Tech Won't Save Us - What New EU Rules Might Mean for Gig Workers w/ Ben Wray

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Paris Marx is joined by Ben Wray to discuss the fight to win a pro-worker Platform Work Directive in the European Union, Uber’s rollout of dynamic pricing, and how Barcelona taxi workers have fought back against ride-hailing.Ben Wray is the coordinator of The Gig Economy Project and the co-author of Scotland after Britain: The two souls of Scottish independence. You can follow Ben on Twitter at @Ben_Wray1989.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.The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.Also mentioned in this episode:The Gig Economy Project has a weekly newsletter on the gig economy in Europe.Ben wrote about the Platform Work Directive for Context.In 2022, the Uber Files gave us greater insight into Uber's lobbying activities, with a specific focus on what had gone on in Europe. The leaks implicated French President Emmanuel Macron, but he said he’d do it all again.The Gig Economy Project broke down what dynamic pricing would mean for workers and spoke to Leïla Chaibi about the Platform Work Directive.The UCLA Labor Center, transport analyst Hubert Horan, and Rideshare Drivers United with the Asian Law Caucus have all found Uber raising prices while cutting driver pay.Spain passed the Riders Law to regulate gig work, and Barcelona has pushed back against ride-hailing with the backing of a taxi union called Élite Taxi.Support the show

The purpose of the amount of price is to find, quote, the revenue maximising price. So the most that the consumer will be willing to pay and the least that the driver will be willing to accept. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. 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 co-author of Scotland After Britain, The Two Souls of Scottish Independence, I think particularly relevant right now with the recent resignation of Nicola Sturgeon, if you are interested in that. And I would also note that the Gig Economy Project has a great newsletter that kind of has a weekly update on what's going on with the gig economy in Europe from a worker's perspective. So if you're interested in that, I'll have to link to it in the show notes. Now this week, we obviously get into what is going

on with the gig economy in Europe. There is movements toward a platform work directive on the level of the European Union that would then apply to the various member states. Now this is still in the works, but there was a recent success at the European Parliament, so we wanted to talk about that. I also wanted to discuss the kind of rollout of dynamic pricing that Uber is doing in Europe because this is going to have real implications for drivers but also for people who use the service, right? It's going to mean that the prices are going to fluctuate more. There's going to be less insight into why that is happening. And it leaves the door open, obviously, for Uber to make sure that they're paying drivers less and charging workers more and then taking more of the fees that are in between those two prices. And then we also discuss what's going on

in Barcelona right now, where there's a strong taxi worker movement that has been really opposing these ride-hailing companies and has also been kind of rolling out a model that is focused on strong rights and protections for taxi workers while using a public app to access that service instead of, you know, some alternative like Uber or Cabify or various of these, you know, private tech companies. So I think that this is a really fascinating conversation that will hopefully give you an update as to what is going on in Europe and the kind of scale of what is going on over there, right?

And the potential implications of these various developments. In particular, I was really excited that we dug into, you know, when we're looking at the efforts around the platform work directive, which has implications for the workers and whether they're going to be classified as employees or not, how the various member state countries are approaching this, what their perspectives on it are, and whether they kind of support the desire or the effort to have better rights for workers in the gig economy. And I think it's really fascinating to see how that breaks down and how some countries have particular perspectives on this question.

Unfortunately, too many of them are more on the side of the platform companies than the workers themselves. So, you know, that's just a quick way of saying that I really enjoyed this conversation. I thought it was really fascinating. And I thought it was a great kind of update as to what is going on in Europe. You know, because as you know, I guess we focus a fair bit on North America in some of these conversations. Obviously, that's where I'm based. So it's always nice to kind of see what is going on outside of our little continent here. So with that said, if you like this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would enjoy it. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week so that I can have these conversations with people like Ben and update you on these important tech issues. You can join supporters like Beau in Augusta, Error Buffer Overflow, and Vivek Srikrishnan by going to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus where you can become a supporter. And with that said, enjoy this week's conversation. Ben, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Thanks so much for having me, Pius. Always good to talk to you. Absolutely. It's always great to chat. It's always great to get an update on what's going on with, you know, the fight against the gig platforms in Europe to see if workers are kind of winning out, finally getting some wins over on your side of the pond, of course.

Especially on the show, I think we pay a bit more attention to what's going on in North America, just because that's where I have more insight into. But it's always great to get updates on what's going on in other parts of the world. And certainly, you know, there is some really important things happening in Europe at the moment. So I figured it was a good time to have you back on to get back into those things. And in particular, you know, the main thing is what's called the Platform Work Directive, which is moving forward at the level of the European Union, which would have really huge implications for the giga economy across the bloc once it comes into force. Obviously,

there are still questions as to what this is going to look like, who it's going to favor in the end. There's still a lot of kind of discussions and negotiations ongoing. So I think to start, maybe just lay the foundation for us. What is the platform work directive and how would this sort of thing work if it's brought in at the EU level? What would it mean for the various member states? Does that mean that it automatically applies to all of them? Yes, it would. So all 27 member states, the platform work directive would apply across the board. There's thought to be around 20 million platform workers in Europe.

