A directive proposed by the European Commission (EC) seeks to clarify work relations between various online platforms and those who work through them. Lithuanian trade unions and couriers support the initiative, but others see no need to implement major changes.
Most of the people who work through online platforms in Lithuania are self-employed. But according to trade unions, employee-employer relations must be established between workers and platforms.
“Once we recognise that this is an employment relationship, people will automatically enjoy all the protections that people with employment contracts must enjoy,” Inga Ruginienė, head of the Lithuanian Trade Union Confederation, told LRT.lt.
“There is a potentially unpleasant part in this process – people will have to pay taxes […]. As employees, we all get paid a salary, but we also pay taxes,” she added.
According to Ruginienė, the EC directive is necessary as it defines not only the employment relations of couriers and drivers, but also of construction workers, those working in the beauty industry, and others.
“The labour market is changing, and labour relations are also on the verge of change […]. We have to think about those changes and about how to protect workers in the best way. That is what the directive is about,” she said.
Trade unions welcome the fact that this issue is being addressed on the European level because individual states are more concerned about staying competitive than protecting workers, Ruginienė said.
Social security
The most important aspect is to ensure that people working through platforms are insured, according to Kristina Krupavičienė, head of the trade union Solidarity (Solidarumas).
“Why shouldn’t that work be covered by social security? […] Our goal is to convince those platforms to insure people against accidents,” she said.
“After all, they are always on wheels. If something happens to a person, for example, they get sick, nobody pays them and they have no income,” Krupavičienė added.
According to her, such workers have no negotiating power because “it is not clear who their employer is”.
“There is no overtime pay or public holidays for these people. You have a price, and you either drive or don’t drive for that price. If you cause too many problems, you’ll simply be disconnected from the platform,” said the head of Solidarity.
No big changes
But according to business representatives, the EC directive is flawed because it applies the same principles to countries that have different employment practises.
Andrius Romanovskis, head of the Lithuanian Business Confederation, said platforms operate quite flexibly in Lithuania, and only some aspects of their activity need to be fixed.
In his words, one of the fixable issues is health insurance. Although people working through platforms are self-employed and pay health insurance contributions, they are not insured against accidents at work.
But in Lithuania, self-employed people pay quite a lot of taxes and are covered by sickness and other insurance unlike in other countries, Romanovskis said.
“I’m sure that in some countries, platform workers have no guarantees – they receive income, pay income tax, and that’s it. It depends on every country’s social security model,” he added.
Employment criteria
Lithuanian couriers’ association, which is part of the May 1 Trade Union (G1PS), supports the proposed EC directive in its current form.
Couriers are also in favour of article four of the directive, which provides that the relationship between the platform and the person working through it is to be regarded as an employment, if there is labour control under the five criteria defined in the directive.
These criteria propose that an employment relationship exists when wage ceilings are set, when the person working through the platform is required to comply with specific mandatory rules on arriving at work and treating the recipient of the service, and when there is monitoring of the job performance.
Another criterion proposes that an employment relationship exists when the person working through the platform is denied the freedom to organise his or her own work, for example, by choosing working hours, periods of absence, and so on.
Lastly, an employment relationship is defined by the effective restriction on building a client base or performing work for any third party.
“In our view, the criteria scheme is the right one, and it sets clear objectives,” said G1PS. “If the relationship between the platform and the person working through it is essentially an employment relationship, then it should be formalised as such.”
According to the trade union, the directive would encourage greater consideration of the workers’ interests and allow for negotiations.
“The EC directive thus seeks to eliminate cases in which a relationship which is, in fact, an employment relationship is fictitiously presented as a civil relationship,” it said.
G1PS stressed that platforms would avoid employment relationships only if they did not meet the criteria defined by the directive. This means that platforms could not set the price of the service or ask workers to wear their uniforms or bags with logos.
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