Originally published in Nextconomy in Dutch by Philip Verhaeghe. Access it here.
After CESI Summer Days, ‘Reshaping Work’ published a new policy paper on the necessary social protection of platform workers. Just in time as the European Council recently defined its position on this and negotiations with the European Parliament are about to start.
The European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CESI) organised its traditional two-day “Summer days” at the end of June in collaboration with the Bertelsmann Stiftung and Reshaping Work. Experts and representatives of European and international institutions, trade unions, and companies debated the green economy and new forms of work.
The starting point were European policy initiatives to reconcile climate neutrality with economic growth and prosperity by 2050. However, together with the ongoing digital transformation and the introduction of AI, the green transition to zero greenhouse gas emissions has introduced profound implications for labour markets across Europe. The question is thus how will these new forms of work affect the fate of workers? How do we achieve a decent, sustainable, inclusive, and fair future of work?
Policy Challenges
We spoke with one of the content creators of this two-day event, Jovana Karanovic. She is an assistant professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam and also the founder of Reshaping Work. She showed great concern for the social protection of all workers in the platform economy. In the upcoming EU directive, the legal status of freelance platform workers is a crucial point of discussion. While most platform workers are genuinely self-employed, the European Commission believes that many others are incorrectly classified as self-employed. According to the EU Commission, they should be reclassified as employees and enjoy the same social protection rights.
Jovana Karanovic expects that platform companies — which are very agile by nature — will do everything they can to adapt their business model so that they can still continue to work with self-employed workers.
For the privileged and well-trained workers this should not be a problem since they can take care of their own social protection. But for the most vulnerable category it becomes problematic. Some platform workers who are considered ‘self-employed’, for example, will still earn less than the minimum wage. Although the new platform work directive would require platform workers to be able to adjust the prices upwards, it is yet unclear how this will happen in practice. One may wonder how this upward price adjustment would affect their chances of securing a gig, considering that platforms still hold all the power.
Jovana Karanovic illustrates the policy dilemma as follows: “We must not only create a positive business landscape for platform companies in Europe, but also, above all, ensure that people doing platform work have decent working conditions. This involves a difficult balancing act: on the one hand, providing optimal social protection for all workers, and on the other hand, enabling business innovation and scaling of European (platform) companies”.
According to Karanovic, there is currently some debate about the tools to achieve this better protection of workers. Although the proposed directive increases legal certainty, labour protection, transparency and predictability of platform work, it will not solve all the problems of correctly classifying platform workers. As the discussions at the conference also showed, there is still much room for improvement.
Reshaping Work’s Policy Guide
Accordingly, Reshaping Work subsequently published the policy guide “Reshaping Work (2023). Securing the Future — Social Safety Net for All.”
This guide is an outcome of a multi-stakeholder task force. It highlights core principles for an inclusive and sustainable social protection system for all workers, regardless of their legal status. It argues for a resilient social safety net that goes beyond the conventional distinction between employees and self-employed. At the same time, it explores the sustainable financing By the way of example, here we share some policy recommendations and action points from this fascinating report:
- Extend social protection to all workers, regardless of their legal status.
- Clarify employment status indicators without undermining the results of case law at the national level.
- Provide a “rulebook” with clear criteria that platforms can use to rebut the presumption of employee status.
- Ensure that genuine self-employed workers can retain their status if they want to.
- Adopt a specific legal instrument to extend the provisions on algorithmic management to all workers dealing with automated monitoring and decision-making systems (not just workers in the platform economy).
Certainly the latter should not be underestimated: platforms’ algorithms can increase workloads, create unfair evaluations, and disciplinary measures, or favour certain workers by placing them prominently at the top. This can lead to income fluctuations that are difficult to prove. So EU regulation will also have to lead to greater fairness, transparency, and accountability in the algorithmic management of platform work.
With optimism, we hope that this well-researched policy guide will make its way to European authorities, who we trust will show a keen awareness of the policy query posed in the subtitle: “How can we establish an appropriate minimum social protection level and secure the necessary funding?”