How to regulate the bargaining of self-employed workers. What does Brussels think
The European Commission has launched a public consultation to gather views on how to ensure that EU competition rules do not hinder the collective bargaining of self-employed workers. Gabriele Rosana's article
That it is time to modernize European competition rules, Brussels has been thinking about it for a while. And not only to allow the great industrial assets of the Old Continent to team up in the construction of European champions capable of competing with the global giants of the USA and China.
The Commission's agenda also looks at the internal economic fabric and the situation in which self-employed workers find themselves, especially in a digital ecosystem, and the obstacles that antitrust law can pose in this sense.
Self-employed workers, in fact, are valid as individual enterprises and, in the European framework, their collective bargaining collides with the rigid links of competition, in particular the rules that sanction the establishment of cartels between companies for the fixing of prices capable of distorting competition in the EU internal market.
For this reason, the European Commission has launched a public consultation aimed at collecting, until May 28, the opinions and testimonies of citizens, businesses, social partners, academia, government bodies as part of an initiative aimed at ensuring that the rules of competition from the EU do not hinder the collective bargaining of self-employed workers.
A possible proposal for a regulation, drawn up in the light of the inputs collected, will be presented by the Commission in the last quarter of 2021.
THE REASONS FOR BRUSSELS
In the digital economy – but not only – self-employed workers often end up finding themselves in a situation of negotiation asymmetry with respect to their client counterparts and having minimal decision-making margins regarding payment and conditions for carrying out their duties. "Collective bargaining can then be a powerful tool to improve working conditions" even for VAT numbers, is the reasoning of Brussels, which already in mid-2020 had started a process of reflection on the issue, looking first and foremost at platform workers online.
"While it is not for competition policy to address the social challenges of the self-employed, the initiative could ensure that EU competition rules do not prevent weak self-employed workers from engaging in collective bargaining or agreements to improve their conditions. of work. Any action in this area should at the same time ensure that consumers and small and medium-sized enterprises continue to benefit from competitive pricing and innovative business models, including in the digital economy, ”reads the accompanying note to the consultation. After all, “in today's labor market, the concept of employee and self-employed person get confused. And many have no choice but to accept a contract as independent; we must provide them with clarity ”. The initiative runs parallel to one of the priorities of the von der Leyen Commission in the field of labor policies, namely the provision of an EU scheme to support Member States in adopting the minimum wage.
WHO HAS ALREADY EXPRESSED
Over three hundred opinions received by the Commission in recent weeks, in a preliminary assessment in which Brussels proposed alternative models of action, from coverage of platform workers only to that extended to all the self-employed: from journalists ' organizations to those of film authors and composers , up to the trade unions , the realities that represent the workers have shown themselves to be convinced that it is necessary to extend the range of action of the guarantees provided for employees also to VAT numbers; on the other side of the fence, employer networks such as the BDA, the German Confindustria , according to which "the initiative would weaken industrial relations at the national level and confuse the effective dividing line between the rights and duties of the self-employed and employees". Convinced that the exception to the rules that censor anticompetitive conduct is good for those who work in the digital ecosystem, he is instead another employer also present at the first appeal, like Wolt . The Finnish online food delivery platform that also operates in other EU states reaffirms its trust in the European social model and invites us to think of a scheme in which "self-employed riders can continue to work in the same flexible way as today, but without having to accept lower social protections ".
Precisely on the subject of those who work via app, the Commission launched a consultation on the working conditions of the workers of messengers and drivers (but also dog sitters and lawyers who work through the platform) almost simultaneously, which was paid for on Start .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/come-regolare-le-contrattazione-lavoratori-autonomi-cosa-pensa-bruxelles/ on Sun, 14 Mar 2021 16:55:15 +0000.