Collective rights of platform workers: The role of EU law

Abstract

Platform work is a new umbrella concept which covers a heterogeneous group of economic activities performed through digital platforms. Effective collective rights and bargaining would be essential for platform workers due to their vulnerable employment status. Yet collective organization of platform workers is troublesome, so trade unions face difficulties. The protection of the labour law directives is limited by their personal scope, which may be gradually expanded by the broad ECJ interpretation of the ‘worker’ concept. The effective right to collective bargaining would be particularly important, but it is restricted by EU antitrust rules with an exemption only for employees. In the last decade, the European Court has moved towards a wider personal scope of collective bargaining by interpreting the concept of ‘worker’. The recent FNV Kunsten decision used the notion of ‘false self-employed’ to go beyond the national concept of ‘employee’, but the wide interpretation of ‘worker’ shall be based on the need and necessity of employment protection deriving from economic dependency. As an alternative, the Gebhard formula may be invoked to grant the right to collective bargaining for platform workers.

Collective Bargaining in Technology-Based Employment

“…Tech-based work is often performed either under atypical employment contracts (fixed-term, part-time or outside the employer's premises) or as a part of non-employee forms of employment (civil law contracts, self-employment) (European Council, 2023). In some member states their right to bargain collectively has been questioned (Biasi 2018;Gyulavári 2020;Ratti, 2022).…”

Uphill struggle: collective bargaining for the self-employed in Poland

“…The legal context is more complex under EU law. On the one hand, the Court of Justice of the European Union has recognised the fundamental nature of the right to collective bargaining; on the other hand, it has limited the exercise of the right to collective bargaining by seeking a balance between union rights and economic freedoms and fair competition (for example, Biasi, 2018; Deskalova, 2021; Gyulavári, 2020; Jaspers, 2019; Ratti, 2022). One result of that balancing is a formula enabling the exclusion of collective agreements from the application of Article 101(1) TFEU (Albany–van der Woude formula).…”

The platform economy and the precarisation of food delivery work in the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from India

“…Increasing work precarity and COVID-19 have made collectives action even more important than before. Collective action can advance the agenda of emancipation (Cant, 2019;Gyulavári, 2020). Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic the condition of informal workers led to few noted collective actions.…”