[Intro]
00:00:32 Mary McCaughey
Good morning and welcome to this edition of Eurofound Talks. Today, I’m joined by one of our experts here in Eurofound, Dragoș Adăscăliței, who is an expert in the area of platform work. Welcome, Dragoș.
00:00:48 Dragoș Adăscăliței
Good morning, Mary, and thanks for having me here.
00:00:51 Mary McCaughey
Well, we’re delighted to talk about this and me in particular, because platform work, it seems to be one of these issues that everybody talks about, but I’m not sure everybody really fully understands. We talk about the future of work, we talk about the gig economy, but what does it actually mean?
00:01:07 Dragoș Adăscăliței
Indeed, platform work is one of the most important emergent forms of work which we discuss broadly in relation to the future work. It is part of a broader change in our labour markets which saw in recent decades the emergence of ever more diverse forms of employment, including, for example, casual work, ICT-based mobile work or job sharing. What all these forms of work have in common is a fragmented and I would say oftentimes temporary work arrangement that is activated depending on the needs of the employer or the contracting party or even the client.
With respect to platform work in particular, what is important to note is that it involves an exchange of labour that is not goods or non-labour types of services, which is intermediated by an algorithm that is oftentimes organising the way work is allocated, performed in and evaluated. So in this case, the algorithm assumes the management functions. What is also important to note is that the platform work entails a triangular relationship between platforms as the owners of the algorithm and workers who provide their work and the clients themselves. Therefore, work on platforms is oftentimes broken into tasks which are then used as benchmark for evaluating and paying workers.
00:02:29 Mary McCaughey
That’s good. That’s clear enough to start with. But I suppose one of the reasons that we’ve all been talking about this in recent times is because there’s been an increase in this kind of working arrangement. There’s been an increased number of people involved in this. And with the digitalisation of our world, the new ways of working and the future of work changing, we are looking at this particularly because we need to ensure that we understand it because it will be one of our core elements of work into the next phase. So I mean, what I understand is at the moment the Commission is estimating that there’s up to 30 million people who have in some shape or form been involved in the platform economy. But can you give me an idea of what are we talking about when we actually talk about that cohort; who are they?
00:03:18 Dragoș Adăscăliței
The first thing to say is that platform work is a very heterogeneous group of workers. It entails various groups of workers that are split along age, gender, sector of activity, level of education and so on and so forth. So it’s a very difficult group to try to analyse – to begin with. In terms of estimating the number of platform workers, this is also extremely difficult because platform economy itself or platform work is a very difficult phenomenon to catch with traditional labour market indicator. Meaning if you’re trying to do a labour force survey, these are the type of workers that will fall between the lines. So you will not be able to actually estimate or capture how many workers work on platforms. We have tried along the years to kind of estimate number of platform workers in the EU and across Member States using various tools. And what we’ve seen is that indeed we have between 17 million and 30 million platform workers at the moment. This is a substantial labour force.
To give you a comparison, the manufacturing sector in the EU employs around 33 million workers, so what we’re talking about here is a large number of workers whose status or whose kind of integration into the labour market, contact with the labour market, needs to be clarified. Now in terms of the growth of the number of platform workers, we know that since 2014 onwards we have seen a constant growth in the number of people who engage in platforms and this is specifically the case in the last couple of years because the pandemic and the COVID-19 health emergency have nudged more people to engage in platform work in order to draw on additional income from platforms.
00:05:16 Mary McCaughey
And, Dragoș, are there are more women than men? Is it an attractive option for women in this context? Are there more young people in light of the economic situation and the current situation for young people?
00:05:29 Dragoș Adăscăliței
That’s a very good question. And this is one of the key efforts that we’re trying to make at the moment; basically, understanding what is the profile of a platform worker. And what we know from available data is that the typical profile of a platform worker is someone that is young, someone that is highly educated. Traditionally more males than women have engaged in platform work. But now we have seen again in recent years a change in the gender balance in platform work and someone who is very highly skilled, usually more skilled relative to the tasks that he or she is supposed to engage in. So what we see is basically that young people tend to engage in platform work in order to gain an additional income and use the flexibility that platforms afford in order to supplement their incomes.
