A belated happy May Day to readers of this newsletter! There's lots happening in Europe's gig economy on this May Day week, so we are going to highlight a few different stories.Getir goes south
Getir was not so long ago the grocery delivery king of Europe, dominating the sector through expanding into new markets and buying-up competitors. Now, it will only exist in Turkey. After weeks of rumours, the company has finally confirmed that it is pulling out of the US, Netherlands, Germany and the UK, and concentrating solely on its home market. An audio recording given to Business Insider Spain shows CEO and founder Nazim Salur getting teary-eyed about Getir's demise and apologising at a high-level meeting on Monday [29 April], but that apology wasn't delivered to or aimed at the thousands of Getir riders and 'pickers' who are about to be laid-off. Indeed, in Germany alone across Getir and Gorillas, the German platform purchased by Getir less than a year and a half ago, around 1,200 people are expected to lose their jobs. Martin Bechert, the lawyer for many food delivery couriers in Berlin, has said that Getir is breaking the rules by putting forward no redundancy plan or severance pay for the terminated workers, despite them officially having a Works' Council, making legal action inevitable.Getir's messy end in the western world is by no means an anomaly in this sector. There are very few specialist grocery delivery players left in Europe, with most of what remains of the market being swallowed up by the big food delivery platforms (Just Eat, Uber Eats) and the supermarkets. It turns out what many people will pay for during a pandemic might not be what they'll pay for in more normal times: who knew? Employment contracts for Belgian riders?
It took 16 months, but finally Belgium's platform work law is showing the first signs of cranking into gear. On Thursday [2 May], the social security department's labour relations committee found that three Uber Eats drivers are actually employees of the Silicon Valley company, and thus have to be given employment contracts.As a reminder, Belgium introduced a legal presumption of employment in the platform economy on 1 January 2023. All of the big platforms responded to the new law by declaring that their workers did not meet the two of five or three of eight criteria required for a worker to be considered an employee, and that seemed to be that, as there was no clear implementation process in place to force proceedings upon the platforms, much to the chagrin of the unions.But the three Uber Eats riders went to the committee in December with the assistance of the ACV-CSC union, which has judged that the freedom of the riders is "very relative", that Uber Eats has a "wide opportunity" to monitor the riders every move and that the company determines the price without input from the rider. Martin Willems from ACV-CSC is "very happy" with the result, as is Labour Minister Pierre-Yves Dermagne, who told Parliament that this showed that "the new law has not missed its target". That may be a bit presumptuous. Uber Eats plans to appeal against the verdict and insists that the decision is "based on the individual circumstances of three individuals and applies only to them". That's obviously nonsense, but if every rider has to make the same petition as these three have done and have to wait five months for a verdict and go through an appeal process before getting an employment contract, it will be a very slow and laborious process for them to access workers' rights. On the otherhand, if this establishes a legal precedent which can then be applied efficiently to all Uber Eats riders, a real change may be in sight.
What happens next is not just important for Belgium, but for the whole of the European Union, given the passing of the Platform Work Directive last week.
Could the EU Directive be a legal game-changer before it becomes national law?
Our May Day article on Wednesday looked at the growing international dispute at Just Eat, as the company is in the process of sacking its riders in Paris despite being an advocate for employment status in the platform economy.
The Parisian riders are represented by labour lawyer Philippe Pradal, who told the Gig Economy Project something interesting we had not heard before. Pradal said that even before the Platform Work Directive (PWD) is transposed into national law (member-states have two years for transposition), it will be affective in all European courts of law as soon as it officially becomes EU law (later this year).
If Pradal is correct, we can expect the courts to start filling up with bogus self-employment claims based on the PWD. The verdicts of those court cases will not only be important for the individual workers involved, they will set a legal precedent for how PWD is interpreted by judges in all 27 member-states, which will then have a significant influence on how the law is eventually transposed into national law.
Keep a close eye out for the first bogus self-employment claim going to court based on the PWD.Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator
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Gig Economy news round-up |
- FOOD DELIVERY PLATFORMS TO STEP UP RIGHT-TO-WORK CHECKS IN THE UK: Britain's largest food delivery platforms will all step up efforts to prevent illegal working on their apps, the UK Government announced on Tuesday [30 April]. Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat have all "committed to changing their processes to confirm substitute riders have the right to work legally in the UK directly," the government said in a statement. Substitutions are when an account holder gets another worker to complete their work on their account. Until now, the account holder has been required by the platforms to check if the substitute has the right-to-work in the UK, a system which has helped generate a roaring black market in sub-letting, whereby account holders rent out their account to undocumented workers in return for somewhere between 20-50% of wages earned. The Government said that Deliveroo was the first platform to introduce "a new substitute registration feature, including right to work checks, earlier this month". Uber Eats said it planned to roll-out identity checks, while Just Eat said it was working with partners on "a solution". The move comes after immigration minister Robert Jenrick wrote to the food delivery companies in December to saying there current practices in relation to substitution were "completely unacceptable". The government is seeking to reduce the number of migrants working without official papers in the UK. The IWGB union, which represents food delivery couriers, said it was already seeing “numerous dismissals of couriers with the right to work as a result of these checks malfunctioning”. Read more here.
