The social affairs ministers of Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, a dozen MEPs, the European Trade Union Confederation and several national trade unions wrote a letter to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on Monday 29 November, urging her to come up with an “ambitious” directive to improve the working conditions of digital platform workers.
Ahead of the presentation of the initiative on 8 December (see EUROPE 12792/11), the signatories call on the European Commission to establish a presumption of an employment relationship that sets the status of employee as a starting point. In its view, the burden of proof should be shifted from the worker to the platform company.
They also call for regulation of personnel management algorithms to ensure transparency on their parameters. In particular, they want workers and trade unions to have a say in the matter. For them, an algorithm should never have the right to dismiss a worker.
The authors of the letter also propose that every digital platform operating in the EU should register with a public authority and make data on its activities transparent. In their view, strong legislative action at European level is perfectly justified given that these platforms have transnational activities.
According to our sources, the European Commission does indeed seem to foresee a presumption of salaried status as well as the reversal of the burden of proof.
To read the letter: https://bit.ly/3D5hDFh (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)
*Article modified on 30.11.2021