A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of autonomous vehicles. In many US and Chinese cities it is already becoming normal to see a self-driving car or bus, and it won't be long before they are cruising around London, Paris and Berlin as well. At first, AVs will primarily take the form of robo-taxis, and as such they will be an existential threat to the taxi and private hire driver.
The competition for the European market is heating up, with Chinese and American AV makers both setting their sights on dominating the 'old world'. Chinese AV producers are partnering with American ridehail platforms to pilot launch in Germany in 2026: Momenta with Uber, and Baidu with Lyft.
American AV firm Waymo wants to launch in the UK next year, while Tesla's robo-taxis remain some way off a launch but continue to do testing in several European countries. While European players do exist, AVs are set to be another case of Europe being a large consumer market for predominantly American and Chinese tech.
As it stands, fully autonomous vehicles remain prohibited in the EU. In most European countries only Level 2 AV technology, which requires a driver to maintain control, is allowed for public deployment. But that is set to change quickly. The European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen is pushing for regulatory harmonisation, with each member-state currently operating with their own safety requirements, which are typically much more stringent than what you find in the US.
There does remain significant safety questions when it comes to AVs. In California at the end of September, a Waymo robo-taxi was caught by police officers conducting an illegal U-turn, but the vehicle was not given a ticket because there was no one to give it to. That's an example of the sort of thing that can happen when tech roll-out runs ahead of regulations.
More worryingly, it only takes one cyber-security breach to, say, motion sensors and there would be carnage on the roads. In 2022, 19 year old David Colombo revealed he had been able to hack 25 Teslas across 13 countries and control aspects of the cars remotely. European regulators should be deploying hackers to systematically test AVs for software vulnerabilities.
Beyond road safety concerns, Worker Info Exchange (WIX) has published a detailed analysis of autonomous vehicles which focuses on the fact that these cars are "surveillance on wheels". In San Francisco, the police are already treating AVs as crucial for "investigative leads" due to the fact they are continually recording their surroundings.
Do we want to permit vehicles onto Europe's streets which undermine the privacy of pedestrians going about their everyday lives? When this surveillance infrastructure will be in the hands of the likes of far-right activist and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, we should be extremely strict about what data these AVs are allowed to collect and retain, and how that data is used.
There should also be much more focus on what the robo-taxi revolution will mean for workers. As WIX points out, while the UK Government projects there will be 38,000 new jobs created in the UK by 2035 from AV roll-out, they do not pay any attention to the jobs that will be lost from this technology. The UK has 381,000 taxi and private hire drivers, so the jobs lost to jobs gained ratio could be as high as 10:1.
Moreover, many of the jobs that will be created will be even lower down the value chain than private hire driving: it will be human support to AVs like safety monitors, cleaners, battery technicians and recovery teams. Many of these jobs may well be subject to the same precarious, piece-waged, algorithmically-managed model as private hire drivers.
As for the drivers, the most likely scenario is that they experience a slow-death, whereby they gradually lose market share as AV technology becomes cheaper and prices come down, until eventually the work dries up and they are left with the expenditure of a car and insurance but no income. If these drivers were employees, at least they would have the security of being paid by the hour until Uber and co formally make them redundant. But with the bogus self-employed model as it is, the ridehail platforms can just slowly wash their hands of any responsibility they have to the workers whose labour these companies have been built upon.
There should be a plan put in place from the very beginning of AV roll-out in Europe to ensure the continent's taxi and private hire drivers are not abandoned. There could be a special tax placed on AV firms and ridehail platforms that could pay for drivers to re-train in other professions. WIX calls for a "just transition".
"The [regulatory] framework must require regular reporting on displacement and labour impacts, enforceable work standards across all AV-related roles and structured consultation with unions and worker representatives," they argue.
As politicians and automakers rush to bring automated vehicles to Europe, we should be careful about who and what might get broken in the process.
Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator |
|
Gig Economy news round-up |
ALL RIDERS IN MALTA TO BE COVERED BY A COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT: Every food delivery courier in Malta working for platforms like Wolt and Bolt will be a member of a union and will be covered by a collective agreement, the country's Employment Minister has said. Byron Camilleri stated in a post on social media that they had been "very tough" on the food delivery platforms and that they had even "refused new applications" to operate. "In a recent meeting they informed me that the next step is that every worker in their sector and platform will be a member of a Union and protected by a collective agreement," Camilleri added. "It is a positive step. We will continue to stress that in our country there is no room for any abuse and that we have a level playing field between all workers. We will remain vigilant." In Malta, food delivery couriers, the vast majority of which are migrants, are hired via intermediaries. The full details of the collective agreement are unclear, but it has been reported that as part of the agreement, the platforms "will commit to engaging only with fleet partners that demonstrate ongoing compliance with regulatory standards, as independently verified by an external party". There will also be data-sharing requirements placed on platforms. Read more here. WOLT TO EMPLOY 2% OF ITS RIDERS IN FINLAND: Food delivery platform Wolt has announced that it will start employing some of its riders for the first time. Until now, the Finnish-founded company, which was bought by US platform DoorDash in 2022, had only contracted riders on a self-employed basis, but it announced last week that it would initially employ 100 couriers in Helsinki, before potentially expanding the new offer further afield. The employed riders will pick scheduled hours, rather than the 'free-login' system for self-employed, and will have to accept all tasks which are allocated. They will be paid 'per active delivery hour', meaning excluding waiting time, but with a minimum of at least €12 per hour. The company claim that while freelancers will earn on average €20-21 per hour (gross), employees will earn just €14 per hour on average. The employees will receive equipment and the company will pay into their pension and social security contributions. Olli Koski, Wolt's Nordic Public Relations Director, said the change was responding to riders' wishes. "We have known that the majority of [riders] want to operate as entrepreneurs, but then there is a small and significant minority who would prefer to work in an employment relationship," Koski claimed. The move comes after the Finnish Administrative Supreme Court found in May that Wolt couriers were employees, a decision that Wolt is appealing against. Commenting on Wolt's new policy, Annika Rönni-Sällinen from the PAM union said that 98% of the company's couriers were still not employed. "The court's decision must be complied with for all Wolt couriers, otherwise the whole picture reeks of whitewashing," Rönni-Sällinen said. Read more here. UNDER-AGE RIDER DIES IN UK WHILE ESCAPING POLICE: A 17-year-old food delivery courier died in a motorbike accident whilst trying to escape the police. Leonardo Machado sought to escape after Dorset police tried to stop him while he was waiting at a red-light in 2023. Machado then crashed into railings, with a coroner ruling during an inquest that he died from head and neck injuries from the accident. The rider was working for Uber Eats through a rented account, as he was too young to hold an account himself. In a 'prevention of future deaths' report, Coroner Brendan Allen criticised the food delivery platforms for having "no oversight of the rental of these licences to those under the age limit". Allen added that this "places children in a vulnerable position: lone working, often at night, riding electric or motorised scooters, mopeds or motorcycles and delivering to individuals that are not known to the drivers.” The use of illegally rented accounts, a practice known as sub-letting, is common throughout the European food delivery sector, and is especially used by undocumented migrants to access work, but can also be used by children. The UK Government has not sought to punish platforms for sub-letting, instead working with Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat in bids to target users of rented accounts, including agreeing in June to share personal information with the platforms on asylum seekers' accommodation status. The platforms have 56 days to respond to the Coroner's comments. Read more here. NEW SPANISH GOVT OFFENSIVE AGAINST BOGUS SELF-EMPLOYMENT AT UBER EATS: Spanish Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz has announced that the Labour Inspectorate has started a new campaign against bogus self-employment at Uber Eats, the last major food delivery platform in the country to still be hiring some of its riders on an independent contractor basis. "Uber isn't going to take us for a ride", Díaz said in announcing the new strategy. The Labour Inspectorate's efforts had been focused on Glovo, the largest player in the Spanish market, which finally began to employ all of its riders on 1 July of this year. Uber Eats has been operating with a mixed model, hiring some of its riders via sub-contractors while having self-employed riders as well, since August 2022, after initially changing fully to a sub-contractor model in August 2021 when the 'Rider Law' entered into force. Uber Eats has already received multiple verdicts of bogus self-employment by courts in Valencia, Seville, Albacete, Tenerife and Seville, but has only accrued fines and back-dated social security contributions totalling €23.2 million, less than one-tenth of the penalties paid by Glovo. On Wednesday [8 October], the Labour Inspectorate raided the company's office in Barcelona, seizing documents, as part of the new investigation. Read more here. 'UBER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY' LAUNCHES IN EUROPE: Snappr, a visual content platform that has been dubbed the 'Uber for photography', has launched in Europe after raising $28 million in venture capital in a funding round. The platform has added French, Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch and will start by operating in 57 European cities. San Francisco-headquartered Snappr, which was founded in Australia, connects photographers and photo editors to clients looking for an on-demand visual content service. Business clients include other gig economy platforms like DoorDash and Instacart, but individuals looking for someone to take a photo shoot or edit photos, for example for a wedding, can also use Snappr. Snappr also offers AI-generated images to clients. Photographers have complained that Snappr doesn't pay workers the going rate and that they often get clients seeking just half-an-hour assignments for a photo shoot, with the time to get to and from the shoot going unpaid. Read more here.
Have we missed something important? You can help keep us informed about what's going in the gig economy in Europe by e-mailing GEP@BraveNewEurope.com. |
|
The Gig Economy Project is working with the ETUC on a major update to the Digital Platform Observatory, a map of the platform workers' movement in Europe. You can help us update the Observatory by sending us information to GEP@BraveNewEurope.com. Full details here. |
|
|
|
GDPoweR Comparative Report
As part of the GDPoweR project on recovering workers' data to negotiate and monitor collective agreements in the platform economy, María Luz Rodríguez Fernández and Leonard Geyer compare the findings across five countries. |
|
|
|
- The European Campaign for Decent Platform Work is hosting another webinar on 28 October, with Silvia Borelli, associate professor of Labour Law at the University of Ferrara, talking on 'Subcontracting Business Models and the EU Platform Work Directive', at 10-11.30 CET. You can register here.
- Berlin Lieferando couriers' strike against job cuts and sub-contracting on 23 October.
Are there more events we should be highlighting? Send us information to GEP@BraveNewEurope.com. |
|
Contact project co-ordinator Ben Wray at GEP@BraveNewEurope.com with news, events, ideas, feedback...whatever you think might be useful.
And if you like the Gig Economy Project newsletter, why not get your friends and colleagues to subscribe? Here's the link. |
|
|
