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

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

Paris Marx is joined by Ben Wray to discuss the state of the gig economy in Europe, including the Spanish riders law, recent court ruling on employment status in the Netherlands, strikes in Germany and Greece, and the forthcoming platform workers directive from the European Commission.Ben Wray is a coordinator at the Gig Economy Project and a freelance journalist. Follow Ben on Twitter at @Ben_Wray1989.🚨 T-shirts are now available!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. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.Also mentioned in this episode:Sign up for the Gig Economy Project’s newsletter for updates on what’s going on in Europe.A Dutch court ruled that Uber drivers are employees.Spain’s Riders Law came into effect, but the companies didn’t comply.Glovo dark supermarkets workers in Barcelona went on strike in August.E-food workers in Greece went on strike and won a huge victory.Gorillas fired workers for wildcat strikes.The European Commission will deliver platform work regulations in December. It’s been meeting a lot with gig companies.Support the show

There's been a massive growth in the sector, but there hasn't been a fast growth in improvement in workers' conditions. So I think we're going to see a lot more actions when it comes to food delivery workers. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and today my guest is Ben Ray. Ben is a coordinator at the Gig Economy Project and a freelance journalist who's written for a number of publications, including Tribune and Jacobin. He lives in the Basque Country in the north of Spain. As part of this month's series on the gig economy around the world, I talked to Ben about what's been happening in Europe with the gig economy and gig economy workers, because there have been a number of stories recently of developments and things happening in Europe

that I think are worth discussing. And so in this conversation, we touch on the rider's law that was passed in Spain that not only said food delivery workers are employees, but importantly gave unions access to the algorithms behind these apps so they can properly bargain on behalf of the workers. There are also strikes and protests that have been happening around the continent and rulings on the status of workers. The European Commission is also putting together regulations of its own that would govern the gig economy across the European Union, and that could be really significant for workers, or at the same time, it could be a step backward if those regulations reflect what the gig companies

want to see. So we cover a lot of ground in this conversation, but I think it'll give you a good overview of what's been happening in Europe in particular. And I would note that we don't talk a whole lot about what's been happening in the UK, because I'll have a specific interview on what's been happening there later in this interview series. I should also point out, you know, before we get into the interview, I have found that the Gig Economy Project is a great resource for finding out about what's been happening with the gig economy in Europe. And they have a newsletter as well that comes out every week with updates. And so I'll include a link to subscribe to that in the show notes if you're interested in doing so. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, a group of

left-wing podcasts that are made in Canada. And you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com. If you enjoy this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, or you can share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. Every episode of Tech Won't Save Us, including all of the episodes in this interview series, are free for everybody because people like you support the work that goes into making the show every single week. If you enjoy the show, if you feel like you learned from it, you can join patrons like Jamie from Ontario and Steven Pellicer from Atlanta by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and becoming a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Ben, welcome to tech won't save us. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to chat

with you. I've been, you know, trying to learn a bit more about what's been going on in the gig economy in Europe for a while. And I recently stumbled upon the newsletter of the Gig Economy Project, which you work with. And that's been really helpful for me, I think, to gain some insight into that. So I'm really looking forward to chatting with you today about what's been going on in Europe. So I was hoping that we could start just by getting you to give us kind of an overview of what the gig economy looks like in Europe. And if there's any particular things that should be called out about, you know, what's been going on over there. So I think if we start off with the kind of big macro picture of the gig economy in Europe, around about, it's very difficult, the statistics are not very reliable, but something like 11% of European workers have engaged in gig work at some point in time. That gives you

a general impression of the size of the gig economy in Europe. It's very dependent on where you are. So, for example, if you're in Romania, in Eastern Europe, where internet connection is low, you don't really have the digital infrastructure to support the gig economy as we would describe it and understand it. So it's very small market size there. In other countries like Germany, France, to a degree Spain, the gig economy is much larger. So it's very uneven, the growth of the gig economy in Europe. And you have it split into really two types of workers, I would argue. Online cloud workers who can do the work from anywhere in the world, who tend to be a slightly higher income workers. They may be doing things like legal services.

