Digital Cleavages and Risk in the Platform Economy in Belgium

Abstract

The adoption of digital technologies challenge existing institutional approaches towards labour markets segmentation and dualisation by dissolving the employer-employee nexus. When national governments adapt to digitalisation by deregula-tion they risk to fostering "flexibility at the margin" which can reinforce digital cleavages at the intersection of tasks, skills and new technology. This is because deregulation threatens the existing country-based employment and industrial rela-tions structures by favoring companies fissuring the labour markets while reducing employment protections for all workers. In the paper we illustrate this argument by shedding light on the case of Belgium as one of the countries in Europe with a gen-erous and encompassing system of collective bargaining and strong employees' representation structures, and which has been experiencing a deregulatory trend in response to digitalisation, following the introduction of the 2016 law "De Croo".