The 4th edition of the ETUC's annual ‘Platforum’ in Nicosia, Cyprus was an opportunity for the European platform workers’ movement to share notes and prepare for the looming transposition of the Platform Work Directive in all 27 EU member-states.
The hot topic of the Platforum was Just Eat Takeaway's sharp turn away from directly hiring its riders across the continent. The company already gutted its operations in the UK and France in 2023 and 2024 respectively, and this year it turned its attention to Austria and Germany, where the job axe is currently falling on at least 3,000 riders across the two countries. Just as attendees sat down at the Platforum, news broke in Denmark that the Nordic country is the latest to see large numbers of Just Eat riders fired, with many re-hired via sub-contractors (see 'news round-up' section below for details).
Why sub-contracting? What does Just Eat gain from paying small companies to employ their riders, rather than doing so directly? The only answer that has ever made any sense, and is backed-up by the research, is that shadowy intermediaries can get away with a level of labour exploitation which a big multi-national like Just Eat can't, up to and including breaking the law. This is 'risk management': Just Eat contracts intermediaries to do the dirty work of squeezing riders until their pips squeak, knowing that if they ever run into any legal issues for flouting labour laws it will be the sub-contractors which take the hit, not Just Eat.
We already know what this looks like in practise. Berlin has been a test case for what Lieferando (Just Eat) is now set to roll-out across Germany, with an investigation revealing in August that Fleetlery, Lieferando's Berlin sub-contractor, has been paying riders cash-in-hand and only paying them for the delivery time, rather than for their whole time at work. Moreover, riders had to pay the sub-contractor to access work with Just Eat, and some riders said they were forced to be available at all times for deliveries.
On Saturday [27 September], Lieferando couriers in Berlin protested outside the company’s German HQ against "illegal, fake subcontracting". One rider from the Lieferando Workers' Collective Berlin, Samee, described what Just Eat was doing as "racist capitalism" because they were targeting migrant workers, especially those on students visas, to "coerce them into worse working conditions". The NGG union will hold a strike in Berlin on 23 October against the company's unwillingness to sign-up to a "social plan" for all laid-off workers.
At the Platforum, Maximilian Schneider, from Germany’s Labour Ministry, told the audience that Lieferando’s shift to intermediaries was a demonstration of the challenge the government faced when transposing the Directive, as they seek to regulate platforms which can “change their labour models very, very quickly”. He said the Ministry was working on a draft Bill to transpose the Directive which would seek to address the question of intermediaries as “the evidence shows it can lead to poorer situations for workers” where labour standards are “disregarded” and social security obligations “violated”.
Whilst not being able to give details about the legislation at this stage, Schneider said they are exploring options, including: that whenever sub-contractors are used the platform also holds liability for social security contributions; a public register of all sub-contractors used by platforms; or potentially even an outright ban on sub-contracting in the platform economy, following the example of the German meat industry, as NGG have proposed.
Some countries have been dealing with the reality of sub-contracting for years, and it’s not pretty. In Croatia, all riders are hired through sub-contractors known as ‘aggregators’, with rampant criminality the norm. Tomislav Kiš from the Novi Sindikat union in Croatia asked Schneider, only slightly in jest, if he could put in a phone call to his Croatian counterpart to "let them know what you think of intermediaries", given the inaction on the part of the Croatian labour ministry to routine breaches of labour rights.
It's not just riders that suffer the scourge of sub-contracting. Indeed, intermediaries are a more common phenomenon in the ridehail sector in Europe, with at least 10 EU countries from Poland to Greece among those to have sub-contractor set-ups, with equally well-established problems for workers.
What can be done about the rise of the sub-contractors? The contribution of Victor Ballester Alarcón from the Catalan Labour Inspectorate to the Platforum showed what is possible if government is willing to put workers’ rights before the interests of platforms and sub-contractors.
Alarcón explained that the Labour Inspectorate had analysed sub-contracting in the food delivery sector (Uber Eats, Just Eat and Glovo are now all using this model to one degree or another in Spain) and found that it “entails way poorer conditions for the workers” and that they had already imposed penalties for “an illegal transfer of workers” from the platforms to sub-contractors, finding that the workers are the employees of the platform, not the sub-contractor.