00:06:24 Mary McCaughey
And just let me, if you permit me, just for a moment, to go into the gender dimension because I always like to focus in on that for a spotlight. Is that good news for women?
00:06:35 Dragoș Adăscăliței
Well, it depends. It depends, because I would say that it’s not only good news; it’s good news in terms of the access that women enjoy to the labour market. But of course, we know from research that women also have usually or tend to have a double burden, meaning basically engaging in work, be that platform or traditional, but also being responsible with all the kind of tasks that usually someone carries at home. So in terms of labour market access, that might be good news for women, but we shouldn’t forget that platform work also reproduces some of the gender disparities that we see in the traditional economy. That meaning, for example, in terms of take-home pay, in terms of the type of tasks that women perform, but also in terms of the kind of sectors in which women engage. Because of course, what we find in the platform economy is that women tend to still engage more in traditionally more feminised sectors, for example, care. And we shouldn’t forget that platforms themselves use algorithms which reproduce some of the gender biases that we find in traditional economies.
00:07:55 Mary McCaughey
Well, let me go into that now because that’s exactly the reason why platform work apart from everything have described here and the growth of this model, we’re looking at the issues that are associated with this because clearly platform work has a problem in terms of ensuring protection of those workers for reasons that you will outline. But can you explain to us what are the working conditions of most of these platform workers? I know you’ve said that it’s a heterogeneous bunch, so perhaps we can’t apply the same issues to each, but perhaps give me an idea of what are the working conditions, the issues, the biases that you’re talking about.
00:08:31 Dragoș Adăscăliței
I think the first point to mention here is that platform work and providing work to platforms has a big promise. And that big promise is the fact that workers can enjoy a level of flexibility that they don’t enjoy in traditional settings. And this is one of the core aspects which has been one of the selling points for platforms and which is attractive for workers themselves. But once we start zooming into how work is actually performed in platforms, we can see that this is not necessarily always the case and that flexibility is sometimes control reduced or fully eliminated. And this is mostly the case for on-location platform work, where workers have to deliver their services face-to-face and meet their clients, and when in cases where platforms control and direct the type of tasks that workers have to fulfil. This in the technical literature is called algorithmic management, right? So it’s the use of a digital tools and digital algorithms to extract first of all data that comes from various sources in order to direct and control the type of work that platform workers do. And this has a huge impact on working conditions because for example, this impacts on the autonomy that workers enjoy. It impacts on the work intensity, on the pace of with which workers have to fulfil their tasks. It impacts on the incomes of platform workers because if you do not fulfil the tasks that algorithm has assigned to you, you risk losing first directly income, but you risk being kicked out from the platform. And it impacts sometimes on the emotional and psychological well-being of platform workers because for example in the case of online platforms workers are required to moderate content that is sometimes psychologically damaging.
00:10:42 Mary McCaughey
And we know that one of the core priorities, and indeed, Commissioner Schmidt, who was here earlier in the year, he indicated this was one of his top priorities to try and tackle the issues around the protection of platform workers. In December, the European Commission set out their proposal for a directive on improving the working conditions of platform work. Do you want to just give us an idea of how that proposal will set out to try and address some of the issues you’ve raised here?
00:11:12 Dragoș Adăscăliței
I would begin by saying that the Directive itself is a very progressive piece of legislation. It draws on a lot of experience that the European Commission has gathered from Member States. It builds on a body of court rulings which have tried to settle the employment status of platform workers, and it tries to come with a sensible list of regulations that address the employment status of platform workers. And I would like to zoom in a bit on this very aspect because this is the key proposal that is included in the directive and that is setting the employment status of platform workers. What is important as well is that the directive doesn’t try to offer an employment status to everyone, so to all platform workers, those 30 million that we were referring to in the beginning of the discussion, but it tries to really correctly classify those workers which are technically in an employment contract, it tries to classify them as employees, right? So the impact of this directive will be that that those workers, a rough estimate is about 3 million workers, will be classified as employees. But besides the employment contract, the other parts of the directive are also very important. Because what the directive does is open up the black box of algorithms, meaning that once implemented, platform workers have a set of rights that they can enjoy, meaning that they will be able to be informed about the decisions which impact on their working conditions.
