Frankfurt/Main – IG Metall welcomes the key points presented today by the Federal Ministry of Labor regarding the regulation of work on digital platforms. From IG Metall’s perspective, the goal is to capitalize on the opportunities that platform work offers many people while ensuring fair competitive conditions.
“A parallel labor market has emerged on the internet, where platforms can undermine many collective bargaining and social standards,” says Christiane Benner, Second Chair of IG Metall. This development has long since had an impact on work in regular employment relationships as well. “It is therefore high time to establish protective rights for crowdworkers.” The proposals from the Federal Ministry of Labor address key demands made by IG Metall, such as the inclusion of platform workers in the statutory social security system—to which the platforms themselves should also contribute—and a clarification of the right to collective bargaining so that platform workers can enter into collective bargaining agreements.
On December 1, 2020, the Federal Labor Court in Erfurt will hear the case of a crowdworker who, with the support of IG Metall, is suing to establish that a permanent employment relationship existed between him and a platform operator. The platform had unilaterally terminated his account without notice. Benner: “If minimum notice periods and a reversal of the burden of proof for determining employee status were already in place today, this termination would not have been possible.” For many platform workers, the termination of their user account has the same consequences as the termination of an employment relationship, but so far they have no protection whatsoever against this risk.
“Unions and works councils are the best protection employees have, even on the internet. That is why we find the key points lacking a digital right of access for unions to the platforms and co-determination rights for crowdworkers,” said Benner. “Even the best regulations remain ineffective if no one monitors whether and how they are being complied with.” IG Metall is critical of the fact that platform operators who limit themselves to purely intermediary activities for work are to be exempt from the provisions. “This would reward platforms like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which assume no responsibility whatsoever for working conditions.” It is therefore also important that the new rules apply at least EU-wide.
IG Metall has been advocating for better working conditions in the internet sector since 2015. For example, together with nine platforms that take social responsibility seriously and have signed the Code of Conduct for Paid Crowdsourcing, it has established an ombudsman office for their crowdworkers.
