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"Privacy International's proposed amendments to the EU Directive on Working Conditions and Platform Work", 7. December 2022
PI submitted amendments to the EU's Directive on Working Conditions and Platform Work to raise concerns about the threats workers face when they are subjected to automated decision-making systems. This is part of our work defending workers' rights to access information as well appropriate mechanisms to defend their interests, and, more broadly our efforts to ensure that automated decision-making systems are subjected to effective and robust scrutiny.
KEY ADVOCACY POINTS
The current draft of the Directive on Working Conditions and Platform Work contains shortcomings with regard to general principles relating to the fundamental right to privacy, including privacy by design and by default, transparency and decisions affecting platform workers’ working conditions
We focused on the threats to workers’ rights that can materialise at three key levels: when personal data is being collected, when decision-making occurs with no transparency and when decision-making systems operate without human oversight.
PI's Managed by Bots campaign exposed how such threats can have can be financially and emotionally devastating for workers and urges the Member of the European Parliament to consider these amendments
The EU Council has adopted new rules to improve working conditions for platform workers by increasing transparency in algorithmic management and establishing clear guidelines to determine the employment status.
The European Parliament overwhelmingly approved a watered-down version of the EU’s long-awaited platform work directive at a plenary on Wednesday (24 April), ending two years of intense negotiations with 554 votes in favour and 56 against.
The EU has provisionally endorsed the agreement achieved between the Council's presidency and the negotiators from the European Parliament concerning the directive on platform work. This directive is designed to enhance working conditions and establish regulations on the utilization of algorithms by digital labour platforms.
On 19 March 2024, the European Parliament's Employment and Social Affairs Committee endorsed the political deal on this new bill aiming to improve the working conditions of platform workers.
EU countries finally adopted the platform work directive at a meeting of the bloc’s labour ministers on Monday (11 March), after Estonia and Greece, which had abstained in the past, voted in favour “in the spirit of compromise”.
European Union lawmakers and countries have again struck a deal on gig worker's rights — but at the cost of the European Commission missing out on one of its key provisions.
Following failed interinstitutional negotiations over the platform work directive, the Belgium Presidency circulated yet another draft text, significantly watering down the file’s flagship chapter on the legal presumption of employment.
The Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU has circulated a new draft text of the platform work directive, which should be the basis for technical negotiations among member states, amid persistent divisions about the directive’s scope.
Negotiations between EU officials over what exactly the directive should include and if have been beset by infighting. Trade unionists and labor activists say that’s because the debate has been heavily influenced by Uber. Labour activists say that arguments put forward by Uber—particularly that a directive that automatically classifies platform workers as employees would threaten jobs—have been repeated by other MEPs and representatives of the European Council.
EU institutions are preparing to discuss the functioning of the legal presumption of employment, the most sensitive aspect of the Platform Workers Directive, in a trilogue next Thursday (9 November).
Trade unions and platform worker collectives across Europe have signed an open letter addressed to ministers of labour of the EU member-states, calling for them to support the Platform Work Directive on the Council of the EU which ensures platform workers’ rights are protected. They support the proposal made by the Parliament, in which there is a presumption of employment and it is the companies that have to claim that the workers are autonomous in each context.
The Swedish presidency of the EU Council proposed narrowing down the derogation for the presumption of employment, one of the most contentious parts of the platform workers directive, in a new attempt to bridge differences after negotiations broke down in December.
The EU Parliament’s approval gives Gualmini the necessary mandate to enter interinstitutional negotiations, known as trilogues, alongside the European Commission and Council.
In December 2022, the European Parliament’s Employment Committee adopted amendments to the Platform Work Directive that represent the EU’s best effort yet to curb employment misclassification in the sector and develop world-leading safeguards against the abusive potential of workplace automation.
The text was adopted with 41 votes to 12. It will provide the basis for a negotiating mandate with the EU Council unless 71 MEPs request a vote at a plenary session, where amendments alternative to the committee text might be tabled.
Privacy International raises concerns about the threats workers face when subjected to automated decision-making systems and claims that the current draft contains shortcomings with regard to the right to privacy.
Revelations from MacGann dating back to July 2022, published by The Guardian in partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), laid bare how the company broke the law and secretly lobbied international governments to push through their ride-hailing solutions.
ETUC, JOC, CECOP, EUROPEAN YOUTH FORUM and SOLIDAR published a letter with suggestions on how to make the EU-commission's proposal for a Directive on improving working conditions in platform work more effective. They argue inter alia for a reversal of the burden of proof with regards to the activation of the presumption of employment and urge for quick action.
In her draft report on the EU Commission's proposal for a platform workers directive, MEP Elisabetta Gualmini pushes for more robust protection for workers and tighter obligations in automated decision-making embedded in the workplace.
New draft legislation from the European Commission says the burden of proof on employment status would shift to companies, rather than the individuals who work for them.
The European Commission launched its first-stage consultation on the rights of platform workers, in a bid to improve the conditions of people working through "digital labour platforms.”