00:12:49 Mary McCaughey
And do you think, Dragoș, that there will be a fall-off from the platforms themselves if we start introducing this type of legislation which puts responsibility back on them for these 3 million employed workers. Do you think we’ll see a fall-off or a loss of jobs in this area?
00:13:09 Dragoș Adăscăliței
Certainly, this is what some of the voices are currently saying in Europe that you know, more regulation equals fewer jobs. That is definitely not the case because what a European-level initiative is going to do is going to ensure that there will be no kind of regulatory supermarket shopping with platforms trying to avoid regulation by shifting between Member States, by shifting locations, by trying to curtail regulations so I think there will be definitely a period of adjustment for the platforms themselves. For example, in Spain this is indeed something that is currently happening where with the introduction of the employment status, platforms are adjusting to this new system. But I don’t think in the longer term this is going to be the case. And even if it is the case, the question we need to ask ourselves is what type of labour markets do we want to have? Do we want to have quality employment, you know, for people, or do we want to have precarious employment for the sake of having more people integrated or more people attached in one way or another to the labour market?
00:14:24 Mary McCaughey
Yeah, it’s not enough to have more jobs. We have to have good jobs.
00:14:29 Dragoș Adăscăliței
Exactly.
00:14:30 Mary McCaughey
So, Dragoș, that has been I think a good moment for us to dovetail into what we ask at the end of each one of these Eurofound Talks editions where I ask the expert to give me a summary. So if I were to say to you, you have a policymaker in an elevator with you and you have a chance to put to them three main issues that they should take on board, which could effect real change in this area, what would they be if you were to talk to me in three?
00:15:01 Dragoș Adăscăliței
I would say the following things. First, we need better data, more and better data because we can’t regulate the platform economy without fully understanding what is happening. Second of all, I think providing employment status is an important step into regulating the platform economy, but this is not the end of the effort to address issues related to working conditions in the sector. So what we need to follow through is thinking about how we address issues with working conditions to the self-employed because, as I said in the beginning, the platform economy includes a big number of self-employed whose rights and protections need to be guaranteed.
Finally, what I would say is something that I didn’t touch upon that much into this conversation but I think we need to facilitate, in one way or another, is collective bargaining for platform workers. And to a certain extent the Directive does this, but it remains to be seen how this will be implemented by the Member States. So I think we need to pay very careful attention about how platform workers will be engaged in collective bargaining, both employed platform workers, but especially the self-employed workers.
00:16:17 Mary McCaughey
Clearly, we’re talking about different employment contracts. So we have the self-employed who to a large degree are happy enough to be self-employed and then we have the potential of employee status within the platform economy. But these are new developments and when you have developments in this area how much have the social partners been involved in discussing the rights for the self-employed and protection for the employees in this environment.
00:16:47 Dragoș Adăscăliței
Social partners have been really involved in terms of trying to address issues related to working conditions and the collective bargaining of platform workers. Of course, this varies by Member States and traditionally more institutionalised systems of industrial relations, i.e. Germany, France, Italy, the Nordic countries, have seen more engagement from social partners in terms of bringing first innovative initiatives to address and try to bring into their ranks an organised platform workers. And on the other hand, to kind of have or push for more regulation that would improve the working conditions of these categories of workers.
But overall, I think the activity of social partners is key first of all to improving the working conditions of platform workers because of one fact; they are the only actors that have a foot on the ground so they actually know what is happening at the individual level with platform workers. If research from the traditional economy has shown something is that every time we have collective bargaining, something that Eurofound is very interested in, this leads to positive outcomes both in terms of pay but also in terms of working conditions. So this is the key finding that I think should be taken on board every time we talk about platform workers because I think if we try to implement the directive without the full engagement of the social partners, we’ll see that it will be impossible for us to monitor what is happening at the ground level. Second of all, to keep track of whether the directive is actually leading to the factor improvements of working conditions for these workers.
00:18:30 Mary McCaughey
Thank you very much, Dragoș, for joining us today for this edition again on a topic which is very pertinent today in the European agenda. For those of you who are interested in platform work and the platform economy, if you’re interested in digitalisation, the future of work, remote working and all of the relevant topics, you can find all of that on Eurofound’s website. Please access it via any of our social media channels or indeed through our topic pages. And until next time when Eurofound talks to you.
[Outro]
