Tech Won't Save Us - A Setback for Gig Workers’ Rights in Europe w/ Ben Wray

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Paris Marx is joined by Ben Wray to discuss why the European Union’s Platform Work Directive isn’t moving forward, what hope remains for gig workers’ rights in Europe, and what we should make of Uber’s first annual profit.Ben Wray is the coordinator of the Gig Economy Project and the author of Scotland after Britain: The two souls of Scottish independence.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:On March 8, Paris will be doing a livestream about Dune 2 and Luddites with Ed Ongweso Jr and Brian Merchant. Get notified on YouTube.Ben wrote about the failure of the Platform Work Directive, the recent conferences on platform workers’ rights in Brussels, and the Uber CEO’s admission of using driver’s “behavioral patterns” to influence pay rates.Paris wrote about the wider context of Uber’s first annual profit.Delivery Hero’s business isn’t going well and its share price has been dropping.Glovo is facing serious legal trouble in Spain, and even as some fines have been suspended, others have been added.Food delivery workers in the UK have been on a major strike. Notes from Below have been publishing some dispatches from it.Support the show

I think that's part of the business model of these platforms is to work within legal areas, to find loopholes. They pay expensive corporate lawyers to do that work. So you don't just need to pass legislation. You need to have states which are dedicated to fighting to make it happen. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Ben Ray. Ben is the coordinator of the Gig Economy Project and the author of Scotland After Britain, the two souls of Scottish Independence. He also has a fantastic newsletter with weekly updates on what's going on with the gig economy in Europe that is associated with the Gig Economy Project.

Ben was last on the show last year to talk about the developments with the Platform Work Directive, which was this piece of European Union legislation that was going to move forward the rights of platform workers in that block of countries. On February 16th, the European Council, which represents the member states, voted against the platform work directive after many years of work on it. So I wanted to have Ben back on to talk about what actually happened here, why this piece of legislation did not move forward, and what it means for the future of rights of platform and gig workers in the European Union after this long process seems to have come to this unfortunate end. So the first part of this interview really digs into that piece of this, right? Getting into the specifics of what this legislation was,

how it would actually work, and why various governments chose to oppose it. Of course, you know, we see no surprise that France under Emmanuel Macron is a big opponent of platform worker rights. And of course, you'll remember that from the recent interview that I did with Nastassia Hadjadji, where we dug into his plans to make France a startup nation, and how that meant not only transforming the state, but also empowering these particular tech companies, and how the shift to the right within the European Union presents even further challenges toward moving this forward and making sure that workers have the rights that they deserve. But then near the end of this conversation,

we talk about Uber and other gig companies more broadly, how the business is going there, because Uber recently reported its first annual profit and used that to claim that now its business is viable. Now it makes sense after 15 years of losing tens of billions of dollars that it's on the path toward a workable business model that will stay around forever. So we wanted to talk about whether that makes a lot of sense, how Uber actually achieved that profit in the first place, and what the future of its business actually looks like. Because the narrative that it is presenting to the public and to investors doesn't seem to line up with what the fundamentals are saying, as is the usual case with a company like Uber. So this is a great conversation with Ben. I really enjoyed having him back on the show.

I always enjoy having him back on the show because he knows these issues so well. And I'm happy that we've been getting a bit more perspective on things that have been happening in Europe on the show lately. You know, hopefully that'll continue and, you know, we'll have some more conversations about things going on in other parts of the world as well. But with that said, if you enjoy this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into the show every week and get a number

of premium interviews that are only available for Patreon supporters, focusing on Elon Musk and his businesses, you know, based on the series that we did back in October, Elon Musk Unmasked, you can join supporters like Daniel from Minnesota did back in october elon musk on mast you can join supporters like daniel from minnesota laura in offenbach germany ian from washington dc and gareth from kaitengata in new zealand by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us where you can become a supporter as well and help us continue making the show thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation ben welcome back to tech won't save us. Nice to join you again, Pius. Yeah, it's always great to chat. You were last on the show about a year ago when we were talking

about, of course, the Platform Work Directive. And at that time, it was coming out of the European Parliament, which is, of course, the elected part of the European political institutions, I guess, you know, where you have all these representatives of the different member states. And there was a lot of hope and positivity in that time around what the platform work directive might mean for workers in the gig economy and working on these platforms. Can you talk to us a bit about, you know, obviously, there have been a number of developments, that's why you're on the show. But I wanted to go back to that time to actually see how this process evolved before we get to the vote that recently happened. So after it moved out of the European Parliament and went to the European Council and through this kind of negotiation process called the Trilog, what was happening there and how did

that framework that came out of the Parliament evolve once it interacted with these other bodies in the European government? Yeah, so it's been a very, very long and quite confusing process with the Platform Work Directive. It originally started, it was first introduced as being part of the agenda of the European Union in 2019, and it's still going on now in 2024. So it's been a long old process. So as you said, there was a key moment in, I think it was March 2023, when the European Parliament supported what was quite an ambitious proposal. And basically that included a general presumption of employment for the platform economy. Now, what that doesn't mean and what companies like Uber and the platform lobby

argues, that means that every worker would overnight be put onto an employment contract. It doesn't mean that. All it means is that the labor inspectorates in different European countries would go and investigate a workplace. If they found that those workers were subordinates, if they were controlled by the platform, it would then say that you have to hire this worker. The company would have a chance to appeal against that in court, and they could do that. But if they lose the court case, then they would be forced to hire the worker.

