On 24 April 2024, the European Par­lia­ment approved the Plat­form Work Dir­ect­ive. We refer you to this press release and our previous blog for more details.

Key points from the Plat­form Work Dir­ect­ive include:

 

Pre­sump­tion of an Employ­ment Rela­tion­ship

• Mem­ber States will imple­ment a leg­al pre­sump­tion of an employ­ment rela­tion­ship in their nation­al laws. This pre­sump­tion applies when facts are estab­lished that indic­ate con­trol and dir­ec­tion, assessed accord­ing to nation­al law, col­lect­ive labor agree­ments, and EU case law.
• Plat­form work­ers, their rep­res­ent­at­ives, or nation­al author­it­ies may invoke this leg­al pre­sump­tion to chal­lenge an incor­rect clas­si­fic­a­tion. The bur­den of proof thus shifts to the digit­al plat­form to demon­strate the absence of an employ­ment rela­tion­ship.

 

Indic­at­ors of an Employ­ment Rela­tion­ship

An employ­ment rela­tion­ship is pre­sumed if at least two of the fol­low­ing five indic­at­ors are met (note: indi­vidu­al Mem­ber States may expand this list):

1. The plat­form determ­ines the (max­im­um) com­pens­a­tion;
2. Elec­tron­ic mon­it­or­ing of the worker’s per­form­ance occurs;
3. iii. The plat­form con­trols task dis­tri­bu­tion or assign­ment;
4. There is mon­it­or­ing of work­ing con­di­tions and lim­it­a­tion of free­dom in choos­ing work­ing hours;
5. Lim­ited free­dom to organ­ize work accord­ing to per­son­al dis­cre­tion, includ­ing rules on appear­ance or con­duct.

 

Reg­u­la­tion of Algorithm Use

• Con­sider trans­par­ency in how task prices are set and tasks are dis­trib­uted.
• A plat­form work­er can­not be ter­min­ated or rejec­ted by an algorithm or oth­er auto­mated sys­tem. Human over­sight is required.

 

Pri­vacy Pro­tec­tion for Plat­form Work­ers

Plat­forms are restric­ted from pro­cessing cer­tain types of per­son­al data, such as inform­a­tion regard­ing an individual’s emo­tion­al or psy­cho­lo­gic­al state and per­son­al or polit­ic­al beliefs.

The final text of the Plat­form Work Dir­ect­ive must now also be form­ally adop­ted by the Coun­cil. Fol­low­ing its pub­lic­a­tion in the Offi­cial Journ­al of the EU, Mem­ber States will have two years to trans­pose the Dir­ect­ive into nation­al legis­la­tion.

 

We will keep you updated on fur­ther devel­op­ments regard­ing this sub­ject.

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