Advancing Together? A Focus on Access to Collective Bargaining is Needed

5 min read

At the beginning of the 2024-2029 EU mandate, after years of discussions on implications of digitalisation for work, access to collective bargaining (and social protection) in Europe remains remarkably tight to workers’ legal status. However, research has largely shown how the proliferation of working arrangements has rendered the link between collective bargaining and legal status more problematic. If the commendable EU priority of advancing together established for the next five years is to be taken seriously, social partners and policymakers should further work on how to ensure better access to collective bargaining across the labour market.

Collective bargaining and the legal status of workers: How do social partners respond?

The fast-paced development of digital technologies has revamped the debate on Social Europe and particularly on the implications for work and social protection.

As the recent adoption of the Platform Work Directive showed, platform work has been at the core of such debates. As well known, the legal status of platform workers, i.e. whether they should qualify as employees or self-employed, has become politically salient. While social partners are primarily equipped to bargain on behalf of employers and employees, most platforms have not joined employer organisations or negotiated with trade unions. This has weakened the action of social partners, reflecting a broader phenomenon characterizing contemporary labour market regulation.

In a context where collective bargaining is needed, yet difficult to put in place due to (platform) workers’ supposed independence, how do trade unions and employer organisations respond? This question, which I focused on in a recent article published in the European Journal of Industrial Relations, is key to understanding present and future challenges to collective representation and reflecting on policy actions.

Social partners and the legal status of platform workers: Insights from Danish and Dutch cases

While the decision of platforms to work with independent contractors has affected social partners’ representativeness in the sector, trade unions and employers gradually emerged as central protagonists of the debate on platform workers’ legal status.

My study of Danish and Dutch social partners shed some light on their action in two countries where social dialogue plays a key role in labour market regulation.

In Denmark, in a context of low self-employment share, the main concern of social partners has been that platform work paves the way for more economically vulnerable forms of self-employment, which would hinder the national social partnership system. At the same time, the latter needs to be able to address successfully the implications of emerging technologies. To this end, in 2018, the well-known collective agreement between 3F and Hilfr sought to bring self-employment within the collective bargaining system. The agreement followed an experimental approach – which was sanctioned by the Danish competition authority – that allowed workers to choose between employment and self-employment status. While the agreement was positively welcomed, what emerges from my research is that social partners soon realised that the approach was not necessarily the most promising and went back supporting more ‘traditional’ collective agreements negotiated by representatives of workers and employers.

While no collective agreements were signed in the Netherlands, my study illustrates the centrality of legal status for Dutch social partners too. Led by FNV, trade unions have been active in organising platform workers and stressing the dependent character of their working activities. In their view, labour market flexibility – sustained by the widespread diffusion of solo self-employment - should be tamed in favour of more protection. The best way to do so is to acknowledge platform workers’ limited autonomy and hire them as employees. Simultaneously, employers have long supported platform work and never really opposed the independent status of workers. While they have acknowledged the problematic imbalances in access to social protection between dependent and independent workers, employers have argued that protection ought not to be strengthened at the expense of flexibility; rather, the two must go hand in hand. This can only happen, in their view, if the strong association between employment contract and protection is loosened and the bundle of rights independent of the legal status is developed further.

Strengthening access to collective bargaining is key to advancing together

Two main broad types of social partners’ answers - both predicated upon the idea that platform work is a small manifestation of what the future of work holds - emerge from the abovementioned piece of research.

On the one hand, the dependent character of platform work is stressed and a focus is placed on reclassifying platform workers as employees. In this vein, the best way to enhance the protection of workers in ‘atypical’ arrangements is through the employment contract, which should therefore be kept at the core of the future of work.

On the other hand, the value of flexibility associated with the status of self-employed platform worker is emphasized and a focus is put on reinforcing protection for economically vulnerable independent workers via strengthening their access to collective bargaining. This approach, which challenges the current structure of collective bargaining, was taken by Dutch employers and partly by Danish social partners ahead of the signing of the Hilfr agreement. A notable case is also the action of Union Indépendants and CFDT in France, which have supported collective bargaining for independent platform workers.

Bring more workers into the employment realm or strengthen the right to collective bargaining for certain types of independent workers? That is the fundamental question facing social partners.

After having closely followed the debate around the Platform work directive, my contention is that the two things should not be put in contradiction, yet be part of a unified strategy to revive collective bargaining.

On one side, unions in particular should keep stressing how reclassification does not lead any self-employed to become an employee. By contrast, it only concerns ascertained cases of bogus self-employment.

At the same time, it will be crucial to continue working on making sure that collective bargaining increasingly reaches solo self-employed with less impediments linked to competition law. In this regard, the path traced by the 2022 EU Commission guidelines on collective agreements regarding solo self-employed is promising and therefore constitutes a good ground for social partners and particularly unions to lobby on the matter. Judging from its focus on ‘people, skills and preparedness’, protection does not seem to be at the core of the new Commission agenda. Nonetheless, if prosperity and competitiveness – listed among the three EU priorities for the new mandate - are intended as means to ‘advancing together’, disparities in access to collective bargaining ought to be urgently tackled in the coming years.