When evaluating which company is the real employer, Alarcón said, “we should focus on the software used to control the work, not whether intermediaries are used or not."
This is exactly the argument that unions need to make across Europe: that the company which controls the algorithm is the one which controls and directs the worker, and is therefore the employer. Sub-contractors can be made surplus to requirements if labour inspectorates identify platforms as the real employer and hold them to account on that basis, as this would render the chief purpose of sub-contracting for platforms - to create legal distance between the platform and shoddy working conditions - obsolete.
The Platform Work Directive does have something to say on the question of intermediaries, although it leaves lee-way for member-states to define their response. Article 3 of PWD states that platform workers must “enjoy the same level of protection” whether they are hired by a platform or an intermediary and, to that end, member-states must establish “appropriate mechanisms” based on “national law and practice”, including "where appropriate, joint and several liability systems".
Furthermore, Article 4.3 of the Directive finds that the employer must be "clearly identified in accordance with national legal systems". It's critical that administrative authorities and courts do not take at face value that the sub-contractor is the real employer just because they handle equipment or deal with payroll issues, when the most indispensable piece of equipment for a platform worker is the app they work through. Member-states should write into their transposition laws that the party which directs and controls the worker by means of automated and semi-automated processes is the real employer.
More broadly, reports from across Europe at the Platforum suggest that the bureaucratic wheels of government are starting to turn when it comes to transposing the Directive. We will be sharing more details about what exactly is happening in each country when the ETUC Digital Platform Observatory is re-launched.
While governments may well be starting to prepare for PWD, the platforms continue to operate as if two varieties of exploitation remain available to them: bogus self-employment, or what Valentin Niebler, an academic specialising in sub-contracting in the platform economy, has dubbed “bogus employment” where "employment classification is granted but its guarantees are denied".
The European trade union movement has been consistent that neither bogus self-employment nor bogus employment is an acceptable future for platform work, and only direct, legal, accountable employment contracts can be the foundation upon which decent working conditions can be built. Turning that ambition into reality remains an uphill struggle: getting the transposition of PWD right can only help.
Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator |
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Gig Economy news round-up |
RIDEHAIL PLATFORMS TO BE "EXPELLED" FROM CATALUNYA: Ridehail platforms Uber, Cabify and Bolt will almost completely stop operating in Catalunya, the north-east region of Spain which has Barcelona as it's capital, once a Bill proposed at the Catalan Parliament last week passes. The new taxi law will see 600 of currently 900 ridehail (VTC) licences eliminated. There are over 10,000 taxi licences in the city. Unauto VTC, the employers' association for ridehail companies, said the new law would effectively "expel" the ridehail platforms. The Bill is backed by the minority social-democratic government as well as the main opposition parties, and therefore is almost guaranteed to pass in 'The Generalitat'. The new law also requires all VTC and taxi drivers to have a B1 level of Catalan within two years. Tito Álvarez, the leader of the Élite Taxi Barcelona union, the majority union of taxi drivers in the city, said that the Bill was "the result of the sector's struggle," and called on VTC drivers to to take the course to work as taxi drivers. The Bill would practically bring an end to what has been dubbed 'the taxi war' in Barcelona between taxis and ridehail platforms, with Élite Taxi leading resistance, including at times major strikes and blockades of roads in the Catalan capital, to Uber's attempts to establish a foothold in the city. In 2022 a VTC law was introduced by the Catalan parliament which limited ridehail platforms to limousines and passenger vans, significantly reducing the number of ridehail vehicles in the city. Read more here. JUST EAT CUTS JOBS AND INTRODUCES SUB-CONTRACTING IN DENMARK: Just Eat has been firing riders and introducing sub-contracting across Denmark since Spring, the company has admitted. The move brings to an end Just Eat's direct employment model in the Nordic country, which was introduced in 2021 when a collective agreement was signed with the 3F union. 