The Gig Economy Project has been out-of-action for well over a year now. For those of you who have missed us, the good news is that we have found a way to restart - in a new form.
We are working with the ETUC on a new and upgraded version of the Digital Platform Observatory, a visual mapping of the platform workers' movement in Europe, which will be re-launched later this year.
The map will be a source of information on key developments from across Europe. It will also highlight where union organising in the platform economy is happening, so workers can link with one another. And it will provide a clear overview of how the Platform Work Directive is being implemented across all EU countries, as the deadline for transposition draws ever nearer. The Observatory will be a practical tool for those fighting for platform workers' rights.
This is where you come in. Readers of the Gig Economy Project newsletter include gig workers, trade union organisers, academics, activists and more. You can help be our eyes and ears to make the Observatory as useful as possible. All you have to do is to get in touch with us by e-mailing GEP@BraveNewEurope.com with information on one (or all) of three areas:
1) News: Let us know about what's happening where you are in Europe. Strikes, court verdicts, new laws, data protection investigations, collective agreements - any significant development in the platform economy over the past year can be added to the map.
2) Organisation: Are you aware of a group of platform workers who are organising as a union or a workers' collective or some other form? Let us know about it and we can add it to the map.
3) Platform Work Directive: Have you got any insight into how the transposition of the Platform Work Directive is going in your country? We want to track the transposition process across Europe, so get in touch with any information you have, no matter how seemingly small.
And don't worry: you don't need to spend a lot of time to do this. You can just reply to this email with a link to a news article you've seen, or if you prefer we can arrange a time to do a quick interview with you by phone or zoom call to get the info that way. Whatever is most convenient.
When the updated Digital Platform Observatory launches and the updates start rolling-in, we will highlight the most important ones here in the GEP newsletter, which won't be every week anymore but will be semi-regular. Also, at the end of September we will bring you a report from Cyprus, where the ETUC's annual 'Platforum' conference is being held.
Finally, we will be drawing your attention to some research work which we have been doing with ETUC on platform work over the past year, which will be published in coming months. The first report is on how to 'negotiate the algorithm', the second on what industries may be at risk of Uberisation, the third is on health & safety in platform work, and finally we will release a trade-union guide to transposing and making best use of the Platform Work Directive.
GEP 2.0 will last at least until February 2026 and we hope you will find it useful. If you think anyone new might be interested in signing-up, then you can send them a link to the sign-up page here, and if you know anyone who can contribute information to the Observatory, send them the email (GEP@BraveNewEurope.com) and a link to this newsletter.
Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator |
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Gig Economy news round-up |
LIEFERANDO TO AXE 2,000 JOBS IN GERMANY: Lieferando (Just Eat Takeaway) announced in July that it plans to cut 2,000 jobs in Germany, as part of a major re-structuring of the country’s largest food delivery platform. The job cull amounts to about 20% of the workforce being cut. The company will also now start to hire riders via sub-contractors for the first time, having already trialled the move in Berlin. The Lieferando General Works Council said that it was informed the company was closing operations in 34 cities, where sub-contractors would be taking over, while in 11 other cities the number of directly employed riders would be reduced. In the UK, France and, most recently, Austria, employed riders have also been fired as the company has shifted away from the employee model it embraced in 2020 towards ‘independent contractors’ and sometimes employment via sub-contractors. Responding to the planned job cuts, Mark Baumeister, head of the NGG's hospitality industry department, said that it was a “terrible development” and criticised the fact that the Lieferando Works' Councils were not given any information before the announcement was made. NGG said that there would be strikes if Lieferando didn't agree to a collective agreement so that all of those laid-off have equal support, as currently only the riders who have a Works' Council will get redundancy support. Read more here. GLOVO ITALY CANCELS 'HEAT BONUSES' AFTER BACKLASH: Glovo Italy cancelled 'heat bonuses' for riders in July after an outcry against the practise. An e-mail from Glovo to its riders during a heatwave offered a 2% increase in wage rates during temperatures from 32-36 °C, a 4% increase in 35-40 °C temperatures, and an 8% increase for temperatures over 40 °C. The e-mail said wage increases during extreme heat were “a financial contribution towards the purchase of sunscreen, rehydration salts, and water”. The bonuses were to be paid from 21 September, some 10 weeks after the e-mail was sent. After criticism from unions, which called for Glovo to suspend its activity during heatwaves, and the general public, Glovo, which is owned by German multi-national Delivery Hero and has it's main offices in Spain, announced that it would “temporarily deactivate” the scheme. However, it did not say it would stop deliveries during heatwaves, except in Piedmont, where the regional government has issued an ordinance requiring food delivery platforms to suspend operations when extreme weather warnings are issued during the hottest