The European Parliament reached a deal on the platform workers’ directive, pending confirmation by the Employment and Social Affairs Committee on 12 December, followed by plenary adoption early next year.
The deal is the outcome of months of lengthy negotiations on the platform workers’ directive, which seeks for the most part to clarify platform workers’ employment status.
The most critical aspect of the directive is the introduction of a legal presumption of employment, meaning platform workers would be deemed employees if they met a certain number of criteria.
MEPs agreed to let workers, trade unions and national authorities trigger the presumption with no conditions if they deemed it fair, while the onus would be on digital platforms to rebut the presumption and prove that a worker presumed employee is “genuinely self-employed”, the text reads.
The second part of the directive touches on algorithmic management. The deal includes human oversight for all algorithmic decisions that “significantly affect working conditions”, while it promotes collective bargaining across the board for platform work.
New provisions also hone in on the transparency of automated and decision-making systems through accessible and understandable information-sharing.
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