They may be doing translations, that sort of thing. They're about 30% of the economy in Europe. Slightly bigger than that is the on-location workers. Retail, food delivery tend to be very low paid, tend to be very precarious, tend to be younger workers. And they're about one third of the giga-korn workforce in Europe. So that gives you a general idea of the kind of parameters of it. Probably the key thing to know about that's different from the North American experience right now is there's a lot happening with the question of employment status, because really this is a determinant factor in terms of what rights these gig workers have access to. If you're self-employed in Europe, you really don't have access to many workers' rights at all.

You don't have holiday pay, pension, minimum wage, rights against unfair dismissal, social security payments, you don't have any of that. You don't even have the right to collectively bargain, or at least it's not clear that you do. There was an important case recently in Denmark where a domestic work platform called Hilfer had agreed a collective bargaining agreement with a union called 3F. But the Danish competition and consumer authority said that this was in breach of EU antitrust laws, which are supposed to be about preventing monopolies. It's competition law. But because they were self-employed,

they couldn't continue with the collective bargaining agreement. So if you're self-employed, I guess, similar probably to North America, you're with very few rights. And the majority of gig workers are still self-employed in Europe, although that's starting to change. So there's been important legal cases in the Netherlands, the UK, not in the EU, but there's an important legal case in the UK, in Spain, where they've basically revealed that Uber drivers are workers and therefore entitled to the rights of workers. Only in the UK has Uber responded to that by hiring Uber drivers as workers. So when these court cases happen, it's not necessarily the case that the platforms then respond by just, okay, we accept, we agree, we're going to do

whatever the courts say. So there's a requirement then for the politicians to act, you know, for it to be regulatory action at that level. And we are starting to see things happen in terms of regulations in Europe. The most significant cases in Spain, they've introduced what's called dividers law. We'll talk about that a bit more later, but basically that means that there's a presumption, a legal presumption that food delivery couriers are employees and the onus is then on companies to show otherwise. The other thing that's happened in Europe is what's called third-party status, where there's been a workers' role between self-employed and employee called worker.

And this is the case in Spain, for example. They have this. But the problem with this is then the platforms move the boundaries and say, well, our employees aren't workers. They're still self-employed because of X, Y, Z. So it doesn't really actually solve the problem. And the way in which the problem is going to be addressed is EU-wide legislation. And that now looks like it's going to be happening at the end of December.

But I guess that gives you a very brief overview. I would say the gig economy is quite uneven development across Europe. You can't say that there's a general development you can speak of. It depends on what countries you're talking about. And very uneven in terms of regulation. So for example, Uber in France is very big because there's very limited regulations. Whereas Uber in Barcelona, which we're going to talk a little bit about as well, almost doesn't exist because it's been regulated out of Barcelona's market. So it's a very fragmented picture in Europe in terms of regulations, in terms of the growth of these platforms. Yeah, you know, I think that's a fantastic overview of what's been going on in Europe,

what the state of things are, you know, what you're talking about with the self-employment status, I think is very similar to what is the case in North America, where these workers have very few rights, can't even collectively bargain. In Canada, there was a court case a few years ago to force Foodora, which was one of the big platforms to allow its workers to collectively bargain, even though they were contractors. And as a result of that, you know, the platform just left the country instead of, you know, working with a union, right? But you know, what you're talking about there, and you made so many important points that I want to draw from in the conversation. But I think to start, you know, you were talking about the employment classification piece of this, and you mentioned the ruling in

the Netherlands. We've seen the ruling in the UK where the Supreme Court ruled that these self-employed workers should be classified as worker, this third category, but then Uber didn't exactly follow what the Supreme Court said that should look like. So what do we see in the Netherlands case? Is this a third category or is this saying these workers should actually be employees with employment status? Employees with employment status, but Uber is going to appeal the decision. So it's not over the court process yet. So we'll have to see what happens with the appeal. Usually what these platforms do is they try to drag out the court proceedings as long as possible before

they have to actually do anything. Even when there has been court decisions which are final verdicts, often the companies still don't respond because they would prefer to pay fines, for example, than to change their business model. In Spain, there's a good example of this, where Glovo, the largest food delivery platform in Spain, has been fined more than 50 times by the labor inspectorate in Spain for breaching the laws on labor rights for Glovo workers because they're still self-employed. And they just pay the fine, you know?

