영국노동법의 인적 적용범위와 플랫폼 노동

This article looks at how platform work is regulated in the UK labour law. What it paid attention to is that the personal scope of UK labour law varies among individual statutes of labour law and even among sections of an individual statute. Overall, UK labour and social security law has 5 categories of protected working people including employee and worker, This article puts its focus on whether, and, if any, how those working through on-line platform are protected according to such categories. Recently UK courts had to deal with the issue whether or not those working through on-line platform, such as Uber drivers and food deliverers of Deliveroo, are protected under relevant labour law. They are hardly treated as employees mainly on the grounds that their arrangement with a platform supplier lacks mutual obligation, which is required in order for the arrangement to be a contract. However the courts upheld that protection of both minimum wage and working time apply to Uber drivers since they are workers. Although the court denied mutual obligation of their engagement in relation to periods between individual assignments, it acknowleged such requirement in relation to periods during which separate assignments are being performed. This article shows that the worker category makes those working through on-line platform more likely to be protected than the employer one. This is due to the fact that the former requires only personal performance of work and Not-being-self-employed. It does not does not require the control test, which is regarded to be an essential element of the latter. There may be some lessons from the regulation of platform work in the UK labour law. The concept of an employee under Korean labour law is very narrow although it applies to almost all individual employment law. UK labour law might suggest that the personal scope of labour law does not have to be the same across all individual employment law. Moreover it might suggest that the some tests for an employee, such as mutual obligation and control, has to be abandoned in order to protect those working through on-line platform.