Recommendations for worker-led future
By Diana Dovgan and Mickael Bianchin, CECOP
In this article, CECOP, the European Confederation of cooperatives active in industry and services, highlights the measures put forth by the European Commission to better regulate work in digital labour platforms in the EU, the current positions of the European Parliament and Council, from the perspective of worker-owned cooperatives. Many workers across the EU have decided to come together and form cooperatives as a solution to bettering working conditions while still reaping the benefits of a digital platform to match customers with their services.
The Commission’s proposal for a Directive on improving working conditions in platform work aims at addressing two key issues affecting platform workers all across the EU: 1) the question of their employment status, and 2) the question of algorithmic management. The Directive must be aligned with European initiatives on improving social rights, in particular the European Pillar of Social Rights, and their principles.
From the perspective of worker-owned cooperatives, the directive must do more to ensure that the status of persons performing platform work is correctly classified in all cases, because it will create a level playing field. This is very important for platforms committed to providing higher work standards, such as cooperative platforms. For worker-owned cooperatives, the rights of workers are by definition integral to their operations. They observe labour legislation, pay taxes, and ensure social protection for workers. Nevertheless, it has become difficult for them to compete against large capitalistic platforms, which have not always followed the same rules.
Several cooperatives have been established to tackle the vulnerabilities experienced by platform workers, such as La Pájara cooperative (a delivery cooperative that emerged as a response to precarious working conditions associated with platforms such as Glovo and Deliveroo in Madrid, Spain) and Coop Maze (a Parisian cooperative established by former Uber drivers). Motivation from La Pájara or Coop Maze workers was not only to find more job security through a cooperative but also to have control over the major orientations of the enterprise, the profit it generates, but also over the algorithmic management and their own data. Many of the ex-workers of the capitalistic platforms who have decided to create cooperative platforms have expressed the will for a more human-oriented decision making process (opposite to the “Algorithmic Boss” in capitalistic platforms where managerial functions are entrusted to algorithm-powered tools). Breaking out their isolation, and thus weak collective representation, is also an important motivation factor. Given their track record of a fairer alternative to capitalist digital labour platforms, the proposed Directive should explicitly recognize platform cooperatives as a way to improve the conditions of persons performing platform work in the platform economy.
Big capitalistic platforms have already tried to use third parties in order to avoid their employers’ obligations. The recent revelations of the Uber Files is yet another proof that they are ready to do anything to continue to operate as they are today. The Directive should recognize that multiple contracting parties may be involved in the organisation of platform work and impose appropriate obligations on all of them, to close these loopholes.
Transparent, fair, and accountable algorithmic management and data ownership should be ensured by the Directive. Workers that own the platform cooperative have usually ownership or control over the data that the platform collects from workers. Thus, it is necessary to ensure these principles in practice in order to prevent discrimination, misuse of personal data, and arbitrary decisions that we witnessed in the case of the death of Sebastian Galassi, the Italian delivery worker.
Some of these concerns were addressed by the European Parliament in its position, adopted on February 2, 2023. The position recognises that “[c]ooperatives could constitute an important instrument for the bottom-up organisation of platform work and could encourage competition between platforms” and calls on the Member States to “protect and promote cooperative undertakings and small businesses by means that aim to safeguard employment and ensure their capacity for sustainable development and growth.” Furthermore, it offers a definition of workers’ representatives allowing for worker-owned cooperatives to be included.
The Parliament’s proposed measures aim to ensure fair classification of platform workers by distinguishing genuine self-employed from de facto employees. Increased transparency and fairness in algorithmic management will be enforced to prevent platforms from avoiding their legal responsibilities by creating fake subcontractors and outsourcing responsibility towards the workers. Ensuring that these measures are implemented will certainly promote fair competition and a level playing field for cooperative platforms.
Yet, while the Council has not adopted their amendments, the current state of the negotiations has not been very promising. We see that the EU Member States with strong traditions of cooperativism, societal solidarity, and workers’ rights are in favour of a strong directive, whereas other Member States have been pushing to water down the European Commission’s proposal.
Going forward, the negotiations at the Council and the following trilogue negotiations will be crucial to achieve a strong directive that ensures a level playing field in the sector and to bring better working conditions to digital labour platform workers. The cooperative model will remain as a solution for workers who seek a fairer alternative to capitalistic platforms.
* The blog is published as part of the Reshaping Work efforts to stimalute timely debate. The opinions and views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Reshaping Work.