Using qualitative methodologies, I conducted research with one group of vulnerable workers (whom I refer to as street rebuscadores) in Bogotá, to study how both State and non-State legal regimes interact to influence their productive strategies. Following a legal pluralist approach, I concluded that as a social group engaging in regulatory activities, street rebuscadores are situated in a semi- autonomous social field generating internal normative rules, but that is also vulnerable to rules from the larger social matrix in which it is situated. Within that semi-autonomous social field, the vulnerability of street rebuscadores is legally constructed and accentuated by the State, and existing regulatory frameworks are perpetuating and reproducing their condition, although not without resistance. In this paper, I will focus exclusively on labour law, to discuss a series of reasons that lead me to conclude that State labour law is unable to penetrate the semi- autonomous social field of street rebuscadores, and therefore, unable to protect those workers most in need.