Egypt’s new labor law recognizes platform-based work for the first time but offers scant protections, leaving workers in a “legislative and regulatory vacuum,” warns a report by the Masaar Center and Defaa/Defense Law Office.
The report, “Modern Work Patterns in the New Labor Law: Between Legislative Recognition and Implementation Challenges,” explained that the provisions on platform-based work are “extremely brief” and rely entirely on executive regulations that have not yet been issued. This maintains the status quo, where workers lack formal contracts, are classified as independent contractors, and are deprived of social insurance and fair pay.
The law’s definition of “new forms of employment” covers remote work, part-time work, flexible work, and job sharing. However, it remains inadequate for addressing the complexities of the digital work environment, especially the algorithmic oversight that replaces managers and supervisors, argued the report.
It also criticized Article 96 for its inability to encompass forms of “digital subordination,” where on the surface, workers seem free, while in practice, they remain under the authority of the platform. This leaves large segments of workers, particularly the most vulnerable, outside the scope of protection.
Masaar and Defaa urged swift action to close legal gaps by precisely defining the employment relationship in gig-economy work, mandating company transparency, ensuring workers’ integration into the social insurance system, enabling their right to unionize, and providing effective mechanisms for resolving disputes.
The report noted that platform-based workers will face difficulties proving employment relationships, as Article 99 requires a written contract but at the same time allows for proof by other means, without specifying the minimum data that the contract must contain. This gap, it said, opens the door to “incomplete or sham contracts that lack fundamental protective guarantees for the worker, thereby weakening their legal position and increasing their vulnerability in disputes.”
It further argued that the model contracts referenced in Article 100 remain “only recommendations, with no guarantee of implementation or enforcement,” and also fail to address “foreign digital platforms that operate in Egypt without a local legal entity.”
In conclusion, the report called for “urgent legislative and institutional reforms” to address these loopholes, starting with updating laws to define a “platform worker,” adopting standardized contracts, integrating workers into social insurance schemes, and recognizing their rights to unionize and engage in collective bargaining.
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ratified the new labor law on May 3, and it has been in force since early September, following the 90-day implementation period set from its publication in the Official Gazette.