So there's a necessity for governments if they're really serious about, you know these platforms to bring them in them into line to step up the compliance you know to force them into compliance it's not just about regulation it's also about compliance as well again it's something that i think we see everywhere you know not just in europe with these companies always you know, not just in Europe with these companies, always, you know, taking it back to the courts, always appealing, always trying to delay any kind of ruling or law that would benefit the workers in any kind of way. It's just the case all over, you know, when you see it happening. Yeah, absolutely. The onus is on governments, I think, to get more

tough about how to deal with these companies, you know. Sometimes you get the feeling that the governments want to just give them a slap on the wrist, but they really aren't serious about changing the business model, you know, because they don't want to intervene that way. In the neoliberal era, governments aren't used to forcing companies to change their business model, you know. So there's a tension there between what the courts are saying, the governments, the platforms, and the pressure from below for these changes to happen, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, speaking of pressure from below, I wanted to touch on, some different examples of where workers are pushing back, I guess, against this model

in the EU. And in particular, when you're talking about, you know, government action in Spain, we saw that in particular. So last week, I believe it was you were in Barcelona, and you went to the strike that was being or this this action, I'm not sure if strike is the best way to describe it, that was happening in Barcelona, with this union that has been kind of pushing back against the ride hailing companies. Can you talk a little bit about what you saw in Barcelona and what the significance of that kind of action was? Yeah, so what I saw was what they called a slow march where basically the taxis go on the road.

They drive extremely slowly through the main arteries of the city, beeping their horns. There's maybe about 2,000 or something like that, taxis doing this. So it slows down the traffic throughout the city. And basically it was a protest, essentially, against what they see as the creeping uberization of private hire in the city.

Now, these drivers are taxi drivers, so they don't work for platforms. They're self-employed and they work via the local authority to get their taxi license. And basically, since Barcelona is a unique example, really, in Europe, where these taxi drivers, they got organized in a new union called Elite Taxi Association in 2013, I think. And since then, they have organised, you know, huge resistance to the incursion of Uber, Cabify, the other private hire platforms into the city. They've blockaded airports.

They've done indefinite strikes. They've really been extremely militant, extremely consistent in their actions. They tried to put pressure on regulators to enforce rules which make it difficult for a company with a business model like Uber to operate. And Uber basically don't operate right now. They left the Barcelona market in 2019. They've then re-entered this year in March, but the re-entry was kind of botched because they were still not compliant with the local regulations. And they haven't re-entered as Uber taxis on the street. They basically re-entered by saying, taxi drivers, licensed taxi drivers can use our app within their taxis. So they've really limited down the Uber model to try to get back into this market.

Even then, they're still struggling to comply with the rules. It's very hard to order an Uber in Barcelona. So I went to Barcelona primarily to speak to the leaders of the taxi union to see this demonstration because as a unique case, most European cities, you can easily order an Uber. Even within Spain, you can easily do so. It's the regulations are regionally based rather than nationally based. So it just shows you what organization, you know, strong organization is capable of achieving, you know, when workers are willing to take serious action.

You're speaking of the action by the taxi workers. I remember, I don't know, I think it was three, maybe four years ago, I was in Barcelona, and there was something similar going on at the same time where, you know, the taxi drivers had filled like, you know, the main streets and main squares with the taxis to kind of protest against, as you're saying, the Uberization and the kind of incursion of Uber into the city and, you know, into their livelihoods and their market, right? You know, you were talking about the specific regional regulations and how that effectively kind of keeps Uber out of Barcelona. But in Spain, I think a lot of people will be aware that the rider's law was passed earlier this year,

and I believe came into force in August. And that is kind of a national law. Can you talk a bit about what that law is and what it does? And how would these workers feel about a law like that? Well, that's a very interesting question, how they feel, because there's a lot of polarization amongst the food delivery carriers about the law. So just to explain the basics of the law, before this law, the onus was on a food delivery worker to prove that they were an employee of, for example, Global or Uber Eats. It was them that had to go to the courts, cost a lot of money, takes a lot of time. And even when they won the case, as many of these food delivery workers have won the case in Spain,

