For the last few months we have been working on an investigation into rider accidents and accident insurance. This cross-border investigation is with journalists Piero Valmassoi in Brussels and Laura Carrer in Milan, who both specialise in the gig economy and have written for the Gig Economy Project previously. It has been funded by Journalismfund Europe. The first article of the investigation has been published this week in El Salto, a Spanish publication, focusing on the city of Bilbao. We went out onto the streets of the Basque city to engage riders directly, at their place of work, about their experiences of accidents and accident insurance. In total, we interviewed more than 30 riders.What we found is that most accidents occur among 'riders sin papeles'; workers without legal residency in Spain, who work through Glovo or Uber Eats rented accounts (Just Eat riders have employment contracts in Spain, so they all have to prove legal status). The most common estimate on the streets was that 70-75% of riders in Bilbao were working undocumented, and they also work the longest hours, often doing 16 hours-a-day on weekends, when demand is highest. The more hours you spend on the street, the more likely you are to be involved in an accident.While all riders in theory can access accident insurance in Spain, undocumented riders obviously cannot, since the insurance is not in their name, it's in the name of the account holder. Not only are they therefore uninsured, but we found out that many fear even going to the hospital after a serious accident, in case their lack of legal status is uncovered and they are deported. The black market in rented accounts does not just heighten the risk of exploitation, it also increases the dangers to the limbs and, ultimately, lives of these riders. For those riders who do have insurance, the positive is that they were able to access it after an accident and were generally treated respectfully. However, some riders felt pressured by the insurance people to return back to work quickly or immediately, despite still not feeling right. At the end of the day, private insurance companies are not neutral arbiters, they work for the platforms, who have an interest in the speedy return to work of their riders.We also undertook a comparative analysis of the insurance policies of the main three platforms in Spain, Glovo, Uber Eats and Just Eat, the main results of which are in the table above. Just Eat's insurance coverage, which is a combination of that negotiated in a collective agreement with unions UGT and CCOO and that which is guaranteed for all employees by the state, is far superior to those of self-employed riders at Glovo and Uber Eats. Moreover, Just Eat riders also receive road safety training, safety equipment and other measures to prevent accidents from happening in the first place. These are benefits of being an employee that are not usually taken into account, but which are obviously extremely important.As regular readers of this newsletter will know, all food delivery couriers in Spain should be employees long before now. In 2020, the Spanish Supreme Court found Glovo riders were employees, and in 2021 the government established a general presumption of employment in the food delivery sector through 'the Rider Law'. What this investigation has revealed is that bogus self-employed riders are measurably worse-off in insurance terms. Moreover, the widespread black market in rented accounts - which is only possible via the self-employed model - means that in practise the difference between employed and bogus self-employed is, for many riders, the difference between having insurance and not having any at all.What can the Spanish Government do to address this? Obviously, the Minister of Labour wants to get these platforms to comply with the Rider Law, and has stepped up its sanctions in order to do so. Glovo's defiance of the law has seen the Barcelona-headquartered platform rack up over €200 million in fines, which could rise to at least €400 million. The management of Glovo and Uber Eats Spain also both now face criminal prosecutions for bogus self-employment. The investiture of the PSOE-Sumar coalition government last month, with Sumar leader and Rider Law architect Yolanda Díaz continuing as Minister for Labour, meant that all hope which Glovo and Uber Eats had that a change in government following the 23 July General Election could let them off-the-hook has been extinguished (although it's possible that the Platform Work Directive could help them out).However, employment status is no solution for the majority of Bilbao's riders who do not have the legal right-to-work in Spain. As some of them told us during interviews, renting accounts is by no means optimal, but it can be a lifeline, as without it they can struggle to find any work at all. There is a solution which can deliver employment status in the food delivery sector and allow riders who are currently