And the platform work directive, the most important aspect of it is that it would create what's called a presumption of employment in the platform economy whereby essentially what that means is platform workers the legal starting point would be that they are employees of the platform and if a platform wanted to contest that it could go to court and contest that and potentially win. The onus would be on the platforms rather than the workers to contest that. Right now, it's the case that workers across Europe go to court cases, win those court cases very often, but it only changes their individual situation. It doesn't change the situation in the workforce as a whole. So by reversing what they call the burden of proof and putting the onus on the platforms,

they would have to pursue those court cases if they didn't think a worker was an employee. So it's quite an important change. I guess it's comparable to AB5 in California in terms of the effect it would have. And in the second part of the platform-locked directive is there's a whole suite of algorithmic rights that workers would get if the directive is passed. So the right to know if they're being monitored, what data is being collected on them, a right to a human explanation of important decisions,

so it's not like robo-firing and these sorts of things. So that's really the kind of basics of what's in the Platform Walk Directive. Now, the process for actually this thing getting passed is very complex because the European Union legislation is a very, very complex process. Let me try to kind of talk you through the basics of it. So there's three institutions that really matter in passing legislation at the European Union level. The first is the European Commission, which is kind of like the executive body of the EU. It's a non-elected, it's like an administrative body. And the European Commission in December 2021 published a draft proposal for the Platform Works Directive with what I've outlined and been the main parts of it.

The second body is the European Parliament. That's the elected part of the European Union. And the European Parliament has just agreed on what amendments it wants to make to the European Commission's draft proposal. That was agreed earlier in February. And there was a big tussle about that. The platform lobby put a lot of pressure on against the proposal that was put forward, but it was passed.

It was a victory against the platform lobby. And the European Parliament's amendments really strengthen aspects of the European Commission's proposal. So the European Commission had some wording in there which attached certain conditions onto whether you were considered an employee or not. And it was thought that that would create kind of legal loopholes for the platforms to try to find ways to get out of employing the workers. So the European Commission proposal kind of closes those loopholes and also strengthens

algorithmic rights aspect. So that's the second body and it's got its position now. And the third body is the Council of the EU and that's the member states. They are represented within an EU decision-making process as well. Now they are still consulting on what amendments they want to the Platformwork Directive. And from July to December 2022, the Czech Republic had the presidency of the Council of the EU. It's a rotating presidency. And they tried to push for a proposal which would have basically made the directive completely toothless. So it included ridiculous things in it,

like just to give you an example, it included a clause whereby the presumption of employment would be null and void if a platform had a collective agreement with any union. So it could be a kind of yellow union, crappy agreement that I'm sure in the US there's many examples of with Uber and other platforms and that would null and void the whole legal presumption of employment. Thankfully that

didn't pass the Czech proposal. There was a majority for it of member states but they need a two-thirds majority to come to a position in the EU Council. So it didn't pass. The rotating presidency has changed. The Swedish presidency is in charge now. And they actually had supported the Czech proposal. And it's a right-wing Swedish government. There's other reasons I won't go into now about why the Swedish government don't want a presumption of employment of platform workers.

So they're trying to find a way to get the kind of blocking minority, as it's called, of member states on board with a kind of a right-wing proposal to water down the directive. Now, this is the final aspect of this confusing process. Once the Council of the EU has its position, and once the European Parliament has its position, those two organisations then have inter-institutional negotiations, right, where they agree on one common position, and that position is the one that becomes the final one that's passed into legislation. So there's still a long way to go in this process.

It's all very, you know, lacking in transparency. There's not even, you know, minutes kept of these meetings of the Council of EU meetings. Anyway, that's a wider issue about EU democracy that's problematic. We'll see how it goes. But certainly the European Parliament vote was a big victory for campaigners for platform workers' rights. But, you know, the platform lobby will fight until the end, basically, to stop legislation being passed, which would mean they would have to do the basic things of being an employer, you know, sick leave, holiday pay and all those other things that it seems familiar to for me, like if I'm thinking about the U.S. context is, you know, when you're talking about the parliament, the council and the commission coming together once they have their versions to kind of come together for negotiations and whatever they come up with is, you know, what ends up going to the president to see if he's going to sign it or not, or he or she theoretically, I guess. So it's really interesting to see that. I'm wondering, you know, obviously you said the commission kind of had

their version of this first and then the parliament passed a version that was much more kind of pro worker than what we were expecting to see out of this process, you know, looking at what the commission had done. And as you say, you know, the council, it's still kind of waiting to see what's going to come there, but, you know, it's leaning more right-wing, which is not particularly great. Is there a reason why the parliament went for a more kind of pro-worker version of the platform work directive versus what we had seen before and did the kind of uber files revelations that we had last year make any kind of impact in pushing them in that direction you know the uber files was a big scandal but doesn't seem to have

really put a dent into uber as yet and and that's as true in europe as anywhere else but i do think that it was a big scandal. And it was a scandal that was focused on Europe as well, because the revelations from Mark McGann, he was a whistleblower, he was a former chief lobbyist, European chief lobbyist at Uber. A lot of the information he had was about things that had gone on in Europe and France in particular. And he actually spoke to the European Parliament near the end of last year. He backed a strong platform workers directive, which I think was

important. So I think it definitely has an impact. The key dynamic that's going on at the European Parliament level is that the right wing are completely divided on this issue. The reason why they're divided is because part of the right wing thinks that what we need is a level playing field for capitalism in Europe, basically. They're kind of tied to kind of old industry. So they wonder, why are these tech companies getting away with not paying any social security contributions? My business has to pay the minimum wage and all that stuff. Why don't these new kids on the block have to do it? So it's a proper old-school free market competition capitalist perspective. Another part of the right wing is more influenced by the platform lobby,

which is very strong in the EU and thinks this will destroy innovation. All the usual rhetoric of the platform lobby it's going to destroy jobs and platform workers don't want rights anyway and all that sort of stuff so they're divided and i think part of the right wing has voted for the european parliament legislation part of it has opposed it i mean i don't have any great insight into this but but it's also the case that MEPs are easier for workers to lobby. You know, it's quite difficult to lobby the member states. Most platform workers don't even know what they're up to, you know, at the EU level. Member states is all very sort of opaque sort of process.