the company said, well, it only relates to this one worker. You know, it's not a precedent for all the workers. So obviously this is a problem. So what the Valdes Law does is flip that around. So the onus is therefore on the company to prove that they're self-employed and the presumption is that they are employees. That's the first part of the law. The second part is that trade unions, which represent the food delivery workers, have the right to access the company algorithms so that they can have the information necessary

to collectively bargain on their behalf. Because if you don't know what the algorithms are doing, it's very, very hard to make claims about what the wages should be, how, you know, the hours they should work and so on and so forth. There is actually now a collective bargaining agreement being negotiated in Spain between Just Eat, which is one of the main food delivery platforms, and two big Spanish unions. So there's a potential there with that agreement, if that comes to pass, that collective bargaining agreement,

probably one of the first times in the gig economy anywhere where a trade union will be able to collectively bargain with the information from the algorithm about what the workers are actually doing, the data on the workers. So there's a lot of potential in it, but there's problems as well, quite big problems. The first and most important thing is the response to the platforms has been, well, there's been different responses. Just Eat, as I mentioned, they have agreed to go along with it. So all the workers are employed.

However, they're mainly employed through subcontractors. And subcontractors are notorious for downward pressure on conditions and wages. And there was nothing in the riders' law which said the workers should be hired directly by the platform. So that's another problem. Uber Eats have also moved to that model of subcontracting. Deliveroo, the UK, partly owned by Amazon food delivery platform, has abandoned the Spanish sector altogether. They've just walked away and said, these new laws were not ingested anymore. So it was capital flight and in global which is the biggest one in Spain the biggest food delivery platform they responded in an

interesting way they've hired 20% of their workers another 80% they've changed the algorithm to try to make it seem like they're more self-employed than they were previously. So, for example, when you have a job, a task, to make a delivery, you can now choose if you want to bid for that task 30% more than the baseline offer of what that will cost or 30 percent less and what this does is it creates like an auction system and a competition between the the couriers and obviously if you want to get the task the delivery you're going to go lower cheaper you're competing with other drivers so it's an even worse system that they've created and they're claiming that this proves that it's self-employed and so on so forth it almost certainly doesn't prove that because the key thing about whether they're self-employed

or not is a relationship to the digital tool. Does the digital tool basically command them? Is the digital tool their manager? That's what the Supreme Court in Spain said was the reason why they were workers. So there's now going to be more court cases about whether the global system proves that they're self-employed so that that's one part of what's going on the other thing about what you said about the response of workers the reason why it is very divided is because there's a movement that's developed called you're so autonomous i am autonomous right there's a group of workers, mainly migrant workers and often undocumented migrant workers,

who are saying, no, we don't want to be considered employees. We want to be self-employed. Now, why are they saying that? There's a couple of reasons. One is for many undocumented workers, the only way they can get access to the algorithm is if they don't have to make an application to be an employee. So they're in a situation of extreme precariousness. And these platforms play on that precariousness.

They know that a lot of their riders are undocumented workers. So they've tried to play on that to say, you know, this is best for you. You'll make more money this way. And they've kind of built astrotough movements of riders. They've funded them financially. It's been proven by unions that the companies like Glovo have funded these groups, these astrotough movements to support these riders to make their protests. So there's a divide because, of course, the trade union movement is arguing no with their employees as well.

So it's interesting because you can see how the platforms, when they're fighting back against a law like this, can mobilize sections of the workforce behind a kind of reactionary idea, playing on the workers' precariousness, playing on their fears. The other thing the company said was, if this law comes in, we're going to have to deactivate half of the riders from the app because we won't be able to afford it. So they played on the idea that they were all going to lose their jobs as well. So there's been a lot of tension about the law, and Europe is looking at this law and saying, does this work? Should we follow it in other European countries? So it's a really important case of

Eider's Law. And we don't know yet. I mean, it's only just coming to force. We'll see if it works effectively. A lot depends on how tough the government is in enforcing the law. Yeah, that sounds fascinating, though, you know, the division that exists over the law, but also, you know, how gaining access to the algorithms and seeing how that works gives the unions the information that they need to properly collectively bargain. And I guess we'll see what is going to come out of that in the Just Eat case. I was wondering, you talked about the migrant workers in particular and the movement that they've formed.

