The Virtual Workplace

Explores the emerging issues of virtual work—defining employment, litigating claims, aggregating cases, unionizing workers, and preventing harassment—and how employers have turned to technology during the pandemic. As work moves further into the virtual context, we must find new ways of framing employment laws to keep pace with these changes.

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The recent pandemic has clarified the overwhelming connection between the workplace and technology. With thousands of employees suddenly forced to work at home, a large segment of the workforce quickly received crash courses in videoconferencing and other technologies, and society as a whole took a step back to redefine what employment actually means. The virtual workplace is the blending of brick-and-mortar physical places of business with the advanced technologies that now make it possible for workers to perform their duties outside of the office. Trying to regulate in this area requires the application of decades old employment laws to a context never even contemplated by the legislatures that wrote those rules. This book explores the emerging issues of virtual work—defining employment, litigating claims, aggregating cases, unionizing workers, and preventing harassment—and provides clarity to these areas, synthesizing the current case law, statutory rules, and academic literature to provide guidance to workers and companies operating in the technology sector.