- ESTONIAN GOVT OFFICIAL'S BOLT SHARE OPTIONS WORTH OVER €30,000: Sandra Särav, the Estonian Government official at the centre of a storm about the influence of the multi-modal platform Bolt on the government, owns share options in the Estonian company which were worth €32,137 in 2022. FoI requests by Corporate Europe Observatory revealed by Euractiv last week showed that Bolt had contacted Särav, a former Bolt employee who is now deputy secretary general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, asking for the government to put its name to a letter to EU labour ministers at a crucial moment in the Platform Work Directive negotiations last year. The letter had been written as if it was the Estonian labour minister who had penned it. Särav should have registered the correspondence at the time but didn't, claiming in an interview last week that this was "human error". In the same interview, Särav said stock options which she still held in Bolt were of "negligible" value, but it has now been revealed that they are worth more than the average annual wage in Estonia. Särav was reprimanded last year after failing to put in her declaration of financial interests that she owned stock options in the company. Tiit Riisalo, Minister of Economic Affairs and IT, defended Särav keeping her job last week, saying "I do not see any reason to take any steps here". Read more here.
- UBER FACES £250 MILLION LEGAL CLAIM FROM LONDON BLACK CABS: Lawyers representing London's black cab taxi service are seeking damages to be paid by Uber on the basis that the company deliberately misled the regulator, Transport for London (TfL), in order to obtain a license to operate. The lawyers say the claim is worth potentially up to £250 million, with every taxi driver receiving about £25,000 each. The claim, which has been filed in the High Court, relates to Uber's operations from 2012, when it launched in the British capital, to 2018. Uber settled a similar case in Australia which was worth £141.7 million. Responding to the London litigation, an Uber spokesperson said: "These old claims are completely unfounded. Garry White, a black cab driver for 36 years who is backing the litigation, said: "Uber seems to believe it is above the law and cabbies across London have suffered loss of earnings because of it. It is time they were held to account.” Uber's current TfL licence is due to expire in September this year. Read more here.
- DELIVEROO FAILING TO HONOUR MINIMUM WAGE PLEDGE IN THE UK, INVESTIGATION REVEALS: An investigation by the 'i' newspaper has revealed that Deliveroo riders are routinely earning below the hourly minimum wage in the UK, despite the company pledging all riders would earn at least that rate after costs. 'i' collated and verified completed jobs by Deliveroo riders, finding some earned up to £2.57 less than the minimum wage rate. Deliveroo riders are self-employed, so there is no legal obligation for Deliveroo to meet the minimum wage of £11.44 per hour, but have repeatedly committed to doing so. 'i' also investigated Uber Eats, which has made no such commitment in the UK, and found that one rider earned £3.42 less than the hourly minimum wage. No riders were found to earn below the minimum wage with Just Eat. In response to the investigation, the UK Government said it encourages all companies to pay above the minimum wage. Deliveroo, a UK-headquartered platform part-owned by Amazon, said that they would investigate any instances of a rider earning below the minimum wage, claiming that they "guarantee" that they will earn minimum wage after costs and that "this is audited annually to ensure compliance with this policy". Uber Eats said “the vast majority are satisfied with their experience on the app”. Just Eat said that their data shows riders "on average, significantly over both the London and national living wage for the time they are on an order”. Read more here.
- MAY DAY STRIKE BY LIEFERANDO RIDERS IN FRANKFURT: Lieferando (Just Eat) riders demanded a collective agreement as they took strike action in the German city of Frankfurt on May Day. The strike, which lasted from 9am to 9pm, was organised by the NGG union and the riders demands in any collective agreement include at least €15 per hour, payment of a 13th month salary, pay for the full journey home after a shift and higher surcharges for weekend and public holiday shifts. Lieferando riders in Germany are employees, sometimes via sub-contractors. "Lieferando has been turning a deaf ear for over a year," Mark Baumeister, head of the food delivery department at NGG, said. "Especially after the high inflation of the last few years, a collective agreement is more than overdue." Lieferando riders participated in an international mobilisation at Just Eat's Amsterdam headquarters on 26 April, and were joined by colleagues from the Netherlands and France. Lieferando told the 'Frankfurter Rundschau' that working conditions at the company were above average for the industry. Read more here.
Have we missed something important? You can help keep us informed by sending information to GEP@BraveNewEurope.com. |
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- A hybrid event on employment practices in the Scottish food delivery sector will be held on 8 May at the Strathclyde University Business School, in Glasgow, 11-1pm GMT. Click here for full details and to register.
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The Gig Economy Project is a media network for gig workers and we welcome contributions from workers, writers, academics, activists - anyone who wants to stand up for workers' rights in the gig economy.
If you would like to write for the site, discuss arranging an interview with GEP, or simply have information about developments in the gig economy in Europe you think we should be aware of, get in touch.
Contact project co-ordinator Ben Wray at GEP@BraveNewEurope.com or send a direct message to the Twitter: @project_gig.
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