Online Platforms, Platform Work and Platform Workers in France, Greece, Italy and Germany: What can we learn from each other?

In Italy, the Legislative Degree has been passed in 2019, improving riders’ working conditions by giving them more guarantees and move towards approximating their status to that of employees. Furthermore, several platforms of the delivery sector signed a voluntary agreement, according to which irrespectively of employment status, all workers are protected against discrimination, have full union rights and the minimum wage in the particular sector.

In Germany, despite multiple grassroots initiatives address­ing the rights of platform workers, the public debates have been focusing more on data protection at the workplace. Various parties and trade unions have been calling for an employee data-protection law in addition to the require­ments laid down in the GDPR.

However, many platform workers are still working under precarious conditions. At the European level, a new Directive on Platform Work is still in the process of negotiation and the subject of implementation into the national law in the upcoming years.

This FES event by FES Future of Work, FES France, FES Greece and FES Italy aimed to address the issue of platform work and discuss the current challenges for platform workers and Trade Unions in France, Greece, Italy and Germany.