Workshop on platform labour (Lisbon, 23th Oct) organized by Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, involving COLABOR.

The PLUS partner of the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (https://ces.uc.pt) organized on the 23th of October a workshop on platform labour in Lisbon, involving the researchers of COLABOR, (https://colabor.pt ) a collaborative laboratory for work, employment and social protection that involves members from academia, business, public administration and no-profit organizations.

COLABOR includes relevant local stakeholders of PLUS with the objective to research and study the transformation of labour conditions, deploy training activities to public and private sector workers and develop and propose new regulatory frameworks.

The workshop, led by researchers Luca Onesti and Giorgio Pirina, involved 25 members of the Colabor between researchers and practitioners, and focused on the preliminary evidences emerged from PLUS research activity in Lisbon, regarding the impact of Airbnb and Uber.

In particular the debate focused on the preliminary insights related to the impact and state of art of application of the law regulating people´s private transportation services – the  so-called “Lei de Uber”. In this framework we discussed the ongoing evolution of Lisbon as Uber’s technological centre and reference for the European context and the state of the public debate over this topic, emphasizing the limited evidence on a critical perspective on the effect of Uber in the Lisbon’s context.

Second, the workshop focused on the impact of Airbnb and short-rental platforms on the housing sector, analysing also the emergence of a new economic sector based on ancillary services to support this kind of use of the urban space. The debate analysed also the way in which Airbnb and similar platforms are framed in the discourses of urban social movements fighting for the right of housing.