42 Amendments of Kim VAN SPARRENTAK related to 2019/2186(INI)
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 41 a (new)
Citation 41 a (new)
– having regard to the ILO’s ‘Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work’ of 21 June 2019,
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 41 b (new)
Citation 41 b (new)
– having regard to the ILO World Employment and Social Outlook 2021 ‘The role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work’,
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 41 c (new)
Citation 41 c (new)
– having regard to the 2020 Gender Equality Index Report,
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 41 d (new)
Citation 41 d (new)
– having regard to the Data&Society report of February 2019 entitled ‘Workplace Monitoring & Surveillance’ and ‘Algorithmic Management in the Workplace’,
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 41 e (new)
Citation 41 e (new)
– having regard to the EPRS report of November 2020 entitled ‘Data subjects, digital surveillance, AI and the future of work’;
Amendment 22 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas platform work canmay create employment opportunities, increase choice, provide additional income, and lower barriers to entering the labour market; whereas platform work may facilitates flexibility for both workers and clients, and the matching of demand for and supply of services, as well as innovation in digital tools, which is a useful vector for growth in times of crisis and recovery;
Amendment 34 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas platform work has alsocan also shift employment away from quality jobs, lead to unfair competition and has raised concerns about precariousness or and poor working conditions, lack of access to adequate social protection, fragmented and unstable income, and a lack of occupational health and safety measures, especially for lower-skilled on-location platform workers and workers performing micro-tasks, as highlighted during the COVID-19 crisis; whereas platform workers that suffered loss of income because of the pandemic were often not eligible for neither the income support measures for employees nor for the self- employed;
Amendment 40 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
Ba. whereas platform workers are exposed to particular health and safety risks due to the characteristics of work they are performing and on-location platform workers have an increased risk of contracting Covid-19; whereas the road safety of platform workers in the transport and delivery sector, in particular cyclists as vulnerable road users, and the safety of other road users can be put in danger because of speed and efficiency pressure; whereas platform workers, in particular female drivers and women providing cleaning and care services in private residences, can have an increased risk of being victims of sexual harassment and violence and might refrain from reporting because of lack of reporting tools, no contact with a human manager or fear of bad ratings and loss of future work; whereas sexual harassment and violence are underreported in platform work;
Amendment 49 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B b (new)
Recital B b (new)
Bb. whereas digital labour platforms use digital tools such as apps, algorithms and AI as part of their primary business model to match supply and demand and to manage their workers; whereas algorithmic management presents new challenges for the future of work, such as technology-enabled control and surveillance through prediction and flagging tools, remote real-time monitoring of progress and performance and time-tracking, automated behavioural nudges which can generate excessive speed and efficiency pressure for workers, track employees’ behavioural patterns, exacerbate discriminatory practices and entail significant risks for privacy, workers’ health and safety and human dignity16a; __________________ 16a Workplace Monitoring & Surveillance, Data & Society, Mateescu, A., Nguyen, A., Explainer: February 2019
Amendment 51 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B c (new)
Recital B c (new)
Bc. whereas algorithmic management can create power imbalances and obscurity about decision-making and must be fully transparent in order for workers to effectively challenge these decisions; whereas a massive imbalance of information between platform workers and digital labour platforms exists;
Amendment 53 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B d (new)
Recital B d (new)
Bd. whereas artificial intelligence trained or fed with biased datasets can exacerbate existing biases and systematically implement them in all its outcomes; whereas women and migrants have a higher risk of costumer rating bias;
Amendment 54 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B e (new)
Recital B e (new)
Be. whereas research shows that transportation network companies add to congestion, increase emission levels and reduce the use of public transport and active mobility in cities where they are operating, causing an increase in air pollution and CO2 emissions;17a __________________ 17a https://www.transportenvironment.org/ne ws/uber-and-lyft-increase-pollution-and- undermine-public-transport-study-shows
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B f (new)
Recital B f (new)
Bf. whereas digital labour platforms globally generated revenue of at least US$52 billion in 2019; whereas about 70 per cent of the revenues generated were concentrated in just two countries, the United States (49 per cent) and China (22 per cent), while the share was much lower in Europe (11 per cent) and other regions (18 per cent);18a __________________ 18aILO, World Employment and Social Outlook 2021 ‘The role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work’, p. 20.
