The image is by Alex Castro.
The European Commission has put forward a series of proposals that could lead to millions of gig workers getting the same legal protections as traditional employees. Minimum wage, collective bargaining, paid leave, unemployment and sickness benefits, and pensions are some of the rights the Commission says they have.
According to the Commission, an estimated 28 million people in the EU currently work through digital labor platforms, and as many as 5.5 million may be wrongly classified as self-employed. The EU wants to lay out a series of criteria that will clearly determine whether a platform is a simple middleman or an employer with more obligations to its workers.
The companies are expected to lobby against the rules.
The legal status of gig workers has become a hot topic around the world. The New York Times says that taxi companies and food delivery services like Deliveroo have been accused of categorizing their workers as independent contractors to save costs and reduce legal liability. The EU's new gig economy rules could be some of the strictest in the world.
Individual countries are trying to push back on categorizations. In February a legal ruling in the UK stated that the drivers for the company are workers, and the following month the company started offering a minimum wage and paid vacation. The Commission's new proposal will result in higher costs for customers and put jobs at risk, according to the NYT. The company made the same argument when California was debating the issue of worker protections. The company got its way and raised prices.
The Commission wants to increase transparency around the management of employees through a process called an "algorithm." The right for workers to contest automated decisions is one of the things the Commission wants to increase transparency around. New obligations for platforms to provide data to national authorities and guidelines for clarifying the rights of self-employed people to collective bargaining are included in the proposals.
The EU's Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said that the proposal for a Directive would help false self-employed working for platforms to correctly determine their employment status and enjoy all the social rights that come with that. There will be new safeguards against the pitfalls of algorithmic management and genuine self-employed on platforms will be protected through enhanced legal certainty.
The European Parliament and Council will debate the Commission's proposals. Individual member states would need to adopt the directive. The New York Times notes that the rules are unlikely to become law before the year 2024.