So that's all that the idea of a general presumption of employment means, is that there would be a process by which a worker can be made an employee, either through a labour inspector doing an investigation or the worker themselves taking the case to court and challenging it directly. So that's the main part of the law. And then the second part of the law, the less contentious part, is about algorithmic management rights.

So the right for platform workers to know what information the platform's holding them, the right to human oversight for key decisions about robo-firing, that would be basically banned. The right for platforms not to take data on workers when they're not at work, not to collect data on workers when they are about issues that are not to do with work, like about their sexuality, about their political views, a whole set of data rights for platform workers. And those are the two parts of legislation. So the European Parliament's proposal was pretty ambitious. And then the council, which is the member states, the 27 member states, France, Germany, so on and so forth, they've been working on their own proposal. And the two proposals get negotiated.

The council eventually came up with its proposal under the Swedish presidency in June 2023. That was a much less ambitious proposal. It had lots of opt-outs for countries. It had what I think would have been a system which would allow unions to flourish, kind of alternative to platform workers' rights. Companies like Uber could establish collective agreements with yellow unions, you know, unions which are basically company unions. It had a very hard criteria for triggering the presumption of employment. So it did also have a presumption of employment like the European proposal,

but the criteria was so tough for triggering it that it would make it very, very hard for workers to actually be able to access those employment rights. So that was in June. And then there was what's called trilogue negotiations between the European Parliament and the council to try to kind of thrash out a deal. Now, under the Spanish presidency in December, Spain is the state that's the one state in the EU that's already introduced a general presumption of employment for food delivery couriers. So they're the kind of most on the kind of progressive side of all the states in this argument. They kind of negotiated an agreement with the European Parliament that was then rejected by the council, that agreement. And it's basically a group of states clustered around France,

being the kind of leading one that are very hostile to employment rights for platform workers, that are most kind of, let's say, uber-friendly, you know, in their outlook on the gig economy. So that was rejected. And then under the Belgian presidency, the way it works in the EU is that there's a six-month rotating presidency, but each member state gets a chance to have the presidency.

So the Belgian presidency began in January. They negotiated a new deal with the European Parliament, which basically left it up to each member state to decide on what the presumption of employment would look like. So if France wanted to have a very weak presumption of employment, it was difficult to implement, then France could do that. Spain wanted to have a strong one, they could do that. Cutting a long story short, that was basically the agreement they negotiated. That was also rejected on 16th of February by what's called a blocking minority of states. So just four out of the 27 states opposed it. But because those four states included France and Germany and the council, you need 55% of all states to support any legislative change. And you need 65% of the population share of all states to support any legislative change.

And France and Germany are by far the two biggest countries in the EU. And those two countries combined make up 33.8%. So with those two countries not supporting the directive, they won a couple of other countries, Estonia and Greece. That was enough to form a blocking minority. Not very democratic, you know, that four countries can block the will of 27. I mean, the whole process, in my opinion, is not very transparent and not very democratic. But that's what's happened. Now, it looked like that was going to be all over.

There was going to be no directive because the time's running out, basically. The European parliamentary term is about to end. There's elections in early June. And before that, there's like a two-month period for campaigning in the elections. So it looked like there was no time to renegotiate a new deal. It now seems like what I've heard, and I've been in Brussels over the past week speaking to people and what I've heard, the information that's come out is that it's possible still

that there could be an agreement, it's going to a meeting, some strange meeting called EPSCO don't ask me to explain too much about what the hell that is, but it's a meeting of economy and labour ministers in Europe, I mean some people are saying it might be that the Belgian presidency

is able to convince a couple of the states to change their mind with the same text. Some people are saying that the text can still be renegotiated again. It's all a bit of a mess at this point. It seems like there's all sorts of behind closed doors deals being thrashed out potentially. So we don't know if it's going to happen or not now. But I guess one of the key things to recognize at this point is that even if a directive does happen now, it's nowhere near as ambitious as it was originally going to be.

You know, it's not going to be as big a deal as it was originally going to be. Because when I was talking to you about the European Parliament proposal, we were looking at a platform of directive which would have been sort of the most ambitious anywhere in the world at that point. It would have been a kind of trailblazer internationally, I think. So that's certainly been pushed back now. It's not going to be anything like that. But it's possible that still something could come from it

within the next few weeks. Yeah, that's a really great summation of everything that's been going on over the past year. You know, the one thing I would add just for people who are not familiar with the European parliamentary process, you know, as you say, very democratic, as you've explained, is that the third body there is the Commission. So the Council represents the EU member states and the Commission, I guess, is more of like the executive branch of what's going on there. You talked about how this proposal evolved over time, basically where you had this really ambitious proposal from the parliament and then was

increasingly kind of watered down as it went through these negotiations with the council, often headed by kind of, you know, right wing governments who had the presidency of the council at the various times. You kind of touched on this a bit, but how are people feeling about the state of the proposal as it was finally going up for these final votes and whether it was going to pass? Like, was it a feeling that this, if it would pass, that it was still going to be really kind of transformative if it were to, you know, be accepted into law and have to be implemented by these member states? Or was there a feeling that this opportunity had really kind of passed because it had been watered down so much? I think it was somewhere in between, you know, a feeling of like dejection and failure and a

feeling of like triumph. I think it was kind of the thinking is we live to fight another day, because basically what would have happened is that one part would have been, you know, quite straightforwardly positive, which would have been the algorithmic rights, because that would have been for all workers, regardless of employment status, all platform workers, regardless of employment status, they could access them. But in terms of the key question of employment status, I think because they fight over the criteria, and that has been a big thing within the whole debate.

