An unprecedented COVID-19-induced explosion in digital surveillance has reconfigured power relationships in professional settings. This article critically concentrates on the interplay between technology-enabled intrusive monitoring and the augmentation of managerial prerogatives in physical and digital workplaces. It identifies excessive supervision as the common denominator of "essential" and "remotable" activities, besides discussing the various drawbacks faced by the two categories of workers during (and after) the pandemic. It also assesses the adequacy of the current European Union legal framework in addressing the expansion of data-driven management. Social dialogue, workers' empowerment and digital literacy are identified as effective ways to promote organizational flexibility, well-being and competitiveness.

What changes affected the working time of employees required to work from home by the 2020 French health measures? Drawing on a qualitative survey of a municipal water company, based on interviews, direct observations, and questionnaires, the author shows how telework prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic restructured working time and redistributed the power of regulation. During lockdown periods, working hours were extended and work rhythms changed, with considerable variation depending on the family configuration: confinement with family was not conducive to extended working hours, instead tending to fragment them, whereas isolated teleworkers experienced the opposite effect.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world of work. But global trade is still recognized as an essential area of business, and maritime transport, being an engine of globalization, cannot be paused. Since the onset of the pandemic, few governments have allowed seafarers - who transport more than 90 per cent of global commodities - to leave their ships and return home. The travel restrictions related to COVID-19 have led to a crisis of occupational safety and health (OSH) at sea. Drawing on 29 interviews, this article explores the OSH challenges faced by international seafarers during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a health, economic and care crisis affecting all workers, including those in the informal economy. This article uses data from the first round of a mixed-methods longitudinal study conducted in June/July 2020 by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing in partnership with informal workers' organizations in 12 cities. It assesses the impacts of the multidimensional crisis on care responsibilities and the resulting effects on livelihoods and food security. A gendered analysis of paid work and unpaid care work sheds light on the unique features of the impacts of the current "pandemic recession" on the world's informal labour force.

This article explores the potential uses by employers of contact-tracing apps and other monitoring technologies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, and the potential concerns that these raise in the context of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. Given the imbalance of power in the employment relationship, the authors call for national laws to strengthen employees' ability to refuse the use of such apps and technologies after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. When such tools are no longer needed to keep employees safe, additional regulations and guidance will be necessary to prevent future problems, such as function creep and other misuse by employers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted gender inequalities, increasing the amount of unpaid care weighing on women and girls, and the vulnerabilities faced by paid care workers, often women working informally. Using a global database on social protection responses to COVID-19 that focuses on social assistance, social insurance and labour market programmes, this article considers whether and how these responses have integrated care considerations. Findings indicate that, although many responses addressed at least one aspect of care (paid or unpaid), very few countries have addressed both types of care, prompting a discussion of the implications of current policy responses to COVID-19 (and beyond) through a care lens.

This article examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ride-hailing drivers in Africa. It argues that though ride-hailing offers paid-work to some African workers, the commodified and informalised nature of this work results in poor job quality. The effects of which are greatly amplified during the pandemic. Drawing on a mixed methods approach: in-depth interviews with ride-hailing drivers in Nairobi and digital ethnography, it also provides a narrative of 'hustle' to outline strategies of resilience, reworking, and resistance among informal workers. It concludes by highlighting the need for adequate regulatory frameworks and on-the-ground solidarity networks to ensure decent working conditions and to push back against precarity in the gig economy.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting containment policies have hit the Philippines harder than most developing countries. The government lockdown is among the strictest in the world, and blanket school closures are the lengthiest. This article uses a novel simulation model to estimate the gendered and regional impacts of these factors on labour, income and poverty, and a case study of school closures points to the losses in employment among private school teachers and in the income of parents with young children. The authors find that the pandemic has had unprecedented implications for economic activity and has disproportionately affected women.

In 2020, Latin America was gripped by an unprecedented labour crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. This article analyses the pandemic's impact on employment and income dynamics, and the policies implemented by the countries in the region. Findings point to a severe contraction in employment, working hours and income in consequence of the sharp decline in economic activity. These impacts have fostered inequalities, and the pathway to recovery is widening employment and income gaps between different population groups.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a more severe labour market crisis in 2020 than that witnessed during the 2009 global financial crisis. As a consequence of lockdown measures, which have been the main cause of damage to labour markets, the deepest impacts in 2020 have been found in middle-income economies, while certain sectors, such as accommodation and food services, and groups, especially young women, have proved to be particularly vulnerable. Contrary to adjustment processes during the global financial crisis, the COVID-19 crisis has resulted in a greater rise in inactivity than in unemployment. Policy support needs to be maintained to avoid an unequal recovery.