undocumented to keep working, and it is one with a strong precedent in Spain. Under the PSOE government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero between 2004-2011, an 'extraordinary regularisation' was carried out, giving 600,000 undocumented workers the legal right-to-work in Spain. A 2021 study found this measure raised billions for the state in increased tax contributions. Regularisation of riders would be good for the workers and for the government, the only constituency it wouldn't help is the platforms, who benefit from having a huge source of cheap labour who "don’t complain, they don’t make noise, they just work and usually very long hours," as Professor Pedro Mendonça, an expert in undocumented riders, told El Salto. This coming week will see articles on rider accidents published by Piero Valmassoi on Brussels in 'Econospheres' and Laura Carrer on Milan in 'Milano Today'. Keep an eye out for them, and if you miss them we will provide links in next week's newsletter.Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator
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Gig Economy news round-up |
- SPANISH PRESIDENCY SET FOR FINAL THROW OF THE DICE ON PLATFORM WORK DIRECTIVE: A trilogue on Tuesday [12 December] is likely to be the final attempt by the Spanish Presidency of the EU to negotiate a deal on the Platform Work Directive. The Spanish Presidency's six-month term runs out at the end of the year, at which point Belgium will take over the Presidency. EurActiv reports that the Spanish Presidency won't present a new text, hoping to be able to thrash out the terms of a deal around the negotiating table. The Spanish Presidency has been criticised by some on the left for sticking too tightly to the position the Council agreed on in June, especially in relation to the crux question of the presumption of employment. While the European Parliament's side have moved a long way from their mandate in negotiations, a shift which has been met with disapproval by The Left and Green MEPs, the Council has been unmoving. However, Euractiv report sources stating "Spain is finally emancipating itself from the Council mandate," and that "chances are higher than even two weeks ago" to strike a deal. Thomas Göransson, International Secretary for EU Affairs for Swedish union Unionen, struck a more pessimistic note, tweeting: "Looks more likely that the can will be kicked down the proverbial road. Will the next Belgian Presidency get out of the impasse?". Read more here.
- NORWEGIAN CARE WORKERS WIN BOGUS SELF-EMPLOYMENT COURT CASE: Three former Norwegian care workers have been awarded €600,000 in back-dated pay, including salary, overtime and holiday pay, after the Court of Appeal found that they were bogus self-employed. The care workers were employed as "consultants" by Recoveryakademiet (Recovery Academy), a private care company, and worked for several weeks without a legal working hours scheme being established, meaning they were paid much less than they were entitled to. In a unanimous judgement, the Court of Appeal found that it is clearly the responsibility of the employer, not the employee, for the correct classification, and therefore they had to bear the financial responsibility for lost income. The case was taken forward by the Fagforbundet union, which also won a similar case recently in respect to 22 care workers at the Stendi company. "Both cases are within the same industry, where this illegal practice of misclassifying workers has been a widespread phenomenon," federal attorney Morten Mønnich, who led both cases on behalf of the workers, said. Read more here.
- FRENCH UNIONS WALK OUT OF RIDER PAY TALKS OVER PLATFORMS' DELAYING-TACTICS: Negotiations took place on Tuesday [5 December] between France's three main food delivery platforms, Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Stuart Delivery, and unions after a major national strike last weekend over rider pay. The pay talks, which took place through the French Government's social dialogue mechanism for the platform economy, the ARPE, where heralded by Fabian Tosolini of Union-Indépendants as "a first battle won", while the CGT union described it as "a victory following the mobilisations of delivery people!". However, CGT and Sud Commerces, two of the three unions which led the strike (along with Union-Indépendants), walked-out of the meeting due to what they considered to be stalling-tactics on the part of the platforms. The platforms wanted to delay talks on remuneration until January 10, and instead focus on the issue of what to do when riders face discrimination in the street, a CGT source told the Gig Economy Project. The strike was sparked by the unilateral introduction of a new pricing system at Uber Eats France on 1 November which unions say saw pay fall 10-40%. Uber Eats claims that some shorter journeys are paid less and some longer journeys more, but the average remains roughly the same. Read more here.