Amendment 58 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas people working in the platform economy are generaldigital labour platforms routinely classifiedy workers as formally self- employed; whereas, as such, these people do not benefit from the equivalent social, labour, health and safety protection that are connected to an employment contract in most countries; whereas digital labour platforms in that case do not pay social security contributions;
Amendment 76 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas the blurred distinction betweenmisclassification of workers and thes self-employed often seen in platform work causes uncertainty as regardsa denial of access to their rights, entitlements, and applicable rules: whereas more and more sectors are likely to be impacted by this in the future;
Amendment 80 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E a (new)
Recital E a (new)
Ea. whereas the employment status of platform workers and lack of explicit mentioning thereof in legislation, in particular in the transportation and food delivery cases, has in recent years led to a high number of court cases across EU member states and the world; whereas the cases brought before the highest national courts and the European Court of Justice have led to outcomes confirming the employee status of platform workers based on different criteria to establish the existence of a relationship of subordination; whereas the Spanish Supreme Court regarding Glovo, the French and UK Supreme Court regarding Uber ruled in favour of employment; whereas the European Court of Justice has ruled in case C-434/15 that Uber is not merely an information society service, but a transportation service and thus has to comply with the EU transport aquis; whereas low-paid an precarious workers that often lack representation shouldn’t be obliged to access their rights through cumbersome court proceedings;
Amendment 86 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E b (new)
Recital E b (new)
Eb. whereas four drivers have filed a case against Uber in the Amsterdam District Court for having been automatically fired by the algorithm without human oversight in violation of Article 22 GDPR, claiming they were wrongly accused of fraudulent activity through real-time algorithmic location tracking and that the company has not shared any evidence against the drivers justifying their dismissal from the platform;
Amendment 98 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas Member States have developed different approaches, leading to fragmented rules and initiatives; whereas most platforms are active in several EU countries and are often not based in the country where the work takes place; whereas there is a need for European level action to overcome the resulting legal uncertainty and improve platform workers’ rightsworking conditions, rights and access to social protection;
Amendment 115 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. NoteRecalls that the current European framework is unsatisfactory, with EU legal instruments which do not cover all platform workers in their personal scope and which do not address the new realities of the world of work; regrets that this fragmentationaccording to the European Court of Justice ‘worker’ means a ‘natural person who for a certain period of time performs services for and under the direction of another person in return for remuneration’; Believes that the practice of misclassification of workers by digital labour platforms as established by courts across the EU is deplorable; Notes that EU legal instruments are not applied to all platform workers and do not sufficiently address the new realities of the world of work, such as work fragmentation and flexibilisation of labour relations; regrets that this places some platform workers in a legally precarious situation, resulting in somea high number of platform workers enjoying fewer or more limited rights than should be guaranteed to all platform workers regardless of their employment status; workers;
Amendment 130 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. StresseRecalls that the European Parliament supported the Commission’s inclusion of an EU-wide definition of a worker in its proposal for a ‘Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive' and regrets that this was not adopted in law; regrets that therefore the unsatisfactory situation where each Member States defines for their territory who is a worker continues to apply; regrets that the meaning of the terms ‘worker’ and ‘self-employed’ are not uniformly defined in all Member States; notes that the boundary between these two terms is less clear for new forms of work, and that some self-employed or workers are at risk of being misclassified;
Amendment 139 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
Amendment 162 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Welcomes the Commission’s proposal for a legislative initiative to improve the working conditions of platform workers; calls on the Commission, if the social partners do not express the wish to initiate the process provided for in Article 155 of the TFEU, to put forward a new directive on platform workers in order to guarantee them a minimum set of rights regardless of theirthat introduces the rebuttable presumption of an employment relationship as well as the reversal of burden of proof regarding employment status, and to addresses the specificities of platform work such as algorithmic management and transparency, data protection, training, health &; safety by establishing a set of rights for everyone that works through a digital labour platform;
Amendment 170 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Amendment 173 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4 b (new)
Paragraph 4 b (new)
4b. Calls upon the Commission to present in the legislation clear criteria to recognise the status of digital labour platforms either as employer, (temporary) employment agency, or intermediary, linked to their sector of activity, in order to ensure all obligations a particular status entails, for inter alia social security contributions, responsibility for health & safety, liability for income tax payments, due diligence and corporate social responsibility are met and a level playing field with other companies active in the sector can be preserved;
