Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) took stock, on Tuesday 12 July, of the report by the Italian MEP, Elisabetta Gualmini (S&D,) on working conditions for digital platform workers and redefined their position ahead of a meeting of shadow rapporteurs on 13 July to discuss compromise amendments.
This debate was logically marked by the recent revelations of Uber’s practices, with several MEPs – such as Leïla Chaibi (The Left, France) – having requested, as early as Monday 11 July, an internal European Parliament enquiry into Uber’s actions and a suspension of the accreditation of the VTC platform’s lobbyists. A request addressed to the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola.
Ms Gualimini, like other MEPs, also claimed that the Parliament could no longer “pretend like nothing had happened” after the ‘Uber files’, had exposed the violence in the relationship with the platform’s workers. These revelations underline more than ever “the need for a framework to protect workers on these platforms and for legal certainty to determine their status”, said the rapporteur.
“We need common rules, with the competent authorities, labour inspectorates and social security authorities responsible for verifying the objective working conditions”, of these people, added the Italian MEP.
Her report, to which 860 amendments were tabled, was rather well received by the Greens/EFA and The Left. Renew Europe as well as the EPP were asking for more guarantees on the definition and respect of the status of ‘real’ self-employed workers and on the means to rebut the presumption of salaried status. The “thorniest points”, according to Dennis Radtke (EPP, Germany), who will have to fully rally his own group, while some of its members are a bit more on the ‘flexible’ side of the platforms.
Several MEPs, such as Mr Radtke, expressed confidence that an agreement between the groups could be reached before the autumn. Leïla Chaibi is also optimistic, while acknowledging that the most difficult points will be the application of the rule of presumption of salaried employment and the more or less numerous criteria that platforms will have to tick in order to comply.
The Left MEP said that “a strong signal is needed at the outset, with a general presumption of salaried status”, which can be rebutted by both the platform and the worker who wishes to remain truly self-employed and can prove it. Her group was inspired by the European Trade Union Confederation and a Californian law (AB5) allowing platform workers to tick three criteria to prove that they are genuinely self-employed and want to remain so.
The rebuttable presumption of wage-earning status will in any case avoid workers having to go to court themselves to ask for their reclassification, she reminded EUROPE, while 5 million people are currently misclassified and some Member States, such as France, have been tempted to let workers go to court themselves to challenge their treatment.
A compromise amendment to this effect will be discussed on 13 July. In particular, it provides that Member States shall ensure that the presumption can be rebutted by demonstrating that the person performing the work on the platform is genuinely self-employed (Article 5) if three criteria are met, e.g. that the person performing the work on the platform is free from the control and direction of the digital work platform in performing the work.
Another compromise proposal concerns the very definition of the legal presumption of wage-earning (Article 4) and removes the criteria for monitoring work performance and thus for triggering the presumption of wage-earning. The Commission, on the other hand, provides in its original text that two criteria are required to determine this employee status.
Member States would thus be invited to ensure directly that the legal presumption can be invoked by the competent authorities verifying compliance with or enforcement of the relevant legislation as well as by persons working on a platform.
The Czech Presidency of the EU Council will hold the first working meeting on this directive on 14 July. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)