So I think the MEPs are a bit more kind of publicly, you know, available. And there has been a good campaign to put pressure on them from trade unions and that sort of thing. So I think that probably has an impact as well. You mentioned the algorithmic rights that are in the platform work directive. And I feel like this is a bit novel. Like I feel like when we see these discussions in North America in particular, they focus a lot on employment status and not so much on kind of this algorithmic piece of it. Have there been other jurisdictions that have already kind of added some of these protections in for gig workers? And what would it mean for them to have more control or even visibility

into the data and the algorithms and how this stuff all works? Well, for me, it's a usually important issue when it comes to the gig economy because really gig workers, if they want to build power, they should be thinking of themselves as data workers, right? There's so much data that's kept on everything that they do. All that data comes from their labor. So they should be able to access that data. They should be able to understand what they've done

to be able to collectively bargain for higher wages and all that sort of thing. These are data workers and they need to have access to it to be able to defend their rights. In Europe so far, very little governments at the national level have done. There's only really one example, and that's in Spain, where they passed what's called the rider's law in 2021. And part of that rider's law was that trade unions or other representatives of workers would have access to the algorithm. This is where it gets very complicated.

What does it mean to have access to an algorithm? And, you know, what does that look like? What do the platforms have to provide which show they've provided genuine access to the algorithm? Because the algorithm is a set of management instructions, right? It's a bunch of things that the management, you know, wants a data processor to order workers to do via the app. It's nothing more than that, really. But how does the trade unions know that they have genuine access?

What does that even look like? So I think there's been a big problem in Spain with the law. The law has been passed, but there hasn't been, as far as I understand, any genuine access to the algorithm that the changing unions have got so far. The platform work directive at the EU level is a lot more detailed than the Spanish law about what it's asking for. It's specific things, you know, like you need to know

about this automated tool, that automated tool. So it's a lot better in that sense. I interviewed a while back a data expert and, you know, he had a lot of criticisms of it that could be stronger and that sort of thing. But I think it does, you know, certainly would provide gig workers with some level of access. But they would still need help, you know, because even if you get that access, I've seen workers who haven't been able to get access for what's called GDPR rights in the EU.

And, you know, it's just a bunch of tables and spreadsheets and all that sort of stuff. You want to actually make sense of that, you really need data workers to help you with that trade unions really need to invest in these sorts of things if they think it's important but i think the the platform director would be a good starting point anyway for algorithmic rights for workers but we're gonna i know we're gonna have a chat about dynamic pricing in this podcast and that's an example of something which is not even considered

in the Platform Work Directive. So part of the problem is that this legislation takes a long time. You know, it's been years since we first started talking with the Platform Work Directive in Europe. It's still not passed. And the platforms move on, you know.

They develop new strategies, new techniques of exploitation. And if the legislation doesn't keep up, the danger is that you end up passing something that's, by the time to, you know, find a business model that can actually make a bit of money because the interest rates have gone up. You know, the access to cheap money is not as readily available as it once was. And so, yeah, you can see how these companies are evolving and the regulation needs to be able to reflect that. I think it's really interesting what you say there as well about, you know, obviously if the workers get access to the data, that doesn't mean that, oh, they have all this magical insight into everything that happens because they need to be able to actually understand the data and see what is in the data.

And especially if there's not kind of rules that say that the companies have to provide it in a means that is actually kind of understandable and whatnot, and not just, as you say, a table of numbers and whatnot. And it does seem like that is a place where unions really have to be involved and really have to be kind of investing in having this infrastructure and these capabilities in place so that they can help workers to understand this. Because if you kind of accept what Uber says, that all these workers are like independent contractors or whatever, it makes it much more difficult for them to then have the capabilities to be able to look into this data. But, you know, if they're kind of collectively organized and have collective structures behind

them that have the capabilities to help them with these things, then that could potentially make some difference. Absolutely. I completely agree. Yeah. So, you know, I think that's maybe an interesting direction that this could go. And I guess we'll see what comes out of it. I'm also wondering, because, you know, the Uber files revelations kind of gave us a bit more of an insight into how the Uber lobbying and kind of the gig work lobbying more generally works in Europe. It's not like we didn't know any of this before, but, you know, it gave us a bit of a clearer picture of

some of these things. When it comes to the platform work directive, I'm assuming these companies have been very active in trying to reshape it to serve their interests. Can you talk to us a bit about what that has looked like? So we did an interview with Leila Chaibey, an MEP, a member of the European Parliament. She's a French politician and she leads what's called the Left in the European Parliament group. She leads on the question of the platform economy. And we spoke to her about what's the campaign been like, you know's the campaign being like you know the pressure being like on the politicians and she said that a lot of MEPs have said it's kind of been the most intense they've experienced in terms of trying to put pressure on them to

you know go with the platforms like bombarding with emails like campaign meetings, trying to get people to come along to events, working with organizations like think tanks that they pay money for, for reports, you know, all the range of tactics that we know. And actually the Uber files also brought some revelations about that as well. You know, the sort of academics who are being paid by Uber to write articles and op-eds and publications and that sort of thing. That's the sort of things that they do and are continuing to do. There was really two arguments that the platform lobby made against the European Parliament proposal. The first was that this will cost cost jobs they had a report from a copenhagen think tank saying