You know, should there be a criteria? Some states have proposed, you know, there should be five criteria and two are needed to trigger it. Some have proposed seven and three are needed to trigger it. Some have proposed no criteria. That's been a kind of big part of the wrangling over it. All of that wrangling would have then just moved to the capitals of Europe, you know, the 27 capitals of Europe, who would have had these debates and process, because it would be a two-year process for the EU law to be transposed.

So it would be two years to have these debates and arguments and work out, you know, what that law at national level, you know, should look like. It's worth saying that it's in some ways kind of strange that the EU is debating this because labour law is a national competence within Europe. So it's perfectly possible for the 23 member states that voted to support this proposal to introduce their own platform work regulation, regardless of whether the EU pass a law or not you know they can they have the competencies to do that so it would have been possible to push for you know at national level anyway but if this passed or if it does still pass it would have been a requirement on those states to establish the presumption of employment and that criteria for and that sort of thing

so i think it was kind of like you know it's better than nothing definitely and it would be something for the kind of movement that's that's campaigned around this issue for years now to build on you know so i think it was looked at positively but not the kind of transformative change that at one point looked possible and so i guess the feeling then you know from activism and from platform workers and people who are engaged on this topic is that even though it was taking a lot of time, it was potentially worth it to do so. Because instead of just potentially getting progress in certain member states where there were governments that were more open to something like this, then there was the potential to push every member state to have to act on it through this directive, instead of just having these national wins. Because one of the things that stood out to me as you were explaining this initially, this process began in 2019. We're now in 2024. You said there was two years to

implementation, you know, once something is actually agreed. So if you think about kind of the speed at which, you know, these companies do try to transform these sectors and do try to, quote unquote, disrupt the economy and society, you can see how this European government process is very unresponsive to these kind of immediate needs that workers and people might have. Yeah, that's a good point about, you know, how quickly the platforms change, because there is, I i think certain things missing from even the algorithmic rights part of this directive around upfront fares you know and dynamic pricing and all that sort of thing which as we were we may talk a little bit about later

is has been key to uber's newfound profitability so in some ways it has already fallen a bit behind. I guess one thing, though, is that the reality is that states have not moved on this issue on platform work regulation. As I said, there's nothing that's been stopping them in these years to do something about it, and they've not done so. So in many ways, I think the reason why a lot of the hopes were pinned on the EU law is because, well, one, that then covers 27 member states in one go, right? So that's what, 500 million workers or something like that. It covers a lot of people. And then two, that is a kind of pragmatic thing that actually there's something happening in this EU law, whereas most countries in Europe have been very slow to actually move on this. That makes a lot of sense. And when you talk about the positions of different

countries, obviously Spain has been a real leader and really trying to push this forward. But obviously, in order for it to be watered down at the council level, that means that there are a lot of countries that are not so engaged in this or that are engaged in the other direction and trying to water this down and make sure that there aren't strong platform worker rights. Can you talk a bit about the positions of key countries that have been involved in the process and how they have tried to shape this directive? As I said before, there's two countries which represent either side of this debate and have been polarizing either side the whole way through. France on the one side, where Emmanuel Macron is the president. People may know that Emmanuel Macron was caught up in the Uber files scandal a couple of years ago, whereby it was revealed that all the way back in 2015, when he was an economy minister in another kind of socialist French government, he had been working and collaborating with Uber to kind of

defend their illegal entry into that country. And even to defend, you know, violent protests and things like that, that Uber drivers have been involved in, and that sort of thing. So Macron's role as a kind of chief advocate for Uber has been longstanding. And since he's been French president since 2017, he's continued to do that quite openly, quite publicly. He will say, I believe this is part of the future of work. I believe these companies are innovative, that they're contributing to our economy. When he was asked about the Uberfiles scandal, he said, I would do it all over again, unashamed about his role. So in France, what they've established is what they call a social dialogue system as an alternative to platform workers' rights, where basically there's a government arbitration body, which sits

between the platforms on the one side and worker representatives who have been elected directly in a kind of process a couple of years ago. It's a very controversial system. A lot of the unions boycotted it. It's, you know, the platforms are a kind of dominant force within it. There's been strikes in France recently which have exposed the limitations of that system, that actually workers' wages continue to fall in food delivery and retail. So basically, to cut a long story short, France are kind of at the vanguard of a group of states

which are very kind of pro-platform. Spain is on the other side with a kind of smaller group of states which are dedicated to the idea that there should be employment rights. I think an important thing about this is where Germany sits in this process. France voted against, and then Germany, Estonia, and Greece abstained.