Is there any attempt to try to address the concerns of those workers, you know, if there is a movement to an employment model? Because naturally, I guess the undocumented workers in particular are protected and things like that. But I feel like on the other side, there also needs to be a consideration for these people who don't have much power in this whole debate, I guess, and who would probably be the most impacted by it. So is there any kind of debate that's happening around that? Yes. I mean, there's a campaign called Raiders for Rights, in Spanish, Riders de Rechos, and they are trying to promote the idea that, you know, immigrants should be supported to get their documentation, it shouldn't be so difficult to get the documentation, and the app should be employed because they have been working as a worker. According to the Supreme Court in Spain, the court case was a couple of years ago, they already are working as workers and therefore should be employed.

Therefore, if they were deactivated overnight, that would be an unfair dismissal or it should be an unfair dismissal. So these arguments are being had and there's a big debate about it. I do think you're right that it's easy for people who are in a more comfortable situation to look at this and say they should be employees, why aren't they employees? But if you are a migrant, let's say you don't speak the language that well, you come into a new country and you can get access to work literally just by signing up to an app so the barriers to entry for a job like this is extremely low then it's understandable why you would do that rather than trying to go through a laborious process of applying for a job and that sort of thing and i think we have to be attentive to that fact so um, it should be the case that people should be able to be hired

and it should be easy for people to do that. There should be language facilities to support them to do that and to adapt to that different scenario. The other thing about it that's worth saying is the technology that they're using on platforms platforms which allows for easy access for for for workers to to get on this work you know that technology is a good thing if applied in a different way you know there is examples of platform cooperatives in in europe small examples are not competing with these big companies but our local a local level, right across Europe, I think there's about 70 or 80 examples of food delivery co-ops.

And this technology could be used to make it easier for migrant workers to work whilst protecting their living standards, being able to be paid a decent income, all the things that the platforms aren't doing. So I think you're right. I think it's important that the workers movement as a whole is attentive to why some people in the sector might be nervous about the idea of having to be an employee. Yeah. You know, I don't know the specific demographics in Europe and in Spain, but I feel like often when you look at, you know, the platform work, usually, you know, migrants and people like that are disproportionately represented in those jobs, right?

Massively, yeah. Yeah. And so, like, as I said, I think naturally, we need to think about, you know, these broader kind of debates about employment law and ensuring that, you know, we're not letting these companies kind of bid down the kind of standard of employment across the economy. But as we're thinking about that, I think it also presents these broader questions that even go beyond this when we're thinking about migration, immigration policy, all these other things that have come up around it. Yeah, no, I totally agree. You know, I totally agree. in Berlin, but also in Greece, you know, where workers are really pushing back against this model and I guess winning gains, I guess, from the companies or better recognition.

Can you talk a little bit about the workers' actions that have been happening in places like that? And I guess their significance when we think about, you know, the worker organizing in response to the platform economy. Yes, I think there's been a major growth in resistance and strikes, protests from gig economy workers over the past year. There's examples all over Europe. The Italians have had a riders' strike in Spain. In Barcelona as well, there's been an important strike of dark supermarket delivery workers.

One of the first times a big union has represented riders anywhere in Europe. Usually these workers are represented by grassroots unions. The two examples you speak of are, I think, particularly fascinating. Starting in Greece, two weeks ago, the main food delivery platform in Greece is called eFood. It's owned by a German multinational delivery company called Delivery Hero. And they decided on the back of the centre-right Greek government's new legislation to do with platform workers to try to push the workers off short-term contracts. They were on three-month fixed-term contracts that just kept getting renewed all the time. So they wanted to push them off that and only hire them on a false self-employed

basis. This led to an uproar, boycott e-food campaigns, it went viral on Greek social media, thousands of people deleted the app, their customer rating on Google went from 4.5 stars to like one star. And then the workers got some confidence from that. They realized they had public support. They organized a big strike, biggest strike ever in Greece in the food delivery sector. There's great pictures online of thousands of red e-food workers protesting together.

