Deliveroo, Uber & Co: those who work as employees must be granted employees’ rights

Work must pay and should be done under fair conditions. That accounts for all workers: at the office, in factories and for digital platform workers such as Uber, Deliveroo and alike. This will be the message of the EPP Group during the debate on the rights of platform workers tonight. “Digital platforms offer great potential for our future economy and played a key role during the COVID-19 lockdowns, helping other businesses to stay open. However, innovation can never be an excuse for mismanagement or exploitation”, said Dennis Radtke MEP, EPP Group Spokesman on Social Affairs.

“New ways of doing business should not lead to new, more precarious working conditions. Misclassification of the status of workers often leads to unfair and undesirable situations. We simply cannot classify people as ‘self-employed’ if they lack autonomy and do not have the means to be self-employed. We also don't want a new so-called ‘third status’ of workers, as this will only create more confusion. Someone is either an employee or self-employed, there is nothing in between”, Radtke continued.

“We need to tackle the misclassification of platform workers, and provide the appropriate tools for it. One of the tools must be the rebuttable presumption of an employment status in combination with the reversal of the burden of proof. In the case of a dispute, where the platform worker believes themselves to be misclassified, it is for the platforms to prove that the worker is in fact self-employed and not an employee. Of course, there are certain conditions that have to apply to prevent possible misuse of the presumption. Besides, not all platform workers want to be employees, some enjoy the freedoms of being self-employed and they will continue to do so. But everyone who works as an employee must be granted the rights of an employee. We urge the European Commission to come up with a legislative proposal to ensure these fair rights and working conditions for platform workers as soon as possible", Radtke concluded.