Data Rights and Platform Labour Markets in Uruguay

This paper examines platform labour markets in Uruguay through an analysis of data practices, algorithmic management, and workers' experiences in location-based digital labour platforms. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork conducted since October 2025 as part of the Data4Workers project, including interviews with platform workers, worker organisations, and legal and institutional actors, the paper analyses how platforms structure access to work, govern labour processes with insights on how companies collect and use worker data across delivery, ride-hailing, logistics, domestic work, and services.

The paper argues that platform labour markets are highly heterogeneous and shaped by different combinations of automation, surveillance, ranking systems, pricing mechanisms, and discretionary forms of control. Rather than treating platform work as a uniform category, the paper examines how these systems operate in practice within specific labour-market and regulatory contexts.

The presentation centres on findings from fieldwork regarding workers' experiences with data extraction, algorithmic opacity, and the practical limits of exercising data rights. While existing literature has identified opaque algorithmic management and asymmetrical access to information as central features of platform labour, the paper examines how these dynamics are experienced by workers themselves, including their understanding of reputational systems, difficulties accessing or interpreting platform-held data, and the barriers they face when attempting to contest suspensions, deactivations, or automated decisions.

Particular attention is given to the relationship between platform labour and emerging debates on data rights. The paper discusses workers' experiences in relation to GDPR-inspired data protection frameworks, Uruguay's personal data protection regime, and recent platform regulation, exploring both the possibilities and limitations these instruments present and their significance (or lack of) for workers.

More broadly, the paper argues that understanding contemporary platform labour markets requires placing data extraction, algorithmic governance, and workers' data rights at the centre of the analysis.