Germany has abstained the whole way through this process. So for over two years, the German government's abstained at every single stage of the process, refused to take a position. Germany is a coalition government led by the Social Democratic Party, with a Social Democratic Labour minister. Obviously, the Labour minister is responsible for this file. Now, what is claimed is that the smallest party in that coalition, an ultra-liberal party called the Free Democratic Party, FTP,

have blocked the German government from supporting the directive. I find it a little bit ridiculous because not only are they the smallest party in the coalition, not only do they not hold the Labour ministry, they're polling at under 5%. And you need to get 5% in the German parliament to get any representatives. So right now, it looks like they're going to be completely wiped out in the next elections. So this idea they have such power to dictate what the German government does at EU level seems fanciful to me. A lot of journalists argue that that is the case, that basically they do have that policy

that if every party in the coalition doesn't support it, then you can't support it. But it's really disappointing for a lot of countries because the social democratic part of the European Parliament has been massively pushing for this directive, for a social democratic-led government to be basically responsible for this directive not passing is pretty controversial and it's pretty poor. I think one thing I guess I haven't mentioned so far is that for a lot of people, there's a little bit of a sigh of relief that something worse hasn't been agreed

because there was concern that if the council got its way, there'd be a kind of European version of Prop 22, where you pass a law which binds member states into a very weak criteria and makes it very difficult for workers to access employment rights. And actually would be a step back because right now

workers can go to court and win the case on a case-by-case basis. It's not very good. It doesn't help a lot of workers. If you passed a law which was kind of underneath the kind of jurisprudence established in most courts in Europe, it could actually be damaging for workers' damage to access and their rights. There's that side of looking at it as well. At least we didn't have a Prop 22 law that could have been worse. Yeah, that's a really good point. And, you know, obviously that would be a terrible development. But it is good to hear some of the positions of those key countries because that really does shape the development. Right. And as you say, countries like France and I know the Swedish presidency was arguing this as well, which is under a right wing government at the moment as well.

Sweden were basically arguing that they treat kind of labor relations in their country, you know, which I think is kind of a deceptive argument being put forward by right wing governments there. I wanted to ask as well about the positions of the platform companies. And there was a quote in I believe it was one of your newsletters, maybe it was an article you wrote, or a tweet rather, from Kim van Sparentak, an MEP for the Dutch Greens and deputy rapporteur on the Platform Work Directive, who tweeted, Macron and the German liberals apparently consider the profits of large platform companies such as Uber and Deliveroo more important than better working conditions for the most precarious workers. Unfortunately, the tens of millions of euros in lobbying money have paid for themselves. And just a quick note for US listeners, when we say liberal in relation to the Free Democratic Party in Germany, that means kind of liberal in the economic sense, not in kind of the social sense as we usually use it in North America. But in thinking about

the platform companies, how have they been engaged in this process? And have they been saying anything since the defeat of the platform work directive earlier this month? So basically, I think the last time we spoke was just after the European Parliament passed its law. And that was seen as kind of a defeat of the platform lobby, right? Because they had really pushed so hard. MEPs have talked about the rapporteur and the director, Elisabetta Galmini. She said in an interview, she's never seen such a hard campaign

by a corporate lobby to push against passing that proposal in the European Parliament. So the platform lobby lost that one, but they always had allies on the member states, right? So they always had that as a kind of fallback to defend their position. I mean, it's worth saying that the EU, Brussels, it's based in Brussels in Belgium, and that city has 70,000 corporate lobbyists in it, and there's only 700 members of the European Parliament. So you do the maths, it's quite dominated by the corporate lobbying. They move freely in the buildings, and there's no doubt that they're influential. The platform lobby specifically

massively beefed up its resources in Brussels. Uber has hired lots more people. They've established their own lobby groups. One's called MovieU. The other one's called Delivery Platforms Europe. So they're really taking this seriously because they know if Uber had to employ its drivers and riders, you're talking about a 20% to 30% increase in their costs, right? As the directive looked like it could be passed, like a strong directive could be negotiated, Uber basically had a big piece in the Financial Times where they basically threatened that if this law passes we are going to move out of hundreds of cities abandon hundreds of cities across europe and what they call work opportunities

because obviously they don't want to say jobs but work opportunities are going to be slashed by you know hundreds of thousands or whatever if the laws pass. Basically, a kind of blackmail, this is going to affect jobs if you go through with this. Now, I think when the directive first came about in 2019, there was less concern around unemployment issues in Europe than there had been during the peak of the Eurozone crisis, right, around, you know, right, around,

you know, 2013, 2014. And there was more focus on precarious work. But I think one of the things that's happened is that as this process has developed, we've had the inflation crisis in Europe. There's been more concern around, you know, employment issues in general. And I think that might have played a role in some of the member states thinking, actually, you know, we don't want to be, you know, hundreds of thousands of less platform workers in Europe. So I think that those tactics of able to focus on job losses, although they won't call it job losses, to focus on pulling out of cities, I think that probably has had an impact on some of the member states, you know, in pulling back from a stronger directive. So they'll be pretty happy, I think, with this outcome. They're staying very quiet at the moment.

They don't want to be gloating about it, obviously, because the process isn't over. I think if there's no directive, they will be pretty happy. Although it's not the most desirable outcome, as I said, would have been a kind of Prop 22 law for europe yeah that's a really good point and i i think it's interesting to look at how you know i don't know how it feels in europe but it feels like the reporting that we used to have on kind of uber's legal campaign to enforce like a prop 22, like, you know, way of governing the platform economy, I guess, has really fallen off in North America in the past couple of years. Like there's less focus on it

since, you know, the aftermath of Prop 22 was kind of experienced even as they continue this push in many more places. But like the focus just shifted to other things after Prop 22. And I also think it's interesting then to see the power that they've been able to wield in order to try to do these things and how, you know, as always, they take advantage of these economic conditions when they turn negative in order to benefit themselves. You know, obviously, Uber was founded during the last financial crisis and, of course, grew in Europe during the Eurozone crisis. And now that people are struggling again, Uber has been able to take advantage of that for itself, even as all these workers who deliver the service on its platform are struggling. You know, it's a company that benefits from this precarity, which is obviously why it fights so much to keep it in place. Yes. I mean, I think that Khosrowshahi actually openly said, didn't he, that the inflation crisis was good for Uber because it was pushing people to drive, get back in the car after the pandemic and start driving to earn additional income. And obviously, they've had an onslaught on wages. And that's been in the United States, that's been in Europe.