Amendment 175 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Stresses the need to better combat bogus self-employment by means of a directive including a workers definition, a rebuttable presumption of employment and defining the liability of digital labour platforms, so as to cover also platform workers which are fulfilling the conditions characteristic of an employment relationship based on the actual performance of work, and not on the parties’ description of the relationship; is of the opinion that special attention should be given to digital labour platforms that strongly organise conditions and remuneration of online and on-location platform work, which could be used as guidance for determining the degree of responsibility of platforms towards platform workers;
Amendment 187 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Stresses that algorithms used by platforms to attribute work can be of a discriminatory nature; recalls that according to Article 19 TFEU „In defining and implementing its policies and activities, the Union shall aim to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual; calls on the Commission to propose a ban on discriminatory practices by AI and put in place solid legal safeguards in legislation to combat discrimination by AI or algorithmic management by ensuring that the information or datasets used to run or train AI used on the workplace represent diversity and are not biased, including tools like consumer-sourced rating systems, which can reflect biased and discriminatory practices towards workers; notes that women and migrants have a higher risk of costumer rating bias; recalls that some platforms use rating systems to influence how many offers or tasks a platform worker will receive; stresses that platform workers must always be able to challenge ratings by clients;
Amendment 197 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 – indent 1
Paragraph 6 – indent 1
– better implement the prohibition of exclusivity clauses, and ensure all platform workers are permitted to work for different platforms (multi-apping) and not be subject to adverse treatment for doing so in line with the Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive;
Amendment 199 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 – indent 2
Paragraph 6 – indent 2
– improve rights in case of restriction, suspension or termination by the platform by ensuring all platform workers have the right to a reasoned statement , and, if this is disputed, a right of reply and to effective and impartial dispute resolution providing the possibility to re-establish compliance or rebut the statement as well as the right to group claims;
Amendment 203 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 – indent 3
Paragraph 6 – indent 3
– address the current lack of transparency by ensuring the provision of essential information regarding working conditions, the method of calculating the price or fee, and transparency in the event of a change in the terms, conditions and procedures for temporary or permanent deactivation, if any, which should be preceded by consultation and in case of use of AI, platforms must be transparent about the fact they use AI, the parameters the algorithms take into account and the way AI is used and influences working conditions;
Amendment 227 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Stresses that some platform workers may bare subject to increased health and safety risks; is of the opinion that the Commission proposal must address the occupational health and safety of platform workers ensuring that the European Health and Safety legal framework can be fully applied to them, as well as establish minimum requirements to enable them to exercise a right to disconnect without any adverse consequences; recalls that the EU legal framework including provisions on working time, paid holidays and breaks apply to all workers covered by the legislative scope and do not foresee an exemption for or exclusion of platform workers; Stresses that on-location platform workers need to be equipped with adequate personal protective equipment and those active in transportation and delivery need to have guaranteed accident insurances and technical checks of their vehicles; Underlines that digital labour platforms need to put in place safeguards to protect platform workers against sexual violence and harassment on the work floor and set up solid reporting mechanisms;
Amendment 238 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Considers that all workers, including platform workers, should receive compensation in case of work accidents and occupational diseases, and be offered sickness, unemployment, accident and invalidity insurance coverage and all other employment rights such as paid holidays; welcomes, in this respect, the initiatives of some digital labour platforms to provide as a first step insurance as well as occupational health and safety measures;
Amendment 243 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Strongly believes that formal and effective coverage, adequacy and transparency of social protection systems should apply to all workers including the self-employed; calls on the Member States to fully and immediately implement the Council Recommendation on access to social protection for workers and self- employed, and to ensure that their national plans set out relevant measures to be taken address the social protection of platform workers;
Amendment 250 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Recalls in particular the importance of extending social protection rights to self-employed platform workers, including people transitioning from one status to another or who have both statuses, for schemes covering maternity and equivalent parental benefits, and unemployment, accident, long-term care, invalidity sickness, healthcare and old-age benefits;
