The digital economy is growing faster than the law can respond. The longer Bangladesh waits, the deeper the inequality becomes, writes Nafiur Rahman Naypurno
A FOODPANDA rider waits in Dhaka traffic, phone in hand, refreshing his app for the next delivery. One cancelled order means lost income. One accident means no insurance, no compensation and no employer responsibility. He works full-time hours and bears full-time risks, yet under the law he may not even qualify as a ‘worker’. This is not a story about one man; it is a symptom of a structural failure: Bangladesh’s legal framework has not kept pace with its digital economy.
The Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 was built for a different world — one of fixed workplaces, formal contracts and identifiable employers. Gig workers, from ride-hailing drivers to delivery riders, fall entirely outside that world. Classified as independent contractors, they are excluded from minimum wage guarantees, paid leave, workplace safety protections and social security coverage. The platforms profit from this ambiguity; the workers pay for it.
The fiction of independence
THE legal designation of ‘independent contractor’ was designed for genuine self-employment: the architect who sets her own fees, the consultant who negotiates his own terms. What it was never designed for is what we have today — workers whose prices are set by algorithms, whose access to work depends on ratings they cannot fully control and who can be deactivated without notice or appeal.
Globally, this phenomenon is increasingly described as ‘dependent self-employment’ — formally independent, but economically subordinate to the platform. The International Labour Organization has recognised that platform-based work is fundamentally reshaping labour markets in ways that existing employment classifications simply cannot accommodate. Bangladesh is no exception to this transformation, but it remains an exception in terms of legal response.
What the courts have said elsewhere
THE most instructive precedent comes from the United Kingdom. In Uber BV vs Aslam, the Supreme Court held that Uber drivers were ‘workers’, not independent contractors, because the reality of the relationship — not the label on the contract — determines legal status. Uber controlled fares, managed access to work, monitored ratings and could terminate drivers unilaterally. That degree of control, the Court found, created economic dependency that the law must recognise and protect against.
This principle had earlier roots in Autoclenz Ltd vs Belcher, where the Court established that tribunals must look through written agreements to examine the actual working relationship. The lesson is clear: contractual fiction does not override commercial reality. Bangladesh’s courts and legislators would do well to internalise this.
India has moved in a different direction, but with comparable intent. The Code on Social Security 2020 formally recognises gig and platform workers as a distinct category, creating a legal basis for welfare schemes tailored to their circumstances. Implementation remains uneven, but the recognition itself is significant: it treats gig work as a structural feature of the modern economy, not a passing phase to be regulated later.
The human cost of legal inaction
EMPIRICAL research consistently finds that gig workers face income instability, opaque algorithmic control, an absence of collective bargaining power and no access to social protection when things go wrong. A delivery rider injured in a road accident receives sympathy from the platform and nothing else. A driver whose account is suspended without explanation has no labour court to approach, no union to call and no legal channel to pursue.
This is not a fringe problem. The ride-sharing industry in Bangladesh is already valued at $259 million and is projected to reach $1 billion within a decade. Bangladesh accounts for nearly 14 per cent of all freelancers worldwide. These are not marginal workers supplementing other income; they are a substantial and growing portion of the urban workforce and they are working without a safety net.
What Bangladesh can do
COMPARATIVE experience shows that early legal recognition prevents long-term inequality. The longer a country waits, the more entrenched the exploitative model becomes and the harder it is to reform without political resistance from well-capitalised platforms.
Bangladesh does not need to copy any single model. What it needs is a framework suited to its own economic and institutional realities. Several reforms are worth serious consideration.
First, the introduction of a third worker category between employee and independent contractor would allow courts and regulators to extend core protections to gig workers without imposing the full obligations of formal employment. This mirrors the direction of UK labour jurisprudence and reflects the actual nature of platform work.
Second, a portable social protection system — where benefits follow the worker across platforms rather than being tied to any single employer — would address the fragmented nature of gig work. Contributions could be shared between platforms and the state, with workers able to access insurance and social security regardless of which app they use on any given day.
Third, platforms should be required to contribute to a national gig worker welfare fund, providing a collective resource for accident compensation, health coverage and income support during periods of enforced inactivity.
Fourth, algorithmic transparency is not a technical luxury; it is a matter of basic fairness. Workers whose income depends on ratings and task allocation have a right to understand the criteria being applied to them. Decisions to deactivate an account should be subject to review and appeal.
Fifth, minimum earnings standards — not simply minimum wage in the traditional sense, but floor-level protections against the worst income volatility — would protect workers without eliminating the flexibility that makes gig work attractive to many.
Regulation is not restriction
THERE is a persistent argument in policy circles that regulating the gig economy will suppress it — that platforms will exit markets where compliance costs rise, leaving workers worse off than before. This argument has not been borne out by experience. The UK, despite Uber BV vs Aslam, remains one of Uber’s largest and most profitable markets. Platforms adapt. Workers benefit.
The objective is not to freeze the gig economy into a traditional employment mould. It is to ensure that the risks of platform work — income volatility, accident exposure and the absence of institutional protection — are not carried exclusively by those with the least power to absorb them. Gig workers are not rejecting flexibility; they are asking for dignity, predictability and a floor beneath which their lives cannot fall.
The question before us
THE gig economy is transforming Bangladesh faster than the law can respond. That gap between economic reality and legal protection is not neutral. Every day it persists, it works in favour of the platforms and against the workers. The question is no longer whether regulation is needed. That debate is settled by the evidence. The question is whether Bangladesh will act before the inequality becomes structural and the political will to change it dissipates.
Either the law catches up with the economy or the algorithm writes the terms of employment for a generation. That is not a technical question; it is a political choice and the time to make it is now.
Nafiur Rahman Naypurno is a teaching and research assistant, department of law, North South University.