And basically the company caved in to the workers' demands. So not only were they allowed to stay on contracts, so having them go and self-employed, but the contracts were made permanent. So now they don't have to worry every three months about whether their contract's going to be renewed. So that was a really fantastic victory and probably one of the most impressive victories I've seen. There's also quite a funny thing.

They won the strike on the first day of strike action, but they had a second day prepared two days later. They had already won the demands, but they decided to go ahead with the second day of strike action just so the bosses know who's in charge now, you know, just to kind of lay a marker down and say, look, we're going to keep fighting. So that was a remarkable case. The other one is with a company called Gorillas. Now, this company, Gorillas, was only established last spring.

So it's a very new company, but it's the fastest growth of a European startup in history. So it's already got a valuation of over $3 billion. Huge amounts of finance capital went into this Berlin-based company. And it's basically a super-fast grocery delivery company.

Their slogan is, they can get groceries to your house quicker than you can. You know, it's like, that's the concept. And they hire the workers directly. So the workers are employed. There's so many problems with the equipment that they get.

They get asked to deliver stuff that's extremely heavy. So they get back pain. The management doesn't pay their wages on time. The company is not very professional, it's not properly set up for the speed of growth that it's gone through. And in Berlin, what the workers there did was they just set up their own collective. So they didn't join any other union, they just set up their own Gorillas Workers Collective, very active on Twitter, you can check it out, Gorillas Workers.

And they started organ organizing wildcat strikes so they would just literally decide one day we're going to blockade these dark stores where the food is prepared for for delivery so they can't be delivered until the company agrees that you know they're going to get us proper rain jackets for going out in the rain or you know they had very practical sort of demands that they had and these wildcard strikes they went on of course during july there was a pause for a couple of months and now just over the past week they've started up again i think the spark for it was one of the riders who was unionizing was was fired and so that's and i think they've spread as well to other German cities now. First, it was just in Berlin. I think it's also in Cologne as well now. And, you know, just totally bottom up these strikes. Germany's not seen wildcat strikes like this in a long, long time. So

it's been a thing that the whole German media has become interested in. The company is becoming under a lot of pressure. Its financial investors start doubting whether this is, you know, are we investing in the right horse? Are we investing in the winning horse here? Because it's clearly been shown to be a badly managed company. So it's just a couple of examples of how actually these workers do have quite a lot of power and they're capable of exercising that power in very creative and innovative ways and I think we're only going to see these kind of actions grow more and more

especially as we come out of the pandemic workers are going to feel more confident. I mean food delivery sector in Europe the number of workers who are working in the food delivery sector has doubled since the pandemic began because obviously more people want to have the food delivered at home and so there's been a massive growth very very fast growth in the sector but you know there hasn't been a fast growth in improvement in workers conditions so i think we're going to see a lot more uh a lot more actions when it comes to food delivery workers, but there's been some exciting stuff. Yeah, you know, it's great to hear about that bottom-up action and, you know, especially winning in Greece, improvements for the workers there. I was interested, you know, as you were

talking about that, I was thinking about how in the United States there were changes to the labour laws, you know, over a number of decades that limited what official unions or recognized unions could actually do in terms of strikes and pushing back and things like that. And that's why these new rider or gig worker organizations that have come up in New York, in California, places like that have kind of had more tools that they could use in terms of wildcat strikes and things like that, though I think it's happened to a lesser degree in the United States. But that like a professional union, or if they were officially a recognized union under the US labor law wouldn't be able to do. I was wondering in the EU, is there anything like that as well, where because these are kind of bottom up, and kind of gig workers organizing in this way, if that offers them more opportunities to kind of bottom up and kind of gig workers organizing in this way if that offers them more opportunities to kind of push back on the companies that they might not have if they were

officially unionized i think that's right i think if you're a big union you can be fined for not going through the official processes of calling a strike you know you're not following the regulated process for it but they can't find a twitter group you know, you're not following the regulatory process for it. But they can't fine a Twitter group, you know. You're organising that grassroots sort of way is difficult because who do you sanction? You know, they don't have money. There's no one really to fine. So, yes, I think that these grassroots models

do offer the ability to get round certain anti-union laws, you know, and restrictions on what unions can do. You know, it's one of those things with unions and the gig economy whereby there's good and bad sides to the grassroots side of it. You know, a lot of the best stuff that's happening is grassroots unions who are doing it, but they do lack resources.

