Deinstitutionalization of traditionally organized labor: the new normality of labor relations

The article examines the changes taking place under the influence of digitalization in the world of human labor, stimulating increasingly flexible forms of employment and deinstitutionalization of traditionally organized labor. In the digital economy, the precarization of labor relations is becoming a new paradigm of socio-economic development, which, as it spreads, becomes the new norm. Digitalization in the field of work stimulates individual self-employment; the use of gig economy practices erodes the system of social guarantees, which manifests itself in various ways of externalizing social protection, weakening the structure of solidarity and new forms of labor exploitation. Institutions of social guarantees are being normatively undermined by the promotion of ideas about the benefits of autonomy and self-realization through self-employment, as well as about the disappearance of asymmetry of power in the labor market in the sharing economy. As a result, the role of social security institutions is being rethought, and the collective protection of workers’ interests is being undermined. The spread of platform work generates new risks in the field of work related to the unreliability of work based on digital platforms and a decrease in the quality of human capital. The instability of employment is becoming a new normality, which is reflected not only in the growth of the number of platform employees but also in the hiring strategies used by employers, the transition to employment practices under civil law contracts, the blurring of the boundaries of working and personal time, the encroachment of capital on workers’ rights, and the rejection of mandatory social guarantees. Workers are increasingly accepting deteriorating working conditions and lowering the horizons of their social expectations. The normalization of instability manifests itself as processes of deinstitutionalization and reinstitutionalization, through which working conditions previously considered unreliable are transformed into a new norm. The task of labor law is the legislative consolidation of the status of digital platforms, the definition of the rights and obligations of subjects of platform labor relations, as well as the inclusion in the legal field of regulation of new forms of employment to increase social security.