Solutions for Regulating Labor Relations in the Platform Economy: Iranian Ride-hailing Platform Business

The emergence of Platform Businesses (PBs) has caused a conflict of interest between traditional and new economic players, so, based on the public interest theories to establish justice, the need for government intervention through regulation is highlighted. The research purpose is to extract regulatory challenges and solutions to the PBs in the field of labor relations. The participant's community includes all the stakeholders of the PBs, 24 of which were selected by snowball sampling, and semi-structured interviews with labor relations experts, academics in legal, economic, and regulatory fields, managers, and workers of transportation platforms were conducted. Thematic Analysis method was used to answer the questions. Results showed 8 main categories of labor relations challenges, which are Ambiguity in the concept of PBs; Market failure and the necessity of government intervention; Ambiguity in how to regulate; Necessity of amending the labor law and creating a special law of PBs; Reducing the bargaining power of platform workers; Weakness of HR systems; Weak social protection of platform workers' rights; Domination of the capitalist system. Also, five solutions were extracted. The fifth scenario -participation of all stakeholders in regulating the labor relations of PBs - was proposed to the practitioners and policymakers.