It's difficult for them to scale up in the same way as big unions. I mentioned the example in Barcelona of a big union in Spain, you know, getting in and organising there. And there is signs that that's, you know, helped those workers to get things started and going. So big unions take it seriously, it can be good. But I think it's important to mention bad examples as well, you know, of union practice in this sense.

I think there's some in the US, but in the UK, the GMB union was the first to come to a recognition agreement with Uber in the world. Now, that sounds great, the union's got a recognition agreement, that means Uber takes the union seriously, basically. But the problem is the terms of that recognition agreement are pretty weak it doesn't include collective bargaining on wages which really if you're a union collective bargaining on wages is is your bread and butter you know that's fundamental to being a union the problem is that uber now use the fact they've got that relationship

with GMB to basically say, because there's other unions, there's more gas unions who organise Uber workers, and there was an Uber strike last week amongst those grassroots unions. They say, well, forget these grassroots unions because, look, we're good employees, we've got a relationship with GMB. So they use the relationship with the big union as an excuse to say, ignore these smaller

unions. So they try to encourage the drivers into this bigger union that have this cosy relationship with. So that's problematic in my view. If big unions are moving into this sector in a way which is all about packs with the platform at the top rather than building the strength of the workers on the bottom.

I think that's going to be a big problem. You know, it's not going to help develop struggle in the sector. Yeah, you know, I the workers to unionize, but have them still be independent contractors and kind of restrict the things that they could actually bargain on. So I don't think that developed to the point where that happened. But there were definitely conversations happening about it. So yeah, I think that's a really good point. Now, I wanted to move on to the broader level, I guess, because we're talking about what's happening in specific countries. You know, Spain has brought in this

riders law, there's other developments happening around the European Union around Europe. But the EU Commission is also considering regulation of the gig economy itself that would kind of apply across the block of countries. So can you talk a bit about what the Commission is is considering and what the kind of effects of that might be if that moves forward? Yeah, so just to explain the commission a little bit. So the EU, the way it's structured is basically the commission operates as the body that designs legislation. It's not an elected body, it's essentially unelected technocrats. And they design the legislation. And that legislation needs to be ratified by the EU Council, which basically represents the member states, the different heads of the different governments, and by the parliament, the elected MEPs for the European Parliament, who can put stuff on the agenda, but don't actually have the power to design the legislation. So what the EU Commission does is really important in this sense. So they're designing a platform workers' directive.

And basically, the reason why they've had to do that is because of the fragmentation across Europe. The fragmentation across Europe isn't necessarily good for platforms because they have to have different approaches in every single different country. There's 27 different countries within the European Union. So they're responding to the Supreme Court verdicts in different countries and saying, right, we're going to have to legislate on it. What is the legislation going to look like? The EU Parliament has been very, very clear that what it wants is something along the lines of what you see in Spain, where there's a presumption of employment amongst, not just, see in Spain it's just food delivery workers, but platform workers as a whole.

That's actually a major limitation of the Spanish law, that it's just food delivery workers. But for platform workers, gig economy workers in general, there's a presumption of employment in those sectors. Now, will the EU Commission do this? Brussels is famous for the power of corporate lobbying. And we've been doing some work on the gig economy project and looking at the amount of lobbying meetings that the big platform companies are having with the EU commissioners who are responsible for this legislation. And it's a lot. They seem to be in there meeting them all the bloody time. So that would make you worry, you know, about whether the legislation is going to be, you know, something positive or not. The signs are good. You know, the things that

the commissioner has said in response to the EU Parliament have been good. But we'll just have to wait until 8th of December to find out exactly what it's going to be. But it is important because as soon as this is introduced, this becomes the standard for all 27 member states. So it kind of overrides all the domestic legislation that exists in Spain, France, and so on. So it'll be a very important moment in terms of workers' rights

