This in-depth study finds that the way platform work is typically organised in Europe today is systematically putting platform workers’ lives at risk.
When researching this study, it became clear that health & safety is the issue in platform work: not just one of many issues, but the one that stands out above all others. There’s nothing more important than life, and gig work is putting workers' lives in jeopardy.
The story of Sebastian Galassi sums it up. Galassi died on the evening of 1 October 2022 whilst delivering for Glovo in Florence, Italy, after a crash with a Land Rover. He was just 26.
Almost 24 hours after the accident, his phone received a message from Glovo: “We are sorry to have to inform you that your account has been deactivated for non-compliance with the Terms and Conditions”.
Glovo’s algorithm had registered that Galassi had not delivered the food to its destination and ‘robo-fired’ him as a consequence, but it knew nothing about why Galassi had failed to deliver the food.
“He wanted to work in graphic design,” Sebastian’s girlfriend, Valentina, said. “And he wanted to start a family with me and have two dogs.”
Most people get into the gig economy in their teens or twenties thinking that it will get them some quick cash before they can move on to something better. But far too many, especially in food delivery, never come out the other side. In Europe today, there’s few jobs that are more hazardous than being a food delivery courier.
Piece rates means you have a financial incentive to go fast. You have to work long hours to make enough money, so you get tired. There’s next to no training/safety checks. You pay for your own equipment, so it’s often not in good condition. You have an app beeping at you all the time while you are on the road, offering new tasks which you have to respond to quickly to beat the competition. The job is a death trap. |
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Even if you don’t have a bad injury or a fatality, riders end-up suffering musculoskeletal disorders from carrying heavy weights on their back. If you get sick, you don’t get paid. You have to work through storms, on black ice, in heatwaves...it’s dangerous, and the data shows it’s twice as dangerous if you are ‘self-employed’ rather than an employee.
UK scholars Nicola Christie and Heather Ward have researched riders hired on a gig work basis at Deliveroo and Uber Eats and riders employed by a pizza restaurant chain. They found that the gig workers were three times as likely as the employees to have damaged their vehicle in an accident and twice as likely for someone to be injured in an accident. A study by French health & safety body Anses found that while 26.4% of riders had suffered an accident at work, this number rose to 46.2% when the riders were working on a self-employed basis.
It’s not just that bogus self-employment is a danger to workers, it’s a danger to the general public as well: riders are working in public space. Tackling bogus self-employment is a public health issue.
But even for genuinely self-employed platform workers, there should be collective health & safety coverage for the time they are spent working on the platforms, which would at least place some legal requirement on platforms to consider the health of those who are working for them. The EU missed an opportunity to extend OSH provisions to all workers in the Platform Work Directive, but member-states could do this when transposing PWD.
The study also examines psycho-social risks in the platform economy. As the diagram below from OSH expert Pierre Berastegui highlights, a toxic combination of alienation, insecurity and stress bears down on platform workers' minds. |
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The final section looks at the critical importance of unions to workplace health & safety historically, and how to apply standard union approaches to the specific context of platform work. All the regulations in the world won't make platform workers' lives safe unless they are combined with the active engagement of workers themselves in ensuring their own safety: strong unions and safe workplaces go hand-in-hand.
In response to Galassi's death, riders held protests in Florence with signs reading: 'my life is worth more than a sandwich'. As we near the end of winter, let's make a vow that this will be the last one where platform workers' lives are valued less than whatever service they are providing, whether it be delivering a sandwich, carrying a passenger, cleaning a house or annotating data.
Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator |
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Gig Economy news round-up |
GLOVO PLACED UNDER PARTIAL JUDICIAL CONTROL IN ITALY: Italian authorities have placed Glovo under partial judicial control to end illegal labour practices at the company. The company is accused by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office of illegally exploiting its workers, with a court-appointed administrator placed with oversight of the company's Italian operation to rectify the situation. The company, headquartered in Spain but owned by German multi-national Delivery Hero, will continue operating, but Glovo's management will not have full control during the investigation, with the administrator empowered to monitor accounts and enforce the correction of illegal practices. Any significant business decisions will require the administrator's approval. The remarkable intervention comes after the Milanese prosecutors presented detailed evidence of abusive working conditions, including dozens of testimonies from riders. The prosecutors found that although the riders are supposedly self-employed, the management system they have uncovered, which includes the assignment of schedules and constant geo-location, suggests otherwise. They found that riders earn around €2.50 per delivery and have to work for up to 12 hours a day to get by. The working conditions were described as "genuine labour exploitation". “It is essential to put an end to this situation as soon as possible," the prosecutors added. Read more here. WOLT STARTS EMPLOYMENT EXPERIMENT IN FINLAND: Food delivery platform Wolt has begun employing some riders in its home country, but is not paying them for waiting time. Neither are riders receiving work equipment from the company, which is owned by US food delivery platform DoorDash. The move comes after the Finish Supreme Administrative Court found last year that Wolt's couriers are employees, a decision that Wolt is appealing. Only around 20 couriers have been given employment contracts so far, with Wolt planning to employ 100 couriers by the end of March, a small portion of its total workforce in the Nordic country. As part of the new contractual arrangement, the riders can choose their own working hours and receive pay only for the hours they are completing deliveries. Wolt says the riders will receive €12 per hour of delivery time. Not paying for waiting time was described by labour law expert Keijo Kaivanto as exceptional by Finnish legal standards. Wolt's Chief Operating Officer for Northern Europe, Joel Järvinen, told 'Yle' that the move was an experiment. Read more here. DRIVERS STRIKE IN UK ON VALENTINE'S DAY: Uber and Bolt drivers in the UK were among those to take strike action on Valentine's Day, as part of gig economy actions that also took place in North America. The strike was promoted by the United Private Hire Drivers (UPHD) branch of the IWGB union, with General Secretary Henry Lopez tweeting a video of drivers on a go-slow. An Uber driver called Mike said on TikTok that Uber drivers were striking to say "no to unfair pay and working conditions...Uber keeps cutting our fares but our costs are rising; fuel, insurance, maintenance...and guess what? Uber's profits are skyrocketing." Nader Awaad, chair of the UPHD branch, told the Mirror in advance of the strike that "the UK’s private hire industry is a wild west". He added: "With no protection from unfair dismissal, drivers see their livelihoods disappear in the blink of an eye." Awaad criticised "dynamic pricing", claiming that he had seen a trip where a customer paid £111 and the driver received just £29. “After expenses, many drivers are earning less than the minimum wage,” he explained. UBER EATS TO GO TO SPANISH SUPREME COURT OVER UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANT FINES: Uber Eats is taking the Spanish Government to the Supreme Court in protest against fines imposed by the labour inspectorate for using migrant workers who don't have work permits on its platform. Uber Eats lost an appeal earlier this year in the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country, which upheld a lower court's decision that Uber Eats should have verified the work status of 11 riders in the Vizcaya region, who authorities found were undocumented migrants. A 2023 inspection found 813 riders in total working for Uber Eats without papers. Uber Eats announced in January that it was moving to a full employment model in Spain, due to fines racking up for bogus self-employment. The Spanish Government recently decreed a major regularisation of undocumented migrants, with 800,000 migrants expected to receive their papers this year. Read more here. UBER EATS TO ENTER 7 NEW EUROPEAN MARKETS: Uber Eats is expanding its European footprint, with plans to launch in seven new European countries. The FT reports that the Silicon Valley gig economy giant will launch in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Czech Republic, Greece and Romania, in a move which will put it head-to-head with Wolt, which is owned by US platform DoorDash, in many of the Finnish headquartered food delivery platform's core markets. The newspaper cited new data showing that Uber Eats was gaining market share in big European markets, including Spain, Germany and the UK. Uber expects the expansion into the seven new markets to bring in an additional $1 billion in gross bookings over the next three years. Susan Anderson, head of delivery at Uber, said that the company eventually intends to replace human food delivery couriers with drones and robots. "We have quite a lot of AVs on the ground in the US delivering [and] we are absolutely seeing cost savings that come from this," she told the FT. 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. |
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The Counter-app podcast series explores how app-based workers can counter the power of their algorithmic bosses. Each episode is based on new research for the ETUC on platform work, with the second episode exploring how vulnerable different industries are to Uberisation. Listen here. |
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The EU campaign for decent platform work has a webinar on the social security implications of the Platform Work Directive with Alberto Barrio from the University of Copenhagen, on February 26, 10.30-12pm CET, register here.
The European Trade Union Institute is hosting a webinar on 'Worker-centred algorithmic management: participatory approaches for design and governance' with Min Kyung Lee on 23 February, 3-4pm. Click here to register. |
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. |
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