United States.” Perspectives on Politics 16 (4): 919–37.

Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Pantheon Books.

Freitas, Hyndara. 2019. “STF: municípios não podem criar regras diferentes de lei federal para Uber.” Jota, May 9. http://bit.ly/2pOBWXP.

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). 2023. “French Uber Files Inquiry Criticizes Macron’s Secret Dealings with Ride-Hailing Giant.” July 18. https://www.icij.org/investigations/uber-files/.

Jacobs, Ken, Michael Reich, Tynan Challenor, and Aida Framand. 2024. “Gig Passenger and Delivery Pay in Five Metro Areas”. Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics and Center for Labor Research and Education, University of California, Berkeley, May. https://tinyurl.com/3496n5w5.

Kesselman, Donna. 2025. “Le statut des chauffeurs des applis: les États-Unis comme laboratoire.” Revue des Plateformes numériques 1 (1). https://doi.org/10.62688/RPN20259400.

Khurana, Tushar. 2022. “Hailed As Rideshare Driver Victory, New Law Lets Uber and Lyft Limit Labor Rights.” South Seattle Emerald, June 30. https://tinyurl.com/59hctc65.

Mouron, Philippe. 2021. “La ‘Proposition 22’ en Californie, une remise en cause de la loi anti-ubérisation”. La Revue européenne des médias et du numérique 56 : 57–60. https://amu.hal.science/hal-03163645v1.

NCST (Nova Central Sindical de Trabalhadores). 2024. “Autonomia com Direitos.” March 7. https://www.ncst.org.br/subpage.php?id=25915.

Ocampo, Dan. 2025. Unpacking Uber & Lyft’s Predatory “Take Rates.” Fact Sheet. National Employment Law Project, updated July 2025. https://tinyurl.com/yu2tdx7e.

Palli, Barbara. 2023. “Les accords collectifs de secteur des plateformes d’emploi.” Revue de droit du travail 11: 679–87. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04300602v1.

Porto, André Nóbrega, and Jailton Macena de Araújo. 2024. “Projeto de Lei Complementar nº 12/2024: Fissuras no Diálogo Social e Desafios para a Promoção do Trabalho Decente nas Plataformas Digitais.” Revista do Tribunal Superior do Trabalho 90 (3): 158–82. https://doi.org/10.70405/rtst.v90i3.9.

Scheiber, Noam, and Mike Isaac. 2016. “Uber Recognizes New York Drivers’ Group, Short of a Union.” New York Times, May 10. https://tinyurl.com/3m24upvz.

Siddiqui, Faiz, and Nitasha Tiku. 2020. “Uber and Lyft Used Sneaky Tactics to Avoid Making Drivers Employees in California, Voters Say. Now, They’re Going National”. Washington Post, November 17. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/17/uber-lyft-prop22-misinformation/.

Siino, Corinne, and Sid Ahmed Soussi, eds. 2017. “Les zones grises du travail.” Interventions économiques 58. https://doi.org/10.4000/interventionseconomiques.3204.

Simonnet, Danielle. 2024. Face à Uber : enquête sur un scandale d’État. Fayard.

Srnec, Cynthia, Maxime Cornet, and Pauline Moreau Avila. 2025. Country Report France: GDPoweR – Recovering Workers’ Data to Negotiate and Monitor Collective Agreements in the Platform Economy. Cergy Paris CY Université. https://tinyurl.com/y463btkb.

Srnicek, Nick. 2017. Platform Capitalism. Polity Press.

Stiffler, Lisa. 2022. “Lyft, Uber and Unions Back New Washington State Legislation Protecting Drivers.” GeekWire, March 7. https://tinyurl.com/ytjz2szd.

Streeck, Wolfgang, and Kathleen Thelen, eds. 2005. Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies. Oxford University Press.

Sumagaysay, Levi. 2024. “California Companies Wrote Their Own Gig Worker Law. Now No One Is Enforcing It.” CalMatters, September 4. https://tinyurl.com/yh5z5yfu.

Supiot, Alain. 2015. La gouvernance par les nombres: Cours au Collège de France (2012–2014). Fayard.

Thomas, Jules. 2024. “Les rémunérations des livreurs et des chauffeurs VTC piétinent.” Le Monde, October 2. https://tinyurl.com/5xappmwj.

University of Oxford. 2025. “New Oxford Research Reveals Uber’s Algorithmic Pricing Leaves Drivers and Passengers Worse Off.” University of Oxford, News, June 23. https://tinyurl.com/yutjr25m.

Valdez, Jimena. 2022. “The Politics of Uber: Infrastructural Power in the United States and Europe.” Regulation & Governance. https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12456.

---