Amendment 264 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Recognises that freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are fundamental rights for all workers, and believes a directive on platform workers should ensure that these rights are effective and enforced; notes the potential for imbalancedoccurrence of imbalanced and asymmetrical relationships between digital labour platforms and workers, who may lack the individual bargaining power to negotiate their terms and conditions; notes further that there are also practical issues such as a lack of common means of communication and opportunities to meet online or in person, and active interference of digital labour platforms through algorithmic work distribution to prevent the assembly of workers, which can prevent collective representation in practice; calls on the Commission to address such impediments in its proposal; stresses the need for platform workers and platforms to be properly represented in order to facilitate social dialogue, collective bargaining and workers representation through their trade unions;
Amendment 271 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11a. Underlines that the cooperative legal form could be an important tool for bottom-up organization of platform work, which may also have a positive impact on internal democracy and workers’ empowerment;
Amendment 278 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Regrets the legal difficulties in collective representation faced by platform workers, and is aware that the solo self- employed are considered ‘undertakings’, and as such are subject to the prohibition on agreements that restrict competition; welcomacknowledges in this regard the inception impact assessment published by the Commission16, and the planned initiative to address this obstacle without undermining collective bargaining; is convinced that EU competition law must not hinder the improvement of the working conditions (including the setting of remuneration) and social protection of genuinely solo self- employed platform workers through collective bargaining; __________________ 16https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/ALL/?uri=PI_COM%3AAres %282021%29102652
Amendment 285 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Believes that basic training must be provided to platform workers by the platform at leastdigital labour platforms on the use of their website or the application and the tasks performed; believes further that platform workers, in particular less qualified workers, should be offered training enabling skilling and re-skilling to improve their employability and career paths; calls for the facilitation of the recognition, validation and portability of attainments in the field of non-formal and informal learning; believes in this regard that a ‘certificate of experience’ should be issued for platform workers who have participated in such training, which could be uploaded on individual learning accounts;
Amendment 300 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Considers that platform workers should be entitled toany algorithms deployed in the area of work must be transparent, non- discriminatory and ethical algorithms; believes that algorithmic transparency and non-discrimination should apply to task distribution, ratings and interactions, while respecting trade secrets, and that an intelligible explanation of the functioning of the algorithm on the way tasks are assigned, ratings are granted, the deactivation procedure and pricing should always be provided, as well as information in a clear and up-to-date manner on any significant changes to the algorithm; is of the opinion that ethical algorithm implies that all decisions are contestable and reversible, andall decisions, in particular algorithmic decisions, must be contestable and reversible; reiterates that any algorithmic decisions must comply with the right not to be subject to subject to a decision based solely on automated processing enshrined in Article 22(1) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), which means there must be human oversight; stresses that incentiveising practices or, such as exceptional bonuses in particular should not lead to risky behaviours, as well as punitive practices, such as assignment of less work or lower pricing should not lead to risky behaviour or health and safety risks; believes that algorithmic management and tools and real-time surveillance can put excessive pressure on workers, potentially coercing workers to forgo safety to meet efficiency benchmarks and significant risks for mental health21a; is convinced that non- discriminatory algorithms are those which prevent gender, racial and other social biases; __________________ 21a Workplace Monitoring & Surveillance, Data & Society, Mateescu, A., Nguyen, A., Explainer: February 2019
Amendment 309 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14 a (new)
Paragraph 14 a (new)
14a. Calls on the Commission and Member States to ensure appropriate protection of workers’ rights and well- being, such as non-discrimination, privacy, human dignity and protection against exploitation by employers in the use of AI and algorithmic management, including prediction and flagging tools to predict employees behaviour and identify or deter rule-breaking or fraud by workers, real-time monitoring of progress and performance and time tracking software, automated behavioural nudges, undue surveillance and decision-making by or based on AI; believes algorithmic management can assist employers in compromising on what constitutes work time, hence salary23a; __________________ 23a Workplace Monitoring & Surveillance, Data & Society, Mateescu, A., Nguyen, A., Explainer: February 2019.
Amendment 319 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Recalls that all online platforms must ensure full compliance with EU non- discrimination and data protection law; believes further that platform workers should have full access to all data concerning their own activities, understand how their personal information is processed, and have the right to export their ratingsbe informed on any classification or evaluation of the worker by the platform,, and have the right to export their ratings; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure that platform workers have the effective right to data portability as enshrined in Article 20 of the GDPR; believes that the possibility of a portable rating certificate, recognised between similar platforms, should be explored;
Amendment 332 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16