that potentially half of all jobs in the kind of digital labor and digital labor platforms would be lost which is ironic considering that they don't believe that their employees and if they are these entrepreneurs then they're not going to lose their job are they because they're so entrepreneurial they can go and just do something else. So there's a bit of a contradiction there. And then the second argument was specifically about the presumption of employment aspect, where it said every platform worker, doesn't matter what you do, if you're a genuine freelancer or not, you would automatically be made an employee under this this legislation so for example let's

say you're a graphic designer on a website like upwork or like freelancer.com you'd automatically be an employee overnight that's not how people get employed you know it's totally it's total nonsense it's like you know a legislation doesn't pass at the EU level and suddenly, you know, you're on the payroll of one of these platforms overnight. Basically, what would happen is the starting point for a dispute about whether you should be employed or not would be that you are an employee. So if you are working for a platform and you said, wait a minute, why am I not getting access to sick leave and all that sort of thing? And the platform said, well, because you're not an employee with us, the responsibility would be on the platform to pursue a court case to prove that you're not an employee. But it doesn't mean that you're just your contract is, you know, you suddenly have a contract overnight or anything like that. So it was total nonsense what they were saying. But it was trying to scare legislators into thinking that if they support this, this legislation is going to be some sort of economic catastrophe, you know, and lots of people against their will are going to be turned into employees overnight rather than freelancers.

That's the sort of propaganda you're dealing with, you know, that's the level of the debate, unfortunately. Ben, I'm absolutely shocked that the gig companies would try to mislead people as to, you know, the implications of their business models and regulation on them. I just can't believe they would do that. Hardly uncommon tactic for them. And, you know, I think that this is particularly important,

right, putting the onus on the platforms to have could mean for the workers going forward to be able to get access to the rights and benefits and protections that they should have had since the beginning, right? It's kind of unfortunate that it's still 2023 and we're still kind of talking about how they're going to do this. But I guess at least it's moving forward in some capacity. I'm wondering, you know, if we're looking at the platform work directive, where do you see this going next? You know, obviously you said that the council still has to look at this and kind of figure out their version of what this is going to

look like and negotiations have to come after that. You know, how long do you see this process taking to play out and what do you think things are going to look like in the coming months as there's more negotiation and as these things continue to move forward? So there's no sort of official timeline on how long this is going to take. And as I've said already, there's no transparency about the process. So we don't really know. The word on the street, I'm not one of those journalists that's got kind of an ear in the Council of the EU or anything like that but the word among those who do

is that March is going to be when this is going to get sorted out. Now, what does it mean for it to get sorted out in the Council of the EU? Basically, the blocking minority of seven or eight states right now, they need to win a couple over.

I think it's two or three states over to have a two-thirds majority. So Germany, for instance, abstained in the last vote. They didn't vote down the Czech proposal sufficiently that, you know, they can bring a couple over. The strategy for the left that Leila Chaibey has outlined is because the presidency rotates every six months, they want to kind of delay the process until July when the Spanish would take over the presidency of the Council of the EU. Now, Spain is the state that's the most aggressive in terms of wanting a strong platform of directive because they already have a similar type of law in the Riders' Law in Spain. That would potentially make a difference.

But you've got to remember, even if that does happen, Spain take over the process of developing this law. The majority of states are against what Spain thinks anyway. So they would have to make lots of compromises anyway. My view is that the legislation that we're going to end up with is going to be a bit of a mishmash between what the parliament wants and what the council wants. Probably not going to be great, but it's probably going to be some sort of a step forward,

which you've got to remember, a lot of the time at EU level, we're seeing steps backwards, you know, neoliberal legislation being passed because it's the EU as an institution. I think there's more corporate lobbyists in Brussels than there are Brussels bureaucrats. And there's a lot of Brussels bureaucrats. So it shows you how much corporate lobbyist in brussels and there are brussels bureaucrats and there's a lot of brussels

bureaucrats so it shows you how much corporate lobbyist there is so you get you get the idea about the sort of institution this is it's it's not that penetrable for like mass movements you know which generally operate at a national level not a kind of supranational eu level so even for legislation that's not perfect but that's some sort of progress to be passed is quite a sort of historic event that happens so i don't want to be too negative about it but probably you know it won't be as as good as sort of you and i would like to see now i i i appreciate you outlining that too i i wonder just briefly like can you give us an idea of how this kind of breaks down in terms of which countries or regions of the EU are more kind of pro a Spanish position, like having a strong platform work directive versus which ones are more kind of on the side

of the platforms? The divide is generally Southern Europe is more pro a strong platform work directive. Eastern Europe is more against a strong platform work directive. France is very strongly against a strong platform work directive because of Emmanuel Macron's presidency. They're very, very close to the platform lobby. And then Germany is sort of on the fence. So that's the sign of kind of geographic spread. Why the Eastern Europeans are so in favour? Generally, the governments there are quite right wing.