- FINNISH UNION PAM BEGINS NEGOTIATIONS WITH WOLT OVER A RIDER COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT: In what would be a first for Wolt and for Finland, talks began on Monday [4 December] over a collective agreement between the union PAM and Wolt, the Finnish-founded food delivery platform. The talks, which are not expected to be easy, are anticipated to come to a conclusion in Spring 2024. Finnish couriers are hired on a self-employed basis, and PAM said that the negotiations were only possible due to recent changes in EU competition law rules on the rights of self-employed workers to collectively bargain. Olli Koski, Wolt’s Public Policy Director for the Nordic countries, said the agreement is intended "to create clear and commonly understood rules for the work of the self-employed". Jaana Ylitalo, PAM’s Collective Bargaining Director, said: "Our aim is to include couriers in the Finnish collective bargaining system regardless of the form of working." Papy Nkunda, chair of the trade union branch PAM Couriers Finland, said: "I am happy that the organising of couriers has brought us to this point, and we can start negotiating an agreement. We need predictability and fair terms." Wolt, which has been owned by American food delivery platform DoorDash since the beginning of 2022, rolled-out a dynamic pricing system of pay at the start of this year, which led to a rash of strikes across Europe, including in Finland. Read more here.
- A GLOVO RIDER CAN NOW USE 10 SUBSTITUTES ON THEIR ACCOUNT: Spain's largest food delivery platform, Glovo, has drastically increased the number of substitutes which are possible on a rider's account, heightening fears about exploitation through illegal sub-letting. Highlighting the change to Glovo's terms & conditions on Thursday, which increased the number of possible substitutes per account to 10, CGT Riders in Barcelona tweeted: "In this way, the phenomenon of rented accounts is legalised. It already was. Now on a large scale." A substitute is when a rider allows someone else to do deliveries they have signed-up for on their account. The practice has been widely condemned by academics and campaigners as making it easy for a black market trade in accounts to proliferate, as substitutes do not have to pass background checks. Many undocumented migrants, who cannot legally set-up accounts, work as 'substitutes', paying a rent sometimes as much 50% of their wages to the account holder for use of their account. In large Spanish cities like Barcelona and Madrid, it is widely considered that a majority of riders are working in this way. Glovo has made no statement to justify the change, but it's possible that the company is seeking to strengthen its case that its riders are genuinely self-employed, despite the Spanish Supreme Court finding in 2020 that they are employees. Glovo augmented its model on the eve of the introduction of the Rider Law and claim its riders are genuinely self-employed and compliant with the law, a position rejected unanimously by labour law academics. The company faces mounting fines for false self-employment, which could reach €400 million. In the UK last month, the Supreme Court found that Deliveroo's riders were not employees, primarily because they had the right of substitution. Read more here.
- ETUC WANTS SPECIFIC DIRECTIVE ON AI IN THE WORKPLACE AFTER AI ACT PASSED: The Council of the EU and the European Parliament have negotiated an agreement for the AI Act, after all night negotiations on Thursday and Friday [7 and 8 December] to broker a deal, with trade unions stating that the deal enables a further Directive to deal with the specific issues relating to AI at work. European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) Deputy General Secretary Isabelle Schömann described the Act, which still must be ratified by the European Parliament in a vote, as a "milestone", saying it "recognises the high-risk nature of workplace applications of AI", but that "the next step must be for Europe to bring in specific protections for people in their workplaces". The details of the text have not yet been released, but a press release stated that the deal included prohibitions on "biometric categorisation systems that use sensitive characteristics", "emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions" and "AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation)". In a series of tweets, the ETUC said that "the AI Act relies too much on self-assessment by the providers of AI systems. This is a major flaw that could undermine the trust and accountability of AI in the workplace." However, they added that the Act "also includes an opening clause that grants member states and the EU the authority to regulate AI’s workplace use. This is a significant victory for workers’ rights, as it allows for more specific and tailored protections." 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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The giant with feet of clay that has crumbled
Carlos Rodríguez Expósito, vice-president of the Taxi Project 2.0, writes in Timis on Cabify, the Spanish ridehail platform, which is in a major conflict with the largest ridehail sub-contractor in Spain, Auro (in Spanish).
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- Latest trilogue on the EU Platform Work Directive, 12 December, Brussels, Belgium
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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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