공유경제(sharing economy)의 노동법적 쟁점 ― 미국에서의 근로자성 판단 논의를 중심으로 ―

This article aims to analyze, in a labour law perspective, the issues and challenges of the so-called ‘sharing economy’ or ‘platform labour’. In 2015, the U.S. California Court has dismissed a motion for summary judgment on the ground that it is a matter of fact for the jury to decide whether Uber and Lyft drivers are employees or independent contractors; that the companies have exercised certain degree of control over the drivers. In the meantime, the Seoul Administrative Court has ruled in 2015 that a teenage driver who provided delivery service via food-delivery app was not an employee under Korean Labor Standard Act as a matter of law, and is not entitled to labour law protection and industrial accident compensation. While proponents of sharing economy insist that platform service providers are mere ‘users’ or their ‘partners’, one who looks at the economic reality of these workers could see that significant degree of control is exercised over them, albeit the use of platform or online application. In most cases, platform workers are exposed to long working hours, low pay, excessive emotional labor and precarious situation to maintain their living. These type of workers are in need of labour law protection just like any other employees in ordinary workplaces. In the long term, our existing labour law standard on defining an “employee” should be enhanced and transformed in a way that better captures the nature of working conditions of the service providers in the sharing economy. This is ever more important in the 21C workplace where, as Prof. David Weil puts it, workplaces are being “fissured” and the use of platform work could be just another good excuse to “shed employment” in the face of deepening global inequality.