Right now, there's strikes going on in the UK, food delivery strikes. And that's all about the fact that over the last three or four years, the pay rates for food delivery cures has been slashed. You know, they've really fallen pretty sharply. So, yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, Uber is a company that thrives on, put it this way, it can only maintain its precarious model due to the platform work directive and so many of these legislative proposals is on the employment piece, right? And, you know, whether or not we're going to have that presumption of employment or employment status for these platform workers. But as you said, you know, at the beginning that there's a whole other piece of this surrounding data rights and making sure that workers have rights

to the data that the platforms are collecting on them, that workers have rights to the data that the platforms are collecting on them, that there are rules around the data that can be collected on them. Can you talk a bit more about that piece and why that is important? And, you know, I know that Spain kind of started to move on this a couple of years ago. Has there been any progress in the Spanish case on the data rights for platform workers? That's a good question, actually, because my understanding is that the Spanish laws end up being a lot more limited and difficult to access than it was originally hoped when it was passed back in 2021. I lose track of the years, but I think it was 2021 when the Rider law was passed. And basically, the idea within that law,

as well as the employment status, was that union representatives would be able to access the data. First of all, it's difficult to be a union representative for a lot of these workers, right? Because the vast majority are self-employed. Who do you collectively bargain with

if they're still self-employed? I won't go into the whole story of why they're still self-employed in Spain, but basically it's because the platforms, Uber Eats and Glovo the two main platforms are still refusing to employ them despite the passing of the law but I understand that where they have grocery delivery riders who are employed that there is union representatives in some of those warehouses, like dark stores that they operate out of, and that they have tried to access data rights and that sort of thing, but it's quite difficult to do it.

Under current EU law, which is called the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, it is possible for any consumer or worker to submit an application to say, I want you to give me the data you hold on me, right? Now, I've looked at some sort of case studies of workers in Geneva, Uber drivers in Geneva, who have put in GDPR requests and got the information. And it's very, very difficult for those workers to make sense of the data they're given. You know, it's not pretty legible.

But if they have the help of data scientists and stuff like that, they can make use of it. They combine it with other methods of like scraping data and that sort of thing to try to work out. So in Geneva, the case was basically the court found that the workers were actually employees and had to have backdated pay. But how do you decide how much backdated pay you should have?

You have to access the data, right? But Uber controls the data. So Uber said, we owe this much money to these workers. And those workers, with the help of data scientists and a group called personaldata.io, they basically said, here's our true data of what we hold, and we actually hold this much more. So there is some examples in Europe of GDPR already being used to access data and information, but it's quite limited, and it's very difficult for an individual worker to do it. I do think trade unions should be invested more in these sorts of tools.

I think what that really says to me as well, individual worker to do it. I do think trade unions should be invested more in these sorts of tools. I think what that really says to me as well, or really makes clear is the real difference in like the power that the workers have between the platform companies themselves, right? Because there can be a law or there can be a court ruling that says, you have these rights, you can take advantage of these rights, but then the platform companies themselves can completely ignore them, or can take years to even force a law to go through the courts in order to be kind of sorted out there so that they can constantly delay the implementation of these rights that go in favor of the workers if those even exist, right? You know, we look in California where the workers achieved AB5. And then Uber, of course, found ways and the other platform companies through

getting the Prop 22 ballot measure to move forward and kind of deceptively, you know, telling the public what that would be about. But of course, in Spain, where we see them, as you say, you know, not following what the rider's law, I guess, would hope is actually going to happen there and forcing this really long implementation process because they see that as being beneficial to them. Or for example, in the UK, where the Supreme Court found that the workers should be considered this worker status, which is above independent contractor, but then Uber just turned it into basically its own Prop 22 in the UK against what the ruling actually found or what the workers say the ruling has found. And now they've had to go

back to the court again to try to get Uber to actually observe what the Supreme Court said that they should be doing. So it just shows time and again how these companies have the power to be able to do that. And it really speaks to me or really shows me that this is in part, I think, a product of the fact that these companies operate on such a large scale, right? They're not just operating in this one city where the taxi workers that work for a taxi company can unionize and push back against them and try to win particular rights and get a city to regulate what the taxi industry is going to look like. But instead, now you have these companies that operate on a continental level or even a global level that have so much more power and money to just throw at these things to

stop workers from achieving any degree of power or rights or what have you. Absolutely. I think one thing I've learned from looking at these different kind of legislative battles is the implementation is as important as the actual legislation. And if states aren't willing to really act on legislation or aren't resourced, which is a big issue that, you know, Labour inspectorates don't actually have the resources to act on the legislation. Platforms will find ways around it. I think that's part of the business model of these platforms, is to work within legal areas, to find loopholes. They pay expensive corporate lawyers to do that work. So you don't just need to pass legislation. You need to have states which are dedicated to fighting to make it happen.

