Right to disconnect and continuous availability

legal limits to algorithmic subordination in digital platform work

Abstract

This article analyzes the right to disconnect as a legal limit to algorithmic subordination in digital platform work. It starts from the premise that new technologies have not eliminated labor subordination, but have reorganized it through digital systems of command, evaluation, ranking, geolocation, pricing, and deactivation. The research problem is to examine how the right to disconnect may operate as a minimum protection against the continuous availability imposed by algorithmic management. The hypothesis argues that platforms use the discourse of autonomy and flexibility to conceal opaque forms of control, transferring economic risks to workers and turning the freedom to connect into a material requirement of remaining online. The study adopts a qualitative, theoretical-bibliographical and documentary approach, based on a deductive method, drawing on legal and sociological literature on uberization, precarization, surveillance capitalism, workers’ health, existential damage, and the digital work environment. It concludes that the right to disconnect should be understood as a guarantee linked to human dignity, health, leisure, working time limits, and the social value of labor, preventing direct or indirect sanctions against workers who disconnect. Finally, the article argues that the protection of free time is a minimum condition for reconciling technological innovation, decent work, and the constitutional protection of working people.