In early 2020, apparel brands and retailers cancelled US$40 billion worth of orders, with critical consequences for suppliers and workers. Their actions illustrate the power asymmetries in global supply chains and the unequal distribution of costs during crises. This article explores these dynamics through original survey data, supplier questionnaires, stakeholder interviews, a time-line analysis and trade data analysis. Findings point to certain limits of buyer power, reflected in the effective collaboration between suppliers and worker rights advocates in the "#PayUp" campaign. Yet buyers retain the power to squeeze suppliers with adverse impacts on workers, thus leading to calls for binding agreements.

Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have differed in scope and design, with important implications for the labour market as a whole but also for specific groups of workers. Using labour force survey data from seven middle- and high-income countries, this article analyses transitions in the labour market in the first two quarters of 2020 and compares them with transitions in the previous year. The authors find that governments that favoured wage subsidies over other forms of income support were able to lessen labour market volatility, but that in all seven countries studied the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated labour market inequalities.

This article analyses actual social dialogue experiences in Italy, Portugal and Spain in order to examine the social partners' participation in COVID-19 crisis management. It considers the economic and political variables that have helped revitalize tripartism in all three countries relative to the previous economic crisis. The lack of austerity policies and responsibility-sharing on the part of the social partners and governments paved the way for various agreements that, though differing in content and scope, attest to stronger peak-level tripartite dialogue.

The 2013 Rana Plaza disaster highlighted the failure of labour regulation in global garment value chains. Eight years on, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, what changes have occurred in labour regulation and with what consequences for workers? Using the concept of a labour governance system (LGS), the authors show that, despite improvements in building and worker safety regulation, the garment LGS remains weak and wages, working hours and the treatment of workers show little improvement. The pandemic appears to have exacerbated these deficiencies but it may also offer an opportunity to strengthen the LGS along lines proposed in this article.

This article presents a framework to analyse the gendered impact of COVID-19 on workers in global value chains (GVCs) in the business process outsourcing, garment and electronics industries. Distinguishing between the health and lockdown effects of the pandemic, and between its supply- and demand-related impacts, the authors' gendered analysis focuses on multidimensional aspects of well-being, understands the economy as encompassing production and social reproduction spheres, and examines the social norms and structures of power that produce gender inequalities. Their findings suggest that the pandemic exposes and amplifies the existing vulnerabilities of women workers in GVCs.

Digital labour platforms have been widely promoted as a solution to the unemployment crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the pandemic has also highlighted the harms to gig workers-who are exposed either to income loss, or to infection while carrying out essential work, but excluded from labour protections. We examine the COVID-19 policies of 191 platforms in 43 countries to understand how the crisis has shifted the conventions of the gig economy. Using a typology of "fair platform work" we report the introduction of some positive worker protections, but also significant shortfalls, including entrenchment of precarious work as platforms leverage the opportunities arising from the crisis.

This article explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the work and life experiences of platform workers' and how workers have responded to the outbreak in Poland. Platform workers have been exposed to substantial fluctuations of demand during the pandemic, magnifying the distortions existing in an unregulated asymmetrical employment relationship diverging from the standard employment relationship. Findings illustrate how workers have attempted to reduce the disruptions underpinning the existence of this unregulated asymmetrical relationship by adopting different strategies, which resemble Hirschman's typology of loyalty, voice and exit. We explain the choice of strategies by highlighting workers' different access to resources and institutional capabilities, as well as by variation in their orientations.

Although studies on digital labour platforms demonstrated how the internet has opened up access to income opportunities in the developing world, an exploration of how informal workers use the internet to access work without an intermediary is missing. Using data from digital ethnography and interviews with workers in Indonesia, this article examines how platform-based motorcycle taxi drivers and domestic workers accessed work through social media in the time of COVID-19 when the platforms were not allowed to operate. The evidence suggests that while social media can offer increased opportunities for workers, their success was largely dependent on their social networks and bounded by the algorithms designed by platform owners.

Thailand has experienced a rapid economic transition from agriculture to industry and services, and from informal to formal employment. It has much less state regulation and worker representation relative to developed nations, who underwent these transitions more slowly and sequentially, decades earlier. We examine the strengthening of Thai government policy and legislation affecting worker's health, responding to international norms, a new democratic constitution, fear of foreign importer embargos and several fatal workplace disasters. We identify key challenges remaining for Thai policy makers, including legislation enforcement and the measurement of impacts on worker's mental and physical health.

Using longitudinal data from urban Brazil, the authors track the employment patterns of thousands of children aged 10-16 during four months of their lives in the 1980s and 1990s. The proportion of children who work at some point during a four-month period is substantially higher than the fraction observed working in any single month. The authors calculate an intermittency multiplier to summarize the difference between employment rates in one reference week vs. four reference weeks over a four-month period. They conclude that intermittent employment is a crucial characteristic of child labour which must be recognized to capture levels of child employment adequately and identify child workers.