Next week in Strasbourg, the European Parliament is expected to confirm its vote approving the agreement reached in February with the EU Council on the Platform Work Directive (see EUROPE 13368/1, 13398/16), paving the way for a formal vote in the EU Council, the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) judged in a publication on Wednesday 11 September, stating that this directive goes “beyond the current General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and paves the way for a new EU instrument regulating data-driven technologies in the workplace, applicable to workers in all conventional sectors”.
“By establishing a comprehensive framework for algorithmic management (AM) and data rights at both the individual and collective levels”, the directive presented in 2021 by the European Commission “fills the gaps in the European data protection framework established by the GDPR, mainly because it was not designed to manage AM systems at work”, explain Silvia Rainone and Antonio Aloisi.
The authors focus on Chapter III, which is “a unique innovation as it reflects the drafters’ urgent desire to address the limitations of the GDPR, whose effectiveness at the workplace level is inadequate”. In particular, the new directive strengthens data protection by prohibiting the processing of personal data relating to emotional state, private conversations and activities affecting fundamental rights.
And “it extends the restrictions of the GDPR by prohibiting the collection of data outside working hours and automated decisions affecting workers’ contracts, insisting on human supervision”.
The introduction of a presumption of salaried status is a major innovation, accompanied by strengthened collective rights and solid guarantees of application, ETUI observes in general terms, but points to uncertainties, with “considerable room for manoeuvre left to national legislators” in defining the criteria for this presumption.
The MEPs meeting in Strasbourg need to reach a sufficient quorum to call for a vote on the agreement reached with the EU Council. The text of the agreement, the language versions of which have been finalised, must now go back to the European Parliament for a second reading under the so-called ‘corrigendum’ procedure. The EU Council will then vote in any formation.
Link to the study: https://aeur.eu/f/df3 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)