'Politiken' reports that Just Eat has gradually cut 140 riders' jobs and introduced sub-contractors, a roll-out which is not yet complete. While some riders are still directly employed, many of these workers have seen their hours slashed, leading some to seek work at Just Eat's main competitor in the country, Wolt. Just Eat said that they had made the change because their competitors used "third-party providers without collective agreements, which results in a skewed and competitive advantage for them". The Danish job cuts follow those announced by Just Eat (Lieferando) in Austria and Germany earlier this year. Just Eat in the midst of being takeover by Prosus, the investment arm of South African tech giant Naspers, which is the leading stakeholder in Just Eat competitor Delivery Hero. In a video posted on Monday [29 September] by the Just Eat Worker's Club in Copenhagen, riders spoke about their fears for their jobs, including the consequences of losing their collective agreement if they have to work for a sub-contractor rather than directly for Just Eat. Read more here. FIRST GLOVO WORKERS' COMMITTEE ESTABLISHED IN PAMPLONA: The first workers' committee in Glovo's standard restaurant food delivery operations has been established in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona. Glovo began employing all of its riders, many via sub-contracting, at the beginning of July. In Spain, workers' committees can be formed by employees to represent them on industrial relations issues, similar to the Works' Council system in Germany. While Glovo's grocery-delivery arm, Glovo Market, already had Workers' Committees' as they have always operated on an employee model, the workers' committee in Pamplona is the first in restaurant food delivery, which before July was exclusively based on (bogus) self-employment, despite the Rider Law establishing a legal presumption of employment in the food delivery sector since 2021. The CCOO union is the majority representative on the workers' committee, winning eight of nine positions. Nearly half of all riders who were eligible to vote cast a ballot. Pablo Díaz, president of the workers' committee, said they wanted an office to operate from and are seeking a "negotiation table" with the company to resolve issues riders face. Read more here. TAXI DRIVERS' STRIKE IN ATHENS OVER "THREAT" OF NEW RIDE-HAIL BILL: Taxi drivers' halted work across Athens for 18 hours starting on 21 September, in a move aimed as a warning shot to politicians over controversial proposals for a new ride-hail bill, which could liberalise the sector. The strike was organised by the Attica taxi drivers' association (SATA) and the union issued a statement saying: “We stand at a critical and dangerous turning point for our industry. Scenarios of complete liberalisation are resurfacing more aggressively than ever, directly threatening the sustainability of our profession, the economic dignity of thousands of families, and the lawful operation of taxis as a public transport service.” A 2018 law placed strict limits on the operation of ridehail platforms in Greece, including that they had to operate via intermediaries, that there was a legal minimum fare of €36, and that each trip had to start and end at an intermediaries' office/registered parking area, requirements that taxi unions believe are regularly flouted by ridehail operators. SATA is also unhappy that the government has stopped taxis from using bus lanes and want the introduction of mandatory electric-vehicle conversions to be stopped. Read more here. ESTONIAN STATE-OWNED POSTAL COMPANY STARTS PILOT PLATFORM PROJECT: Omniva, the government-owned postal delivery company in Estonia, has announced a pilot project organised on a gig economy basis. The pilot, which states it is looking for "people's couriers" to sign-up and work using their own vehicle and equipment, comes amidst a dispute with Omniva's employees over wages. Kadri Kangur, head of the Pro Trade Union, said he believes that the pilot has been introduced to "replace" the company's employees "with unqualified platform workers". Kangur said that the wages of Omniva delivery workers had not increased for two years and that they earn close to the poverty line. The union also denounced the Estonian government for under-funding Omniva. The union said it believed the company's introduction of a pilot undermined ILO conventions, including on the right of workers to organise and that workers should not be treated unequally for the same work. The state-run postal company claim that the introduction of the platform will help Omniva respond to fluctuations in consumer demand. 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 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. |
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- 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.
- The European Confederation of Industrial and Service Co-ops will host a webinar titled “Who’s the Boss? Algorithmic Management & the Cooperative perspective” on 30 September, 2 to 4.30pm. Click here to register.
- 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. |
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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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