- Location
- Webinars will be held via Zoom. Webinar details will be sent to all registered participants via EventBrite.
- Series/Type
- DLSPH Event, Seminar
- Format
- Online
- Dates
- March 17, 2023 from 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Links
Title: Ambiguities and Absences: Regulating Occupational Health and Safety in the Platform Environment
The presentation will examine the challenges of regulating occupational health and safety in the environment of platform mediated work (PMW). It will first describe the structure of PMW and briefly review the evidence on the incidence of PMW in Canada. It will then consider the OHS hazards associated with PMW before turning to a discussion of the regulatory challenges. These challenges arise in part from ambiguities about the legal relations between platform worker, platform owners and platform clients, but the problems are deeper because OHS regulation itself is not well designed to address work in the platform environment.
Learning objectives:
At the end of this seminar attendees will be able to:
1) understand the legal ambiguity of platform mediated work and why that poses a challenge to OHS regulation;
2) understand why, apart from legal status ambiguities, current OHS laws and regulations are not well designed to address platform mediated work;
3) discuss potential reforms that could improve OHS in the platform environment.
Presenter: Eric Tucker
Eric Tucker is Professor Emeritus, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. He has written extensively on occupational health and safety regulation, including a book, Administering Danger in the Workplace (1990) on its history in Ontario. Over the years, he has published many articles on contemporary OHS regulation, critically examining roles of the internal responsibility system and external enforcement. He recently co-authored a study of worker voice during the COVID-19 pandemic with Alan Hall and published an article on OHS regulation in the platform environment.