The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the impact of the digital era on work morphology and regulation

Abstract

Starting from the notion of a Fourth Industrial Revolution, this article deals with understanding the impacts of the application of digital technology to capitalist production, from the point of view of the work morphology and its reflexes for the regulation of industrial relations. To this end, an exploratory study was undertaken, based on scientific productions from the sociological field on the already observed or contemplated impacts and challenges of the recent digital transformation of modes of production in the world of work and their consequences in the labor regulatory field. It is concluded that the facilities and productive possibilities sown by the latest technology have shown to intensify the exploitation of the formal and informal labor force and that, in the legal field, the expansion of the flexibilization of rights and the prediction of atypical employment contracts, as well as the denial of the employment link for service providers by digital platforms reveals the legal precariousness of labor rights in the digital era.