and the gay economy in Europe. But we'll have to wait and see whether the power of the platforms, they spend a lot of money on lobbying in Brussels. It's a big focus for them. Whether their lobbying power will be resisted by the EU Commission or not, time will tell. Yeah, you know, as you're saying there, I guess if this directive, you know, applies across the bloc of countries, kind of, you know, harmonizes the sector, then, you know, that could be really positive if the EU Commission recommends, you know, employment status for gig workers and, you know, ensuring access to the algorithms, opening the algorithms, things like that. But it could also be really

negative if the lobbyists for the gig companies make progress and ensure that that directive fits more along the lines of what, say, Uber has proposed the labor model should be for gig workers. And I guess another piece of that, you know, just going off what we were talking about earlier, if this directive is going to take into account what that's going to mean for, you know, the migrants and people who currently make up a lot of this workforce. Yes, yeah, exactly. And for Uber and these sorts of companies, they'll be looking at this law as an opportunity, you know, to push back on the national level legislations, to push back on the Supreme Court verdicts in the different countries. They'll be thinking this is a chance to, you know, cement the model they already have in place,

the business model they already have in place. So it's potentially a dangerous moment for gig workers. We'll have to see how it plays out. Absolutely. You know, I think you've given us a lot to think about in terms of, you know, what the gig economy looks like in Europe. Some of the laws and kind of legal decisions that have happened recently that have impacted the workers, kind of the way that workers are pushing back and are mobilizing, you know, to try to improve their conditions in the gig economy. And what could come in the near future, conditions in the gig economy and what could come in the near future, especially with the EU Commission and what that could mean more broadly for workers across the European Union. But I wonder, you know, as we close, we touched on a lot of topics, but is there anything else you think that we missed and that is important for

listeners to understand about the gig economy in the European Union. I think we covered quite a lot of good territory there. I think it's probably worth saying that Europe as a whole is very dominated by US tech. And that has a big impact in terms of the regulations that Europe has, in terms of the nature of Europe's economy as well. The digital labor platform sector is slightly different in the sense that you have Uber, obviously a U.S. company, and Uber and Uber Eats are probably the biggest player still in the gig economy in Europe. But a lot of the gig economy platforms are European-based. As I mentioned, Glovo is from Spain, Liberty Hero from Germany. These companies are not global players

in the way that companies like Uber and Uber Eats are global players. Glovo is expanding into Africa. Delivery Hero is expanding into Latin America. So they are expanding beyond Europe, but they're not global players in the same sense. But I think the thing that's important, and I think this is probably the same

in in north america is that none of these companies are profitable you know in retail or in food delivery they're not profitable firms are basically being expanded usually by the investment of finance capital into them but they're struggling to get towards profitability and the more the regulations come in the more they're struggling to get towards profitability. And the more the regulations come in, the more they'll probably struggle with reaching profitability. And there's some signs that financial markets are beginning to see this as well. So for example, Deliveroo had its IPO earlier this year in London. It was labeled by the Financial Times as the worst IPO in London's history, with the stock dropped 31% in value as soon as it started trading. It's interesting to look

at what the investors said about it. They said things like they were worried this was too much of a low productivity type company. They were worried that Deliveroo had no route to securing a dominant market position. There was too many competitors. And also they're worried about the sustainability of the gig work model with these regulatory changes. One investor called the gig model a ticking time bomb. So it's not at all clear that the growth we've seen in Europe in these digital labor platforms is going to continue. I think we're going to see crisis as well within these

markets i guess my point is i i presume it's the same in north america like this is not a stable sector you know it's not a sector that's just going to grow in a linear way and it's all going to be fine and dandy i think it's going to be lots of crisis uh within this sector and that's as true of the european digital labor platforms as the American ones. Yeah, you know, that definitely resonates across the pond as well. I think we see something very similar over here. Well, Ben, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat

to fill us in about what's been going on over in Europe. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Ben Ray is the coordinator of the Gig Economy Project and a freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter at Ben underscore Ray 1989. And you can also follow the gig economy project at at project underscore gig. You can follow me at at Paris marks and you can follow the show at at tech won't save

us. Tech won't save us is part of the Harbinger media network. And you can find out more about that at Harbinger media network.com. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.