Il presente scritto è dedicato al Liber amicorum in onore di Maximilian Fuchs

Technological innovation, particularly digital innovation, and globalisation have changed the organisational models adopted by companies, and led to greater flexibility in working time and the place of work, when compared with the Fordist enterprise. This has had profound consequences on the interpretation of legal categories in all jurisdictions, and even made it necessary to re-conceptualise the foundational categories of labour law.
While the perspective of this paper in examining the legal issues posed by work that falls outside the normal space and time coordinates of factory work is the Italian legal system, its findings can also be extended to a large degree to other legal systems.
In some cases, the problems concern adapting/re-interpreting current labour law; in other cases, the problems are more radical, and are related to whether the employment relationship is to be defined as independent or subordinate, and the different status of protection that this entails. A typical example is the case of digital platform work.