You know, after the fall of the Soviet Union, socialism was in such a sort of bad regard that the governments tend to be very, very right wing there. And the platform lobby seemed to have a lot of influence. So that's unfortunate i mean it's not it doesn't look like a sort of how can i explain this it's difficult to see when states have these positions the extent to which they reflect any real social forces in their countries you know i mean the public in all these countries they're not talking about the platform of the directive

they're not thinking of the platform of directors you know They're not thinking of the platform of directives. You know what I mean? It's like I can't sit here and say everyone in Eastern Europe loves the gig economy. You know what I mean? That would be nonsense. But the states, they seem to, you know, they seem to be quite close to the corporate lobby. And that's certainly how they're behaving around this legislation. Yeah, that makes sense. Especially if, as you say, you know, what happens at the level of the European Union is a bit more divorced from, you know, those national movements and the actual demands

that are kind of happening on the ground and within certain countries. I want to ask a few clarifying questions on a few countries. Italy, we know it has a very far-right government right now. It's still part of Southern Europe. Where would you say it falls on this? It's a good question, actually, and it's not totally clear as it stands. So when Italy voted against the Czech proposal, the new Italian government, I don't think it was actually in place yet, the far-right government of Georgia and

Maloney. Whether its position is reversed now is probably going to be one of the important factors in whether the Swedish presidency can get the legislation through or not. As I understand that government, it is a very pro-corporate government in its gauge workers' rights, which is typical of the far right. So I would expect that to be the case, but it's not totally clear as it stands. And the Nordic countries, obviously you've said Sweden is,

you know, kind of more on the platform side of things. They have a new right-wing government that came in last year that is in coalition with the far right party. How do the Nordic countries in general kind of respond to these questions? Because they're generally, in some of the discourse that we get you know these are kind of the social democratic nordic countries that are pro workers rights and blah blah blah how do they kind of fall on this on this question so they come out from a very different perspective because we've got a country like sweden um the the model there the labor there, is not based on employment status or anything like that. It's very much based on collective bargaining. That's the strength of Nordic social democracy is strong trade unions,

sector level institutional collective bargaining with employers associations on the other side. You know, these big bodies sitting around the table and thrashing out wages, conditions and that sort of thing. Obviously, that's not the situation for the vast majority of European workers anymore. In fact, it never was for the majority of European workers. But at one stage, it was the majority of Nordic workers. Even now, in a country like Sweden, lots of workers are not, you know, represented by trade unions, are not part of strong sectoral collective bargaining negotiations. So the right wing use what's called the Swedish model to justify its opposition to the platform work directive

because they say we've always never needed to have employment status or anything like that. We negotiate informally between unions and employers. Therefore, we reject the platform update. But of course, within Sweden, the workers that this would impact, the food delivery couriers, the drivers, they're not negotiating with Uber on a collective bargaining basis. It's one of those things where a big victory for the Labour movement 30, 40 years ago is ossified and turned into its opposite, you know, 30, 40 years later,

to actually defend the neoliberal status quo. And I think that's really what's happened. I don't think it would have even made that much of a difference whether it was the previous social democratic government or this new right-wing government because there seems to be a consensus there that we're going to defend the

Swedish model, even though the Swedish model in practice has really been eroded a long time ago. So it's quite an interesting dynamic, something I'd like to learn more about. I think that's the basis of the Nordic opposition to the directive. That's really fascinating, actually, to understand those dynamics and how it kind of plays into this discussion. You know, if we look at Germany, they had an election in 2021. The Social Democratic

Party came back to power. You know, obviously obviously they are in coalition with the Greens and, you know, more of a centrist party there. You said that they abstained the last time that the Czech proposal kind of came up. What does it look like they are going to do on this proposal? Because I guess you would imagine, you know, they have a more left-leaning government in power now. You know, why are they not backing these rights? I mean, in theory, you would hope it's a more left-leaning government. I'm not sure if it's really turned out that way so far in practice. It's not clear what the German position is, whether it's going to change, why they abstained. This is the thing.

A lot of this stuff is very murky because the Germans abstain on it. And that's decisive in the directive not going through the EU Council level. There's no questions that journalists are asking, you know, the German government. Why did you abstain? Can you justify that? It's very murky about why they're taking that position. In Germany, Germany has its own laws in place whereby I think almost all platform workers are employees in germany as it stands so you would think that they would see this as an actual extension of what they already have in place in germany it's a bit odd actually that germany has abstained but i can't tell you why

that is or whether it's going to change unfortunately i'm really enjoying digging into like the different perspectives of the different governments i appreciate this i have one final one that i want to ask about and that's obviously france which you know you've mentioned they have been you know more on the platforms side of things there were revelations when the uber files came out that you know emmanuel macron personally was kind of close with the platforms and the lobbyists and there was a particular scandal in france over you know, the revelations that came out that showed the closeness between kind of the French government and Uber and kind of the platform companies. Has this kind of impacted the orientation of the French government on these issues? Or,

you know, does Macron just kind of not care? We know he's pushing through these pension reforms and these other kind of anti-worker measures right now. Does he just not care and he's going forward with it anyway, regardless of the criticism and everything that's happening? Yeah, it's definitely the latter. So when the Uberfiles scandal came out and it was revealed that before he was a prime minister, he was a cabinet minister in a social democratic French government. And basically, in, I think, Marseille, Uber had just launched there, you know, as usual. They didn't ask anyone.

They just launched there. There was big taxi protests against it. I think there was some conflict between the taxi drivers and the Uber drivers. And the mayor of Marseille just was demanding that Uber kicked out. And basically, Macron worked behind the scenes to defend Uber and to defend that Uber can stay within, continue operating, even though they don't have a license to do so.

