How Fair Are Digital Labor Platforms in Brazil? Evidence from Fairwork Brazil

The chapter presents and discusses the results of the second round of the Fairwork scorings, carried out in Brazil during the years 2022 and 2023, under the general coordination of the Oxford Internet Institute and the WZB Berlin Social Center, with funding from GIZ. Based on a triangular methodological framework articulating desk research, interviews with workers and meetings with platform managers, evidence is sought on whether companies comply with the five principles of fair work: pay, health and safety conditions, contracts, management, and representation. The study focused on on-location platforms, in which the buying and selling of labor occurs in the same territory. The business model of platform companies is characterized by developing mechanisms to rationalize the work process and subject workers to control and data capture. The rationalization of the work process is structured around the logic of task fragmentation, the diffusion and concentration of information, and deskilling. This Fairwork research concluded that work through platforms in Brazil is far from being decent or complying with fair work principles. Overall, the platforms’ ratings in 2023 remained very close to those presented in the 2022 report, the same trend found in other countries in Latin America.