Social mechanisms for regulating labor relations in the digital environment

The aim of this article is to analyze the social mechanisms of regulating labor relations in the digital environment. The authors emphasize that one of the most important social functions of modern government is the regulation of social labor relations. However, in addition to the government, there are numerous institutional regulators in the social labor sphere that exert varying degrees of influence on social labor relations. In the digital environment, the mechanisms of institutional regulation of social labor relations are transformed in light of new realities. The active implementation of modern digital technologies leads to changes in work processes, automation and robotization of production, changes in professional structure, and the emergence of new forms of employment. However, due to the imperfections of the regulation mechanisms for new forms of employment in the digital environment, they exist under less stable conditions than traditional forms of work. The primary methodological basis of the research consists of theoretical scientific methods and a systematic approach. The interdisciplinary nature of the research within the defined issues requires the involvement of a significant amount of data from both international and domestic socio-economic statistics. A comparative analysis of the risks and advantages of new forms of employment in the digital environment and the institutional mechanisms governing them is conducted. The authors focus in detail on the analysis of new forms of employment in the digital environment: remote work, platform and mobile employment, freelancing, as well as the increasingly widespread sharing forms of employment, outsourcing, and outstaffing. New labor practices have both advantages and disadvantages. The lack of an effective system for both state regulation and public control in this sphere can lead to actual violations of the labor and social rights of workers and increase risks for the state: criminalization of the social labor sphere, reduction of state budget revenues, creation of additional difficulties for the social insurance and pension system, and the actualization of the "free rider problem." The authors conclude that the profound changes occurring in the social labor sphere require the development of new compromise and non-standard institutional mechanisms to ensure the regulation of social labor relations that are adequate to the dynamically evolving digital environment. The article analyzes the experience of institutionalizing such mechanisms in our country (for example, tax regulation of self-employment).

social and labor relations, the welfare State, Digital transformation, platform employment, remote employment, freelance, shared employment, the labor market, digital economy, outstaffing