And basically, when Macron was asked about this, he said, I would do it all over again, the same as I did before, because it's been good for jobs and good for the French economy, which is nonsense, by the way, isn't it? It's not been good for the French economy, the globalization, not even in terms of GDP or any of the kind of mainstream metrics has been good for the French economy. So basically, Macron is as loyal as ever to the platform lobby. He's convinced that it's like, well, he says anyway, he's convinced this is innovation, it's good for France. So in France, they established last year something called

a social dialogue process, whereby the French government established a new kind of department department which would act as a sort of arbitrator mediator between the platform lobby and elected representatives of platform workers but the the process for those elections was very controversial because it was run by someone who was formerly worked closely with Uber. So it was very controversial. Lots of the main unions boycotted the process and that sort of thing. But anyway, the social dialogue process went ahead

and recently they agreed a kind of minimum wage for platform workers. But it's a very, very low level that the drivers will get. So it's like, it's much lower than the average chip would be. But, you know, I guess it offers some level of social protection. So the French government are using this, you know, quote unquote success to say, look, social dialogue is the way to ensure platform workers' rights going forward, not changing the laws. So that's their argument, that the French social dialogue model should be the model for the whole of Europe.

So Macron is really in the vanguard of pushing a kind of model which defends lack of employment rights and justifies basically the platform's business model. Man, what a terrible guy lots of liberals love to defend macron still you know especially those that don't really know what's going on in france but yeah you're right he is a terrible man yeah no and you know the only reason i think that he looked as good as he did is because he successfully was able to kind of fight against marine Le Pen the whole time

instead of, you know, really being up against a more kind of energized left that has been, you know, obviously their excitement around Mélenchon in the past couple of elections. But the left seems to be in a tough place in France these days. So I think you've given us a really good insight into the platform work directive and how this kind of breaks down along country lines and where it looks like this might go next. You mentioned earlier as well that dynamic pricing is kind of rolling out across Europe right now. This is something that Uber is implementing, and it's a shift to the way that its services were priced in the past, more kind of algorithmically driven mode of pricing. Can you tell us a bit what dynamic pricing is and what the concern is on the side of workers, but also what it means for people using these services as it rolls out

even more? Yes, because it definitely impacts on both workers and consumers. So dynamic pricing basically means highly variable prices for consumers and highly variable pay. And I'm going to explain why those two things are separate and are not the same. And that's an important aspect. This is distinct from the surge pricing that they used to have before, right? So they often lump the language of dynamic pricing together in terms of surge pricing and dynamic pricing. But yes, I think to think about this, it's better to think about it in a way which is distinct.

So surge pricing, as you say, was something very specific. That's when a football match or a baseball match, whatever, is finished and demand is really, really high. And so they put the prices up, they surge the prices, and that attracts more people to drive, you know, to increase supply to match demand. It's a similar logic, I guess, but what dynamic pricing does is it basically allows Uber or any of these platforms

to set prices based on lots of different data inputs, right? So it could be based on supply and demand factors in that moment. It could be based on what competitors are doing. It could be based on historical data from the worker or from the consumer. But from the perspective of the driver, with dynamic pricing, there's not any way of understanding that, you know, if I do this journey and this journey is X kilometers long, I will get X dollars or X euros. You know, the link between distance and price is completely ruptured with dynamic pricing because there's so many variables that go into determining the price and the pay level.

So if you're a driver, you never really know how much you're going to earn with dynamic pricing. On any trip or across any day, you can't really plan your life. It's a kind of new level of precariousness, the pricing system. And there's suspicions that driver's own data is being used against them, right? So imagine, just say you're a driver and you accept, I don't know, a 10-kilometer journey for $25, right? And I'm also a driver and I don't accept it.

Now, the next time, the algorithm may offer you $23 rather than $25, right? Because they've realized that you're going to accept it. So they try to, you know, they want to give you as little as possible in pay. And they may offer me $27 rather than $25 because I won't accept, because I didn't accept the $25 during the last time. You see what I mean? So I watched a presentation on YouTube from a former Uber executive about dynamic pricing. And what she said was the purpose of dynamic pricing is to find, quote, the revenue maximizing price.

So the most that the consumer will be willing to pay and the least that the driver will be willing to accept. Now, you may be thinking, but hold on a minute. If Uber is extracting the higher price out of the consumer, then surely that's good for the driver because it means their pay will be the optimal amount. But the thing with dynamic pricing is it's delinked the price of the journey and the pay rate of the journey. So I did an interview with a union leader in the UK about this. And he said that one of the things that can get you robo-fired now, automatically kicked off the app, is if you're caught looking at the Uber customer app at the same time as while you're working on Uber's driver app, because they don't want drivers to be comparing their price rates to the pay rates because they're not the same.

You could be charging a customer a huge amount and paying a driver a tiny amount and making the difference between those two. So it's really dynamic pricing. As you said earlier, Uber is in a new context. All these platforms are in a new context of high interest rates, pressure from investors to deliver profitability, and dynamic pricing. I think the reason why it's being pushed and rolled out now

is because it helps them squeeze the consumer and it helps them squeeze the driver. But it's leading to a lot of discontent. There's been protests in London about its rollout there. Walt is a European food delivery company that's owned by the American company DoorDash, and it has been rolling out dynamic pricing in lots of different European countries recently. And there's strikes and protests in almost all these countries that it's

rolling out because the food delivery cutters, they don't understand why they're being paid what they're being paid. There's no logic to it. And the pay is going down. That's the impact of the amount of pricing. They're getting paid less. So I think it's a really serious thing. And I think it's something that really needs to be talked more about because this is Uber's kind of path to profitability it's a really kind of we already

