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The aim of the article is to analyze the main problems emerging by the Proposal of the Directive concerning platform workers’ minimum rights and their employment status in the digital economy. In identifying the main challenges for the Italian legal system, the A. focuses on three questions. The first question, which appears to be the most relevant, concerns the subjective field of application of the Directive: the European proposal is divided into two levels of protection, distinguishing those who have a contract or employment relationship recognized by national Law and persons performing platform work who do not have an employment relationship. Conversely, the Italian legal system, which historically is more articulated, contemplates a large intermediate area of ​​semi-subordinate, hetero-organized and weak autonomous work, to which specific protections are gradually applied. The second question concerns the mechanism of the legal presumption of subordination applicable to platform work (see Article 4). This is a simplified procedure for verifying the employment status of digital workers, which, however, is extraneous to the domestic legal system and above all to the model of ascertaining the status of subordination adopted by jurisprudence, thus requiring a regulatory and interpretative connection that is not simple. The last question raised by the proposal concerns the definition of European workers' rights towards the digital platform. The Directive is focused on the rights connected to algorithmic management and the transparency of automated decision-making systems (see Chapter III), while it even seems to include or restrict the operational scope of some substantial safeguards recognized in the domestic legal system.

The ability of the web to be a mean of self-representation of each individual increases the problems of the traditional unions that, for a long time now, have been looking for strategies to face workers’ needs in emerging sectors. The coalitions of digital workers have been developed outside the trade unionism. These aggregations try to gain visibility especially in the public arena through dialogue with local institutions and city government. In the theoretical perspective, the occurrence of synthesis and standardization’s elements is essential to identify a collective interest. The relevant differences among workers on the socio-economical level, on the contrary, affect the possibility to place the aggregations of digital workers inside the traditional unionism. However, the difficulty in tracing collective interests outside the area of dependent work is no more justified in the theoretical perspective as much as in the logic of union representation. The analysts of social networks and industrial relations have emphasized the usefulness of a revival of representation of historical unions through an alliance including collective players of the digital economy, civil society and public opinion. The coalition experiences in progress at the metropolitan level can be favourably assessed, as they are aimed at set up a new sphere of socio-political influence for unions, by opening new spaces for collective bargaining. Social coalitions can assist the transfer and mutual exchange of information and organizational resources, with positive results in both directions.

Public and scientific debate on the digital economy is now widespread in many european countries. Also labour law scholars started to pay more attention to the new economical models and to the impact of digital technologies on productive processes. Economics and labour sciences should now move from a descriptive analysis to a deeper theoretical elaboration.The directions of the theoretical analysis are essentially two: the first one deals with the overbearing diffusion of non-standard forms of work on the web, especially on the digital platforms. This trend undermines the traditional foundation of subordination and affects the dynamics of global labour law market. The second directions deals with the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the industrial environment that presents new legal and social issues, concerning both the replacement of standard work with robotics and the complementarity between human work and «non-human agents» work.

Is there work on web? Can we distinguish web-users between "workers"? What innovative ways takes digital activity? Is it possible to identify typical professional profiles and trades on web? Can the extreme accessibility and impersonality of the web create genuine employment relationships and support production processes? Is there a way to apply labour rules and protections to experiences that intentionally take advantage of extraterritoriality, autarky and polycentric dimension of Internet?The questions raised by the Author underline that the web, rather than simply providing means and support to the movement of information in advantage of the labour market traditional players (companies, workers, private agencies, public employment services), has instead developed autonomously its own potential. On one hand, the web has became a professional intermediary, using the capabilities of computing devices and search engine that offer global employment services 2.0; on the other hand, has caused the “dis-intermediation” towards institutional operators (public and private) through the dissemination of informal circuits, sites of social recruiting, and also civic networks aimed at intercepting interstitial job opportunities.Moreover, the web tends increasingly to exchange or combine the role of the intermediary and the one of the employer in the labour market, making available - at least potentially - a virtual, but global, space for outsourcing. The A. reflects, in particular, on legal characterization of digital work through crowdsourcing and on the application of rules of contracts and Agency work.Although work on web is difficult to recognize, measure and regulate in legal terms, it has been observed that the use of technological devices and digital services mark the rebirth of the "trade" - in its original, ancient meaning of the practice of an art or the expression of a talent - in contrast to the "profession" established in the high twentieth century through a bureaucratic public organization. The network is the means and the support of the "trade" professed by digital workers, but is both the object and purpose of the trade itself. Means and end often coincide.