And I guess you also need unions and workers to push those states as well to act on the legislation. So it doesn't stop when you pass a law. In fact, in some ways, that's just the beginning of the fight to actually hold these companies to account. Absolutely. And I think, as you say, Spain and these other examples really show us that that's the case, right? And really show us how important the implementation side is, not just achieving the law in the first place. Now, obviously, as we've talked about, the Platform Work Directive came up for vote on February 16th and was defeated. You know, as you say, France voted against it and Germany, Estonia and Greece abstained. And this was enough to ensure that the Platform work directive won't move forward,

at least, you know, in this kind of current phase, because that was enough to block it, even though that would have meant about, I think, 65% of the states by population were still in favor of it. And 88% of the states, I think it would have been by number, were still in favor of it. So what does this say about the future of the rights of platform workers in the European Union? You know, you were at this conference last week in Brussels, where unions and platform workers and advocates for the rights of platform workers kind of came together. What are they thinking about what the fight is going to look like moving forward after this vote on the Platform Work Directive at the European Union level?

Yeah, it's interesting because when this initiative for this directive came about, it was part of a kind of broader suite of measures that the EU wanted to take around what are called continuing an economy that works for people, right? Now, in Europe, for decades, we've talked about a European social model, right? That Europe stands out as being a place in the world where there's employment protections for workers, where there's a welfare state to fall back on. That doesn't exist in the United States and many other countries, especially obviously in the global south. That has clearly been eroded over recent times through privatization, austerity, and the rise of things like the gay economy.

So the failure to pass a successful EU directive, I think, is kind of symbolic of the decline of the European social model. It was always a kind of exaggerated thing, right? Because there's always been poverty in Europe. It's not like there's some sort of paradise. Really, really not. But I think it is the case that there was some level of employment predictions for all workers and that you didn't at some point have the level of precarity that you see now. At a kind of broader political level, it should be registered that the EU has failed to

deliver protection and protect the European social model with this law. So in Brussels last week, there was two big conferences, two big platform conferences. The first was a trade union one held by the European Trade Union Institute. And that was like a lot of researchers and academics and that sort of thing. And the second one was the Alternatives to Uberization Forum, which is organized by the left group in the European Parliament. And that's the fourth of those conferences. And that's been kind of key hub for platform workers and activists around europe to meet with you know supportive politicians and that sort of thing and organize so coming just

days after the the defeat of the platform work directive there was a lot of disappointment in the room that was quite clear people were not trying to hide that they were disappointed about the way it went but people were quite determined as well, you know, because as we've just said, it's not just about the legislation, it's about the organization. And basically what the workers committed to out of that conference was that they would establish a permanent network that would operate independently of what's happening at the EU, independently of whether there's a platform or directive or not, that would meet annually, that would coordinate actions, and it would try to maintain what's been built up, which is a network of trade unions and of what's called workers' collectives, you know, grassroots work organisation,

which is kind of organised around this directive across Europe, and they would try to keep that voting. So I think that was a positive thing, the big positive thing to come out of the conference, that the workers and activists that are dedicated to this aren't giving up, they're going to keep fighting, they're going to try to take, if there's no EU law, they'll try to take it to the national level and pursue it there. There's some people who have said after the next European elections that this could come up again, but I think most people I spoke to seem to think that was a dead end.

If it doesn't happen now, then it's not going to happen later because it's expected that the far right is going to do well in the European parliamentary elections and that the balance around this law in the European Parliament will become more unfavorable after European elections. So it's just not seen as like a kind of now or never sort of thing for European law. If not a European law, then, you know, the activists are thinking about how they can go back and fight for a law at the national level. Yeah, and I think that's a really good point. And I did want to bring up the political angle to this as well, right? Because as we have

been having these discussions about platform workers' rights in Europe, you know, whether it was last year or again here, you know, the politics of the various governments involved has been quite important to shaping, you know, their various perspectives on this and whether it's been able to move forward. And so, as you say, it seems unlikely that it would come up again after June, after the European parliamentary elections, because it looks like the right wing and the So I guess my questions are, have any of those member states signaled that they're ready to move forward on a national level to do something if the platform work directive isn't moving forward? And then the second piece of that would be, you know, we know that there is this kind of general shift to the right. It seems to be happening in European politics and with various

national governments. Does that make that more difficult than to achieve? to the right, it seems to be happening in European politics and with various national governments, does that make that more difficult than to achieve? I think probably there would be more chance of passing a directive if certain governments hadn't fallen into the hands of the right wing, right? So Greece is an example of that, I think. Greece, I can't remember what year now, but certainly in the last couple of years, the main right-wing party, New Democracy, won a majority. And that wouldn't have happened if, you know,

I've got lots of criticisms of this main centre-left party in Greece, Syriza. They wouldn't have supported the kind of blocking minority of states on the European Council. So that's happened already. And if the slide to the the right and the far right continues then then we could expect that would continue to happen i'm not aware of any countries saying yet that you know they're going to act on this at the national level i think probably everyone's waiting to see what happens exactly, whether something can be agreed or not. So, you know, to be seen in terms

of that. No, that makes sense. And we'll have to follow that and, you know, read your newsletter to get the updates on what's going on there. You know, as we start to kind of close off our conversation, I wanted to pivot away from the platform work directive a bit, unless you think that there's anything else that people should know about that, to talk a bit about Uber, right? We recently had Uber report its first annual profit that seems to be at least somewhat legitimate, you know, using like proper accounting standards instead of its made up accounting standards. What is your thinking on the state of Uber these days as it reports this first annual profit?

