New laws designed to improve the rights of gig economy workers in the EU contracted to companies such as Uber have been saved from oblivion after they won the majority backing of member states.
The legislation had been blocked by a group of countries last month, when France said it could not support the text on the table and Germany abstained.
But on Monday, a compromise text pushed by Belgium got the law over the line, giving it one final chance of being passed before legislative procedures are timed out due to the looming EU parliamentary elections.
The Belgian presidency announced the breakthrough during a summit of employment, social affairs and health ministers in Brussels.
“Better working conditions for those delivering your meal at home. Ministers just approved the compromise text on the platform work directive,” it said in a tweet.
✅ Better working conditions for those delivering your meal at home!
— Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU 2024 (@EU2024BE) March 11, 2024
🇪🇺 Ministers just approved the compromise text on the Platform Work Directive (#PWD).
This will improve the rights & conditions of more than 28.5 million Europeans working in the #PlatformWork economy.#EPSCO pic.twitter.com/94nHO40UcK
Pierre-Yves Dermagne, the Belgian deputy prime minister and minister for the economy and employment, said: “We have taken this historic step, so the message is workers are being heard.”
He said the law “was one of the Belgian presidency’s top priorities” and would improve the working conditions of the 28 million people employed as gig workers in the EU by allowing the “reclassification of those bogus self employed persons”.
Two years in the making, the directive is designed to give taxi and delivery drivers, such as those working for Uber and Deliveroo, rights similar to those full employees enjoy, including holidays, sick pay and the minimum wage.
Under the new laws the default status of gig workers will be as employees and the onus will be on employers to prove they are not, if they so wish.
Brussels has previously estimated that this could affect about 5.5 million of the 28 million workers using gig economy platforms.
Mark MacGann, the whistleblower who leaked more than 124,000 Uber documents to the Guardian, in part because he believed it misrepresented the economic benefits to drivers of the company’s gig economy model, said: “Millions of platform workers across the EU have waited almost a decade to get governments to recognise their basic human rights. This legislation is an overdue but welcome step in the right direction.”
An Uber spokesperson said: “EU lawmakers have voted to maintain the status quo today, with platform worker status continuing to be decided country-to-country and court-to-court. Uber now calls on EU countries to introduce national laws that give platform workers the protections they deserve while maintaining the independence they prefer.”
It is understood that four countries – France, Germany, Estonia and Greece – said as recently as February that they could not support the text. However, after Estonia and Greece indicated their support at the minister’s meeting, a breakthrough that tipped the balance in favour of the laws.
The EU jobs commissioner, Nicolas Schmit, said: “One member state surprised us by joining the qualified majority at the last moment – of course that was great news.”
Schmit added that the law had much wider scope beyond taxi drivers and food delivery riders who had previously been dismissed as “young people with bikes” but were “workers with precarious jobs” who must “not be deprived of their rights”.
The deal will also give workers the right not to be managed by algorithm, as well as future-proof employment law against employment rights being determined by artificial intelligence, something ministers said was a world first.
