Digital platform work, which involves performing tasks for customers via a platform such as a website or app, is rapidly growing in Europe. In 2022 there were 28.3 million digital platform workers in the EU. This matches the employment figures for manufacturing – and next year it is expected to grow by 52% to 43 million .
Digital platform workers are likely to be young, male, and over-qualified, using it as a secondary source of income – mainly through taxi driving (39%) and delivery services (24%).
More than half (55%) of these workers earn less than their country’s net hourly minimum wage, while 41% of the time they spend on platform work is unpaid, with activities such as researching tasks, waiting for assignments and reviewing ads.
According to research from the EU, 19% of Europe’s platform workers (around 5 million) are incorrectly classified as self-employed, denying them the rights and protections of employed workers.
In October, the European Council adopted new rules to address some of these issues and improve working conditions. The directive aims to grant workers’ easier access to their rights as employees under EU law, as well as strengthening their digital and data rights.
The European Confederation of Industrial and Service Co-operatives (Cecop) has been heavily involved in the campaign for platform work reform. Cecop, which represents 27 co-operative federations across 16 countries, described the directive as “a great step towards a fairer platform economy and a great opportunity for platform co-operatives to thrive”.
Related: MEPs adopt new rules on platform work after campaign by Cecop
Cecop recently ran a webinar to explore the challenges and opportunities this directive presents to the co-op movement.
Dragos Adascalitei, a researcher at the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, took attendees through the key elements of the Platform Work Directive, including the correct classification of platform workers with regard to their employment status, new rights related to algorithmic management systems and stronger rights to information and consultation of workers.
Under the directive, platform workers will be presumed to be in employment “where facts indicating direction and control, in accordance with national law, collective agreements or practice” are found.
EU member states have the next two years to implement the directive, which also grants workers more rights with regards to the algorithms governing their work – for example, the right to a human review and explanation of any automated decision affecting a worker. Decisions to suspend or terminate a workers’ contract must now be taken by a human.
“The way member states actually transpose it will be very much influenced by the national traditions,” said Adascalitei.
The role of co-ops was outlined by Francesca Martinelli, director at Doc Servizi and chair of Cecop’s Working Group on the Transformation of Work. She laid out the ways co-ops operate differently in the platform economy, starting with a focus on greater worker autonomy. “Since co-operatives are created by workers, they are not exploited, isolated,” she said, “but they are protagonists of the work. Then, they are owners, and they democratically decide how to work. So they decide to work in safety, they decide to have insurance, most of them are employees, with access to social rights and welfare.”
Another significant difference of platform co-ops is their non-extractive economic model, as well as a more ethical use of technology.
“When you are a co-operative… if you introduce technology, you use it for your own purposes,” said Martinelli. “So it is not the transfer of human responsibility to an algorithm based on unequal or opaque rankings. If you create a technology, you create a tool that is useful for you. So this is a very big difference.”
Pedro Blazquez from the Spanish Confederation of Worker Cooperatives (Coceta) gave a perspective from Spain and explained some of the challenges and opportunities offered by the directive for platform co-ops. Blazquez highlighted potential challenges around cost and data protection that come with a move towards algorithmic transparency, but also that the changes present opportunities for co-ops to draw on their agility in adapting to changing regulations.
He stressed the importance of the directive’s implementation by member states, as poor implementation could be costly for small co-ops.
Sayah Baaroun, general secretary of drivers’ co-operative Club VTC – which also operates as a trade union supporting drivers of larger platforms who have been wrongly classified as self-employed –shared his perspective.
Club VTC is developing a digital tool for its drivers, he said, highlighting the financial challenges associated with this kind of development. “It’s very difficult to compete with the big companies, but we can do it, I’m convinced,” he added.
“I don’t know what will happen in the future with the EU directive, but as far as we are concerned, we will continue to go to court to fight for drivers rights to get compensation, and we will see if everybody becomes an employee in the future. It’s just wait and see.”
Also speaking at the event was Conor Farrell, policy officer at the European Transport Workers’ Federation, who outlined the main challenges concerning the implementation of the platform work directive, such as political priorities of national governments.
“We have eight or nine far right or extreme right governments in Europe now who may not be that interested in this as part of their work,” he warned, “so we’d encourage them to transpose the directive as quickly as possible.”
Farrell also warned of an “avalanche” of work for government administrations in implementing the directive and called for collaboration between labour inspectorates, trade unions and ethical and democratic platform businesses in supporting the implementation of this directive.
“We are hoping we can work together with whoever’s at a national level, whether that be co-operatives or political parties, to make sure the governments in power transpose the directive as quickly as possible, because the last thing we want is a slow transposition at this stage.”
This call for collaboration was echoed by Cecop president Giuseppe Guerini.
“The growth of bigger multinational companies in the digital sector has created some power conditions where their power is so huge that they cannot be regulated separately in each different member state,” he said, “so it is very important to create alliances between the different organisations to rediscover the common root of co-operatives and trade unions.”
Guernini also called for an “innovative social dialogue”, which goes beyond the current employee-employer dynamic, but includes the whole of civil society, and stressed the importance of work as a social utility rather than just an economic one.
“Work is much more [than an asset of production]. It is about participation and identity. It’s also an important social element. Fragmented freelance work brings the risk of loneliness, and the co-op model is the instrument through which we give dignity to the world.”