And as you know, it's trying to send this narrative, at least to financial markets, that after 15 years, the model is finally working and it's paying off and it's proving that it's a good business and all this kind of stuff. What is your take on uber well let me first direct people to your newsletter disconnect and where there's an excellent piece exactly about uber's profits and what it says about the company where it's going so you've already said in your newsletter better than i can but what i would say thank you what i would say is that my understanding of how Uber has got to this point of profitability, I mean, for one thing, it's still quite a lot of that profit comes from its equity stakes, right? So let's keep that in mind. It's still very slim profit if you take out those equity stakes. Its operational profit is actually still pretty slim. But what it seems to have managed to do to get there is to massively increase the rate of exploitation of its drivers and riders. The commission takes on every trip has gone up, I think, something like 28%, if I remember correctly. So basically, it's used this new form of payment system, upfront fares, what's called upfront fares, you get to see before you accept

the task, accept the delivery or the journey, how much you'll be paid for it. But you don't have any understanding as a driver or rider why you're being offered that pay rate. It's not related to the distance traveled. It's not related to the time it takes to do the chip. And basically, Uber has an algorithmic way of determining those pay rates, which include behavioral patterns of the drivers. Now, I did a piece just after Uber announced their Q4 2023 results, where Dara Khosrowshahi had an investor call, and he was asked about upfront fares. And he said, you know, we're continuing to roll this out based on the behavioral pattern of drivers and it's about finding

the right driver for the right price for the right chip, right? And I tried to contact Uber to see if they would deny that that's what they meant. They based their pay rates based on the prior personal data history of each driver. They didn't respond to that. I've had some people respond to my article by saying that, you know, that it's not true, they mean something else. But actually, I think Dara Khosrowshahi's statement is crystal clear. I don't really see how you can interpret it in any other way.

It's absolutely clear that they do do this, what Professor Veena Debal's called algorithmic wage discrimination between, you know, different drivers getting the same chip for a different price so that's how uber have got there in terms of what it means for the company's long-term future it's obviously done this share buyback scheme now they're trying to boost the the share value even more it looks like data kushrahi is going to cash in with his big 50 million bonus. So it's good news for Dara. But I still don't think, I mean, if they continued at the current rates of profits,

it would take a long, long, long time for Uber shareholders to make their money back. So I still don't think the company is some sort of shining example of profitability. And I also think that if economic circumstances change, then we've already talked about how the macroeconomic environment can affect Uber's model. And of course, if regulations come in, which increase the security for drivers and riders, that will affect Uber's profitability. So I think it's too early to say Uber's defeated its critics. You know, it's going to be a profitable company for the long term. Like, let's see how it develops over the next few years.

I obviously completely agree with that. I think just to kind of put it into context for listeners, Uber reported a profit of $1.9 billion US, of course, in 2023. 1.6 billion of that, as you were saying, comes from equity stakes that it holds in other companies. So the actual profit itself that it claims to have made is, you know, in the 300-ish million mark. And over the past 10 years, it's burned over $31 billion to fund its model. One of the things that kind of stood out to me is obviously on the one hand, you know, what you were saying about Kostra Shahi's admission that they are looking at the behavioral patterns of drivers. And I feel like, you know, to me, that really sounded like this guy is excited, like things are going well, and he like accidentally let this slip out or like made

the proper admission of what the company is actually doing after all this time. But then there's the other piece of this where I feel like the narrative doesn't reflect what is actually going on here. And also the actions that Uber is taking, like as we were saying, the profit is quite small that it actually made after all of this time. And it's a, it's an annual profit, not even a quarterly profit, right? When we're talking about if it was 300 million quarterly profit, that would be a bit more impressive than like for the whole year, even still not very impressive, but still. On top of that, you know, they say that they've made this $300 million, but now Kosa Shahi is talking about a $7 billion share buyback. Like where is this money coming from? There was the talk of a potential dividend,

which is not coming for now. It could come in the future. And then, of course, since this has happened, he's been making investments in different companies. He's been talking up Uber's business in India, saying that he wants to massively expand it there, which is, I think, going to be a difficult market for them to make very much money in. On one hand, the narrative that Uber is amazing and it's doing great and that it's doing this massive share buyback and that it's it's making all these investments and growing its business because everything is going great doesn't line up to me with we made 300 million dollars last year and and now that is apparently a big change like i don't know these things are not working for me yeah i think you're right and i think that uber there's a lot of triumphalism right now around uber there's a lot of in the

financial press they're reporting it and you know people saying of course the ship has turned the ship around and all that sort of thing and i think it might be premature to add in one thing about this because it's also worth thinking about the wider sector, right, that they're operating in, you know, food delivery and retail. A lot of the other companies are really struggling still. That does give you an indication that this is a sector where it's hard to make a lot of money. It always traditionally has been. If you take one example, the German multinational delivery hero,

which has brands like Glovo, like Foodpanda in Asia, Foodora in countries like Austria and Sweden. Their stock prices hit the floor recently after they announced that they were selling their stake in Deliveroo, the British food delivery platform, under the value of those shares because they need to raise money. Glovo, one of Deliveroo's main brands who we've already spoken about, they are now telling the courts in Spain that they can't pay their fines for bogus self-employment because they have no money

and they're in an extreme financial situation and their parent company, Deliveroo, has no money. And I don't know why the courts are doing this, but they're letting them suspend the payment of the fines. So that's just to give an insight into, people might think that these sectors somehow are kind of out of the woods, and it's like a kind of stable financial situation.

