Beyond the Office

Historically, employment was defined by the place where it occurred. The worker’s presence on the employer’s premises symbolized subordination; it justified protective legislation on safety, working hours and employer control. 

In recent years, work has escaped those walls. Remote working technologies have enabled millions to perform their jobs from homes, cafés or co-working spaces. This smart or agile model of work has become the new frontier of employment. It detaches labor from a fixed time and place, offering flexibility for workers and efficiency for employers.

What distinguishes this new form is not independence from an employer, but autonomy within subordination. Employees remain legally bound by their employment contracts, yet they now have significant control over where and when to work. The employment relationship persists — but its symbols have changed. The desk and the clock are no longer defining features.

And when work takes place everywhere and nowhere, protection can no longer depend on walls or shifts. It must follow the person, not the place.

In this context, the smart (or remote) worker embodies a paradox. Freed from the office, they gain flexibility, privacy and the ability to blend professional and personal life. But that same freedom can dissolve boundaries, exposing them to new forms of pressure and surveillance.

Technology has made it easy for employers to monitor output remotely, track log-ins, measure keystrokes and evaluate performance through algorithms. The traditional “directive power” of the employer — once exercised face to face — is now embedded in digital systems. Subordination becomes invisible but pervasive, exercised through data rather than direct command.

Meanwhile, the classic functions of labor law — protecting physical safety, limiting working hours, ensuring rest — must be reinterpreted. 

What does “health and safety at work” mean when the workplace is a kitchen table? How can the right to disconnect be enforced when connectivity is the very condition of employment?

The redistribution of autonomy within employment does not erase the power imbalance between employer and worker; it simply transforms it. The employer’s control is no longer exercised through immediate supervision but through the architecture of the organization itself — the systems, processes and digital platforms that define what work must be done and how.

Even in the most flexible arrangements, workers remain part of a structure they do not control. They can choose the place and time of work, but not its meaning, its goals or the standards by which it is judged.

This observation redefines the essence of subordination. It is no longer about constant oversight but about organizational dependence — the fact that the employer determines the framework within which the worker operates. The smart worker may seem autonomous, but the autonomy is procedural, not structural.

The implications are profound. Labor law, once designed to regulate power inside factories and offices, must now address the complex reality of digital, networked work. It must protect not only the worker’s physical integrity but also their personal autonomy, privacy and time.

At the same time, the employment contract, far from being outdated, remains a remarkably flexible tool. It can adapt to the changing nature of work, provided the law evolves to match it. What must change is the conceptual lens: we must understand “work” not merely as time and effort exchanged for pay, but as a social relationship shaped by power, technology and identity.

The future of labor law lies in its ability to act as an innovation facilitator — a system that helps societies adapt to economic transformation without sacrificing fairness or dignity.

Protection must become more personal, more portable and more attuned to the realities of digital life. It must account for workers who are both autonomous and subordinate, connected and isolated, flexible yet precarious.

Work has escaped the confines of the factory and the office. It now lives in clouds, networks and devices, in the spaces between professional and private life. The task for the law — and for society — is to ensure that as work evolves, its human core does not disappear.

Autonomy without protection is fragility; subordination without freedom is exploitation.