Uber Files gives new impetus to discussions on platform workers directive

This story was updated to better reflect the view of the European Trade Union.

The revelations of Uber’s opaque lobbying tactics are bound to affect the negotiations on the platform workers’ directive, with those asking for stronger social protection ready to capitalise on them.

With the Czechs having just taken up the file in the Council and lawmakers having begun negotiations at the technical level last week, the revelations of the Uber files are set to come to the fore in the discussions on the future EU directive on platform workers.

On Sunday (10 July), The Guardian, along with 42 other international newspapers, including Le Monde in France, revealed in a series of articles Uber’s intensive lobbying machine to gain a foothold in the market and how the US company allegedly flouted the law.

The investigation was based on 124,000 confidential Uber documents, which the British newspaper was able to access before sharing them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

These revelations come at a time when Brussels is seeking to further regulate the working conditions of workers on these platforms, including Uber, and lobbying is in full swing on all sides.

“The Uber files, if the news is confirmed, demonstrate how urgently we need to protect vulnerable workers from abusive business models”, declared the rapporteur of the file in the Parliament, centre-left MEP Elisabetta Gualmini, adding that they “prove again that it is time to close the legal loopholes some platform companies abuse.”

The leading committee’s lawmakers will get to vote on Gualmini’s report in October. “In this vote, political groups will show their true colour: do they side with workers and their social rights and fair competition, or with these modern day ‘pirates’ as they even defined themselves, proudly, reaping the spoils of the digital revolution?”, she asked.

The battle is raging in the European Parliament, where the industry has found a sympathetic ear among conservative and liberal legislators, in particular, worried the proposal may destroy the growing, yet untouched market.

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“I am not surprised [by these revelations]. It’s a confirmation of what we’ve been seeing,” said French left-wing MEP Leila Chaibi, accusing some of her right-wing colleagues of taking up word for word the arguments of the delivery platforms.

Meeting on Wednesday, MEPs on the employment committee discussed the possibility of hearing from Uber as part of their work and of opening an internal investigation about the lobbying campaigns by the platforms.

For its part, the American company does not seem to see the harm. “We have not and will not make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with our present values”, Uber said in a statement on Sunday (10 July).

France on the spot

The Uber Files also uncovered that French President Emmanuel Macron, then Minister of the Economy, was a partner of choice and a direct point of contact for the company, which at the time was experiencing some obstacles to its implementation on the national market.

This supposed proximity, at least ideological, between the French head of state and the American company makes sense, for some, in view of the little progress made by France at the head of the Council.

Paris has been leading a coalition of Northern and Eastern European countries that are sceptical about the proposal, in particular about the notion of a rebuttable presumption. Conversely, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Belgium have been pushing for more social protections.

France’s preference would be to leave the question of status to collective bargaining, as it does at the national level. However, the Uber files might end up weakening its position in the EU Council, and more broadly undermine the credibility of the platforms’ arguments.

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“It is a fact that the French Presidency wasn’t in any hurry when it comes to this file. One meeting per month cannot be interpreted as giving it high priority”, an EU diplomat told EURACTIV.

While the directive had indeed not been announced as a priority of the French mandate, President Emmanuel Macron said he had “regulated the sector, without any complacency”, during a visit on Wednesday.

The French President stressed that he worked to create jobs for people from difficult neighbourhoods, with no opportunities, specifying that he would “do it again tomorrow and the day after.”

Still, according to the European Trade Union (ETUC), the revelations help to explain why the French Presidency seemed unwilling to advance this file. In light of the revelations, ETUC sent a letter to MEPs asking them to wait for the results of an investigation on the Uber Files before the file gets through the plenary. EURACTIV understands that it is unlikely to be the case.

Contacted by EURACTIV, the French president’s office said that “the French Presidency has carried out this work swiftly: since January, seven meetings of the Social Questions Group have been organised on this subject, which have enabled the Presidency, in a very short space of time after the presentation of the Commission’s proposal, to make progress in the substantive discussions and to present a compromise text.”

The presidential office highlighted that in Macron’s traditional address in Strasbourg in January, he said that he was “very much in favour of us being able to consolidate social rights for all workers and social convergence upwards”.

Meanwhile, the newly appointed French Minister of Digital Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, is expected to officially relinquish Uber-related matters due to his relationship with Uber’s European communications director, Hélène Barrot, who is none other than his sister.

Negotiations on the upcoming directive now fall to the Czechs, who have held the EU Council Presidency since the beginning of the month.

“The platform workers directive has always been a priority for the Czech Presidency. Our aim is to move fast, present a good and solid proposal and reach an agreement on a general approach at the end of this year”, a spokesperson told EURACTIV.

Platform workers: French presidency clings to criteria approach

The French Presidency of the EU Council suggests not to stray too far from the Commission’s proposal regarding the determination of the status of platform workers but could share the same ambition as the European Parliament regarding algorithmic management.

[Edited by Luca Bertuzzi/Nathalie Weatherald]

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