know uber's a dirty company and you know it's a history of corruption that sort of thing but it'll really be based on screwing both the customer and the driver as much as possible yeah it's just so concerning right to see how this plays out. And I think it really cements how this kind of algorithmic model of pricing and of managing workers is so incredibly weighted in favor of the company and of management, right? Because as you're saying, even if the workers get access to the data, it's still so opaque, right? It's still so difficult to understand what is going on here, especially if you're having such incredible kind of fluctuations and movements around pricing. Like it's not something that's stable. It makes it even more difficult to understand and to make out what's going on there. And that's even if you have access to the data, which the vast majority of Uber workers would not have. Right. And so it's

then so much more difficult to gain insight into what is actually happening. You know, Uber workers and people who are researching these companies have looked increasingly into the difference between what the drivers are earning and what the customers are being charged. I know there was a report out recently from UCLA that found that as Uber has raised its prices in the past few years, the benefits of that have not fully gone to the workers, which means that Uber itself is taking a much bigger cut of the fare so that, as you say, it can try to show a profit, right? So that it can try to show that its numbers are finally kind of

working out after more than a decade of operation and still losing money. And this is, you know, all of the kind of big ideas of, oh, we're going to do flying cars and self-driving cars and all this stuff is out the window, right? They ditched all of that early in the pandemic. And now kind of the means to actually show a profit to show that they can actually be a workable business at some point is just to say, okay, the fees are going up, the prices are going up, and we're going to keep kind of pushing on workers to make sure that they don't get the rights and the pay and the benefits that they deserve because this is how we make our money is by fighting the workers making sure that we exploit them as much as possible and also seeing how much we can squeeze out of the customers

before they'll finally abandon us and go do something else yes absolutely and i wonder if uber would have been able to get away with rolling this out if we didn't have the inflation crisis you know which forced so many drivers back into their cars because before that uber had a big problem you know with driver shortages they were having to like offer bonuses and stuff like that to try and get drivers back into their cars. But with the inflation crisis, it's, you know, the dynamics shifted that people feel like they have to drive and have to, you know, accept what they're offered by Uber. And Uber is, like, boasting about this, you know.

They always say the inflation crisis has been great for us. We're doing amazing. It's almost like they want to show off about the fact that the reason why they're doing better than they were before, and by the way, they're still losing money, but they're doing better than they were before, is because drivers, like, they've got no option. It's not because, you know, they love driving for Ubers. It's because they're fucking desperate, you know. It's a grim situation.

I'm not convinced that... I think dynamic pricing is certainly helping Uber in the short term. I'm not convinced that's going to... I mean, people are going to get fed up of that, you know? If you're a driver, you get one price for one chip and then a completely different price for another one and it's the same distance chip. You know, how could you put up with that you

know it's ridiculous is it should be i think it is a fundamental right it's certainly in the uk that once you agree to do work you're paid you know you you you should know how much you're going to be paid for that work you know and before you start doing it and this idea you just work and well uber will decide how much you get it's absurd you know so i don't think it's going to work for uber long term but in the immediate term it does seem to be working for them yeah it's completely ridiculous and as you say like it just continues to show that uber is a company that kind of relies on people being in difficult situations so they end up you know, driving for Uber in order to bring in a bit of extra cash to, you know, meet their bills at the end of the month and stuff like

that, right? That's how the company got started, right? It got started in the 2008 recession when people were really hard up as well and took advantage of that. And this is just how it tends to benefit time and time again. As we kind of wrap up our conversation, I want to talk about a specific model that you've been writing about a bit over the past number of months. And that is what is going on in Barcelona. You know, obviously, we're talking about these kind of EU wide discussions around what, you know, platform work is going to look like. And you mentioned the rider's law that is coming in at the Spanish level. But in Barcelona, in particular, there has been a really strong organization by the taxi workers in order to push back against Uber and kind of the ride-hailing

business model, you know, the desire to turn all these people into independent contractors that are, as you say, at the whim of Uber and its dynamic pricing and algorithmic management and all these sorts of things. Can you talk to us a bit about the kind of recent achievements that they've had in pushing back against Uber and what that has looked like on the ground in Barcelona? Yeah, for me, Barcelona is really sort of inspiring. It is a case where Uber, at least for the time being, is lost. You know, they've lost the battle for a city. That's really quite unique and different.

And it's not just that they're lost, but they're actually building an alternative there as well. So it starts, Uber launched in Barcelona in 2014. And in response, there were taxi strikes. And out of those taxi strikes emerged a new union called Elite Taxi Barcelona. And this union is really cool and quite different because its leader is called tito alves he goes around in a yellow vest with the words fuck uber on the back so you get the idea of the kind of character you're

looking at here and they use really militant my kind of guy yeah they use really militant tactics so they blockaded airports train stations stations, city centres. You know, they're willing to do what it takes to win, you know. And all of this, these tactics that's used over the years has had a big impact on the politics there. The Barcelona City Council and the Catalan Parliament, which has had to respond to these strikes, these taxis strikes, with strengthening its regulations on private hire platforms. And due to that pressure, Uber has effectively kind of been pushed out of Barcelona twice,

first in 2019, then in 2021, and has always tried to find ways to relaunch. It's still trying to find ways to relaunch, but there was a kind of a key moment in July last year when the Catalan parliament passed a legislation which effectively barred private hire platforms from operating beyond passenger vans and limousines. You know, they couldn't operate normal cars. The logic that was put forward when the parliament proposed this legislation was that they considered the taxi to be a public service and it didn't make sense to have competition because it was a public service for the city. And therefore, the private hire platforms, if they wanted to stay in Barcelona, had to offer a completely different type of service to the one that the taxis offer. Now, obviously, the private hire platforms were absolutely apoplectic about this. Cabify, which is the main one in spain they put up posters all around barcelona attacking the transport minister and so it's interesting actually in

one of the posters they said the transport minister is a hypocrite because our data shows that she has been taking x number of cabify journeys so. So they were implying that they were, like, publishing someone's personal data, right? Now, it actually didn't turn out to be true. The data they were publishing was just journeys to the general area that the transport ministry was in and could have been taken by anyone, not the transport minister.

