Precariedad laboral y formalidad: Percepciones y tensiones en torno a la regulación, flexibilidad y autonomía.

This article analyzes the recent 2025 labor reform in Mexico that seeks to regulate work on digital platforms. This business model, represented by companies like Uber and Rappi, is based on a discourse that extols autonomy, flexibility, and self-employment. The reform recognizes VTC (Vehicle with Driver) and delivery platform workers as formal independent workers, granting them labor rights and social security. This legal change has generated a series of controversies ranging from the economic impact of the regulation and the tension between the concepts of autonomy versus subordination to a landscape of uncertainty regarding the reform's implementation and effectiveness. Among the main findings from the analysis in this article, it is identified that managerial spokespersons for the platforms and some workers argue that the regulation threatens flexibility and autonomy. There is also a sense of mistrust and disbelief regarding the real scope of the reform due to the heterogeneity of workers' profiles, contexts, and particular trajectories. On the other hand, there are those who support the bill, pointing out that it does not assume a dilemma between flexibility and labor rights but rather that it is possible to maintain both and, in this way, end the condition of vulnerability and precarity that accompanies these types of activities. The document concludes that the reform, designed from the framework of salaried employment, faces challenges when attempting to regulate a labor model that has grown under the context of neoliberalism and flexibilization.