part of the day. A court in the southern Italian city of Palermo mandated Glovo to distribute sunscreen and water for riders after several suffered sunstroke in 2022. Read more here. GLOVO FINALLY EMPLOYS ALL OF ITS RIDERS IN SPAIN: Glovo finally started to employ all of its riders on 1 July 2025, bringing to an end a four year battle between Spain’s largest food delivery platform and the Spanish Government over bogus self-employment. The Spanish Government’s ‘Rider Law’, which established a general presumption of employment in the food delivery sector, entered into force in 2021 but Glovo refused to comply with it. Non-compliance sparked tens of thousands of former and current riders to be subject to investigations by the Labour Inspectorate, with Glovo racking up hundreds of millions in fines for bogus self-employment and unpaid social security contributions. The Barcelona-headquartered company, which has had the payments of fines delayed by Spanish courts due to Glovo being at risk of liquidation, finally caved into the pressure at the end of 2024, when it announced it would transition all of its riders to being employees by July 2025. Glovo is hiring 14,000 riders directly, on part-time contracts and paid the minimum wage, while an unknown number of additional riders, thought to be a similar number, are employed via sub-contractors. Some sub-contracted workers are now subject to a Labour Inspectorate investigation for an illegal transfer of workers (from the company to the sub-contractors), after unions filed a complaint. Read more here. NASPERS TO COMPLETE TAKEOVER OF JUST EAT: South African company Naspers is set to complete its takeover of Dutch-based Just Eat Takeaway, after the European Commission approved the transaction as long as Naspers follows through on its commitment to sell its majority share in Just Eat's rival, Delivery Hero. Just Eat and Delivery Hero, which owns brands such as Glovo and Foodora, compete in the same markets in five European countries, Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, and Spain. Naspers, through its investment subsidiary Prosus, owns a 27.4% stake in Delivery Hero, and the company said it would sell down its shares to a "single-digit" percentage within 12 months and it's Delivery Hero board members would resign with immediate effect. The FT reported that analysts believe Naspers may still seek to acquire Delivery Hero in whole in the future. The company says it wants to make Just Eat a "European tech champion". The European Commission also signalled in August that it is likely to approve American platform DoorDash's takeover of Deliveroo. DoorDash already owns Wolt, which operates in several European countries, although not the same markets as Deliveroo. In June, the Commission issued a fine of €329 million to Delivery Hero and Glovo for "participating in a cartel". The Commission found that from 2018 to July 2022, prior to Delivery Hero completing its purchase of Glovo, the two companies "replaced competition with multi-layered anticompetitive coordination". Read more here. PORTUGUESE SUPREME COURT FINDS GLOVO RIDER IS AN EMPLOYEE: Food delivery couriers for Glovo are employees, the Portuguese Supreme Court found in May, bringing clarity to a dispute over the issue in the southern European country. Portugal introduced a rebuttable legal presumption of employment in the platform economy to its labour code in May 2023, based on a set of six criteria, with two required to trigger the presumption. Following the change, the labour inspectorate investigated Glovo and found its riders were employees, which Glovo rebutted, leading to a series of localised court cases with mixed outcomes. The Lisbon Court of Appeal had found that Glovo had successfully rebutted the legal presumption, leading the Public Prosecutor’s Office to take the case to the Supreme Court, which decided that five out of the six criteria for the legal presumption had been met. The Supreme Court judges unanimously supported the conclusion of a lower court, which found that Glovo "exercises the power of direction and determines specific rules”. Glovo is one of two big food delivery platforms, along with Uber Eats, which has also faced bogus self-employment claims by the labour inspectorate since the introduction of the legal presumption two years ago. Read more here.
Have we missed something important? You can help keep us informed about what's going in the gig economy in Europe by e-mailing GEP@BraveNewEurope.com. |
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Shortly before Gig Economy Project 1.0 ended in June 2024, we produced a podcast series which gets behind the tech jargon and the CEO propaganda to examine the reality of work in the gig economy. The Rebel's Guide series of podcasts is eleven episodes, each about 11 minutes each. There is also a text version you can read. |
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- The GDPoweR project on workers' data, collective bargaining and the platform economy will hold its final conference in Warsaw, Poland, on 11 September. See here for details.
- The European Campaign for Decent Platform Work will hold an expert session with Sergio Guerrero, an Uber driver in Mexico City and the general secretary of UNTA, discussing Mexico's new law for platform workers. The online event will be held on September 23 at 5pm CET, register here.
- The fourth edition of ETUC's 'Platforum', the trade union forum on platform work, will be held in Nicosia, Cyprus, 25-26 September. See here for details (registration closed).
Are there more events we should be highlighting? Send us information to GEP@BraveNewEurope.com. |
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Contact project co-ordinator Ben Wray at GEP@BraveNewEurope.com or send a direct message to the Twitter: @project_gig.
And if you like the Gig Economy Project weekly newsletter, why not get your friends and colleagues to subscribe? Here's the link. |
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