Not from where I'm looking in Europe, it's not, especially in food delivery. I think it's still not clear to me that app-based food delivery is a profitable endeavor. I still think that it's very, very difficult. So certainly the focus of my reporting on location, gig work, food delivery, and retail, it's still a sector that is, I think, financially vulnerable. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think that's helpful to have the European

perspective on that, right? Because one of the things about the North American market is that it's so dominated by Uber and what Uber does. Of course, there are a few different delivery platforms, but like with ride hailing, the only real alternative is Lyft for the most part, and they're not doing particularly well either. So Uber does really seem to stand out here. And I think that also kind of backs up the point that the rhetoric that we're getting about how Uber is doing does not back the reality of how that company is looking. And I think part of that relates to just wanting to pump up the share price, wanting to make

things look good on paper, in part so people can get out, so Kostor Shahi can get his bonus and be able to take advantage of the stock options that he has. But also, I'm sure that there are some investors in there that have been with the company for a long time that see this as an opportunity to finally cash out when the share price is high, because it has gone up significantly in recent months, and in particular, since these numbers were reported around its kind of quarterly profit. I think the other question I have for you around Uber is really around its kind of future focused endeavors, like what it's trying to do in order to cement its

power. And one of the things that has always stood out to me and that I feel like has been under focused on is the growing number of deals that it's signing with taxi companies around the world in order to bring taxi companies onto its app and then kind of control the mediation of rides to taxi companies. I wonder what you make of what it's doing there and the influence that it gives it then over taxi companies in various markets. There's no doubt about it that that's part of their strategy in Europe now

is to bring the taxi sector onto the app. They've achieved that in parts of Italy, for example. They're trying to do that in the UK with the black cabs. I think the black cabs in London are resisting that so far. And this is all part of Uber becoming the transport super app, you know, where you go to Uber not just for retail or food delivery, for your flights, for, you know, anything to do with transport, bus tickets.

That's what they want to sell it as. But to achieve that, certainly in Europe to achieve that, you would have to convince governments to tap into the public sector. Basically, municipal, local bus services and publicly owned chain services, which is still most of the continent still publicly owned, not all of it, they would go onto Uber's app. And that's a difficult sell for Uber. From where I'm sitting in Europe, I don't see the transport super app being realized anytime soon.

I think the other thing they're doing in Europe is they're pushing the idea that Uber's green, you know, that it's supporting electric vehicles, reducing carbon emissions. There's no actual basis for that. In fact, there's good evidence to suggest retail is not a very green mode of transport because the cars drive around whilst they're looking for work and use up petrol. And there's studies to suggest that Uber is less green than

if you owned your own car. But they're trying to push the argument of sustainability with the EU and to get access funds. I think part of Uber's long-term model is to tap into public infrastructure. And there's some cases in some parts of Europe where they're managing to do that, but there's still a long way off that. I think that is a potential model where Uber could be sustainably profitable

in the long term if they somehow manage to get their hands on public infrastructure. But that's still an uphill battle. Absolutely. And the stuff you say around sustainability makes a ton of sense because we're seeing that argument in North America as well, where they're trying to present themselves as green and going electric and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, mainly putting the cost of that on the drivers, but making it seem like it's this great kind of corporate thing that they're up to. The one other thing I would want to ask you about as we kind of close this off is I know that there were a series of strikes recently in Europe. Can you talk to us a bit about what is going on there

and what these workers are demanding when they're going on continue on every Friday in bank holidays until not just Uber eats, but all the food delivery platforms give them a pay rise. One of the remarkable things about it is it was completely grassroots organized. So it started with a Brazilian community of riders spread to other communities. But whilst being grassroots organized,

it was extremely well organized. So they had in every locality, they had maps where they looked, where do we want to have pickets? What restaurants do we want to go to? What dark kitchens do we want to shut down? They had a captain in every place to kind of make sure that each locality was well organized and that sort of thing and all this was organized just through whatsapp groups just riders themselves organized themselves in whatsapp groups and doing it and it was quite remarkable to see that and the effect of the

strike was absolutely huge so uber eats and delivery they started offering riders massively higher rates for deliveries because they were struggling to get a supply. So they were trying to use higher rates for deliveries to kind of break the strike. There was on social media, there was customers complaining that they couldn't access the app. There was evidence that food was piling up in lots of restaurants.

So really exciting to see that, that a strike in the food delivery sector could be so powerful. It just basically seemed to come out of nowhere and have a real effect on the platforms. And it just shows you that, you know, we're talking about legislation, talking about employment status, unions and all that at the end of the day all workers need to fight the the corner is a lot of determination and a whatsapp group or you know it could be signal it could be on telegram whatever you know like workers are capable of fighting for their interests even regardless of what the politicians do yeah take the digital tools and and use them against the bosses of the tech companies that have created them. You know, I think that's great to hear. And it's I think it's a great story

to end off this conversation around the defeat of this platform work directive. But we can clearly see that that doesn't mean that the fight for platform work rights in Europe, including the UK, is over. You know, this will continue to move forward. And these actions like we've seen in the UK with these strikes will be an important part of pushing these companies to do something greater. But hopefully this also means not just having to rely on the workers to do these individual actions, but also forcing governments to finally hold these companies to account. If it's not on the European level, then on the national level, in order to make sure that, as you say, that this model that erodes kind of the social fabric and the employment

rights that workers have had for a long time is not able to take hold in the way that, you know, it seems to be working and trying to do so. So Ben, it's always fantastic to speak with you to, you know, get an update on what's going on over on your side of the pond. Thanks so much for taking the time. Great to join you, Pat. Ben Ray is the coordinator of the Gay Economy Project and the author of Scotland After Britain. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Eric Wickham and transcripts are by Bridget Palou Fry. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical

perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening. Make sure to come back next week. Thank you.