Probably the transport minister has a government vehicle. They probably don't take Cabify, so ridiculous another of the private hire platforms what they did in response to legislation was put artificial extensions onto their cars because the law said private hire platforms need to have vehicles over certain sides so they can't be cars they have to be like limousines or passenger vans so they added these artificial extensions on the car. And of course, the police said, well, this is against public safety because, you know, drivers can't see these extensions you have on the cars. So they had to remove them.

But you get the idea about the kind of ridiculous kind of tactics they had to stop this. So anyway, while all this was happening, they set up a public taxi app in Barcelona. So all the taxis are linked in with this app and it's just like one click and you get your taxi ordered. It means there's less taxis driving around, wasting their time and less pollution, that sort of thing. So they're building a kind of new model using this technology, a kind of public planned taxi model. Elite Taxi, the union, has even been trying to find ways to make it easier for people who used to be private hire drivers to become taxi drivers because they need to grow the number of taxis to serve the demand because obviously the private hire platforms haven't disappeared.

But when this legislation came into effect on 1st of January this year, predictably the private hire platforms ignored the law and tried to keep operating the city. But the police have actually been cracking down on them and have been towing, once they've been finding people operating Uber and Bolt and that sort of thing, they've been towing the cars away. So it's really quite remarkable. There's this city in Europe where Ubers are being about his Asian and you can have a better model which protects workers' rights. Yeah, it's a fantastic story. And I was so happy to read about it, like in what you've been writing. And I found it particularly fascinating that like, it wasn't just that,

you know, the government decided to make this kind of public taxi app, but part of what Elite Taxi was pushing for, both in, you know, kind of trying to restrict the operation of the kind of Cabify's and Bolt's and Uber's and what have you that were operating, but was to also say, you know, we want you to make a public taxi app that is kind of used by the taxi companies instead of having the taxi companies make their own, right? Because it does very clearly seem like something that the government should be doing, right? This is a service that they're providing, especially if they're talking about it as a public service to the people of the city, they should be creating this app that can then be used by the public to access the taxi system. And that is kind of a unified platform instead of having a bunch of different separate taxi apps by different taxi companies and things. Right. So, yeah, I think it's a fascinating story. Is there any indication of like how it's going so far in Barcelona?

The things I've been reading is mainly the tensions around, you know, the private health platform still operating and the conflicts around that. So it's not totally clear yet. I think on Monday coming, they have the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. So, you know, there's suddenly massive demand. I think that'll be a test to see, can you meet that demand with the new public taxi app? Can you get these people signed up to the public taxi app to use it and that sort of thing? It's really hard to find examples of public sector digital innovation, you know, like that, you know, using technology in a way

which isn't, you know, actually intervening in the economic sector. I don't know if there's any examples in the US, but there's very few examples in Europe apart from that. It works so much better, you know know if you have a public platform where there isn't this competitive model you have a more planned model people shouldn't have to if they want to get a normal taxi shouldn't have to you know just call up and that sort of thing and use old methods there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to just use your phone but as you say if you do it just as a co-op it's very hard hard to market it. It's very hard to fund it.

It's really difficult because you don't have that venture capital behind you. But governments have the funding behind them, and they also have the public profile. You can get the media attention and that sort of thing, where it can get the public to know about the app, use the app. So, yeah, I think a public model has got a lot going for it, but it's just sad that there's so few examples of it actually being tried out, you know?

Yeah, and I think that's a really good point, right, around the difficulties that, say, a platform cooperative model face where it doesn't have access to the venture funding, you know, it can't lose billions of dollars like Uber did in order to kind of price out the competition and try to, you know, get a hold on various markets. to kind of everyone who's using it, but also to put in the regulations to restrict the activities of the kind of private competitors

that are exploiting workers and the public rather than, you know, delivering a service that is kind of mutually beneficial for everybody. Ben, it's been really fascinating to chat to you about all of these topics,

to get an update on what's going on in Europe. Is there anything we didn't chat about that you think people should know before we close off our conversation? I mean, we could go on and on, couldn't we? I don't want to take up too much of your audience's day or whatever they're doing.

So we should probably leave it there. Sounds good. Well, we'll have to, you know, get another update from you in the future as these things continue to progress and move on and see how they keep developing. Ben, thank you so much for taking the time. It's been great to chat as always. Always good to join you. Thanks, Pat. Ben Ray is a coordinator at the Gig Economy Project and the co-author of Scotland After

Britain, The Two Souls of Scottish Independence. You can follow him on Twitter at Ben underscore Ray 1989. You can follow me at Paris Marks and you can follow the show at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save Us is produced by Eric Wickham and is part of the Harbinger Media Network. 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.