The ETUC Fair Platforms project addresses a series of challenges that have been identified through ETUC’s policy work and in the framework of past projects, and that were further selected with the help of ETUC affiliates who are active on the ground. These challenges are:
- algorithmic management and how to safeguard workers' rights trough collective bargaining;
- the platformisation of the economy;
- hybrid challenges concerning health and safety;
- the transpostion of the Directive.
In order to further explore these challenges, exchange experience and develop tools to challenge them, the project foresees four thematic events that feed four thematic reports, that are proud to published here below.
- Negotiating the Algorithm - Trade Union Manual
Click here to read and download the report
Algorithmic management is used to determine work allocation and pay in ways that are typically opaque and often discriminatory. Platform workers have to contend with intensive forms of surveillance which reduce autonomy and undermine privacy. Workers are evaluated in ways that are not transparent and with no opportunity for worker input. Perhaps worst of all, workers face algorithmically-determined punishments, up to and including the loss of their job, sometimes without ever being able to communicate with a human boss.
To address these problems, it’s imperative that workers and unions ‘negotiate the algorithm’. In this report we use this term on the basis it was originally intended; to negotiate collective agreements between employers and unions over the use of algorithmic management. But we also use it more broadly to refer to all trade union activity which relates specifically to the algorithmic management of workers, including case work, legal actions, political lobbying and research.
- Strategic Foresight - Which workers in Europe are vulnerable to Uberisation?
Click here to read and download the report
‘Uberisation’ is the spread of digital labour platforms across the economy. Uberisation presents serious risks to the quality and security of jobs in Europe, as it is associated with insecure and low pay; limited or non-existent social protections; opaque algorithmic management practices; intensive data surveillance; and the flouting of government regulations including labour laws.
Because of these negative affects, identifying sectors that are undergoing Platformisation or are threatened by Uberisation, and understanding the causes of this and what can be done about them, is an important part of developing strategic foresight in the trade union movement.
It’s difficult to predict the future as there are many moving parts in whether companies decide to establish themselves as digital labour platforms and - more importantly - whether they can make a success of it over the medium to long-term. This report adopts a different approach, as it identifies characteristic indicators of Uberisation and defines a set of criteria to evaluate different groups of workers and jobs against these indicators.