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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
18 April 2023 April 2023 19
P
latform work is work organised
through an app, such as UberEats,
Deliveroo and Just Eat.
In December 2022, the
Employment Committee of the
European Parliament considered the Terms of
Reference for the new EU Platform Work
Directive, passing the most progressive version
of the amendments on oer. A plenary vote on
February 2 rearmed this decision.
Sweden, currently holding the Presidency of
the EU Council, is under pressure to reopen
debate on consensus-agreed definitions of
worker status. This means that the final Terms
of Reference for the Directive may not be
finalised, and transposed into national law of
Member states, until after the EU Council
presidencies of Sweden’s Right-wing coalition
and then Spain’s Pedro Sanchez-led Left-wing
coalition.
Despite intense and sustained lobbying from
platform-dependent companies aimed
particularly at European People’s Party (EPP)
MEPs, the key Article 4 pertaining to the
“presumption of employment” was passed by
the European Parliament and it is on this there
is most focus. As it stands, the burden of proof
will be on such companies to prove that any
workers they want to regard as self-employed
are genuinely self-employed. Otherwise they are
by default to be considered employees.
Wexford-native James Farrar, whose legal
case secured employment rights for 70,000+
workers in 2021 after vanquishing Uber in the
In 2021 members
from both of Ireland’s
main coalition
parties supported the
introduction of a ‘third
category’ of worker,
neither employee nor
self-employed, but this
was dropped by Fianna
Fáil and Fine Gael after
workers expressed their
opinion that this was not
what was needed
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael reveal
prejudices on labour contracts
Some party representatives ran for cover on EU directive laying down
presumption worker is an “employee”, while campaigners against the
likes of Uber and Amazon faced untold abuse
By Fiachra Ó Luain
UK Supreme Court, expressed concern right up
until the December 12 vote that the Fine Gael
MEP for Midlands-North-West, Maria Walsh, the
only Irish MEP on the Employment Committee,
would join her EPP colleagues in abstaining or
voting against the definitions of Article 4. This,
in his opinion, would have neutered the eventual
Directive. Walsh’s Swedish EPP colleague, Sara
Skyttedal MEP appears now to be leading eorts
to reject the mandate and reopen the Directive
for amendments, to further water down an
already compromised agreement.
Walsh has still not clarified how she voted on
December 12 but, before the vote, committee
members were warned that any MEP who voted
against or abstained on measures designed to
protect the welfare of workers, would be plied
with Freedom of Information requests pertaining
to any lobbying directed at them and their
parties. All eyes are on such matters following
exposure last year of the ‘Uber files’ in which
Uber Chief-lobbyist in Europe turned whistle-
blower, Mark MacGann exposed the extent to
which Fine Gael and other EPP members had
been lobbied by companies in favour of ‘light-
touch’ regulation.
International recognition of the rights of
oppressed app workers to date has been largely
down to recent landmark legal cases and
organisation by workers, activists and unions
through the likes of the European Transport
Workers Federation and Worker Info Exchange,
that study and challenge the algorithmic
exploitation of workers.
In March 2020 Stamp Two (student) visa-
holding delivery workers had a meeting through
English and Portuguese with then Tánaiste and
Minister for Enterprise Leo Varadkar, supported
by SIPTU and others familiar with the issues
faced by non-EU workers and students in
Ireland. In the months preceding, a series of
well-attended meetings took place where
workers expressed their concerns to Fianna Fáil
Senator Mary Fitzpatrick, members of An Garda
Siochána, Sinn Féin, Labour, People Before
Profit and the Socialist Party.
POLITICS
18 April 2023 April 2023 19
number of years have been receiving passive
income from the many non-European workers
who need to rent these accounts at up to €100/
week in order to make ends meet here.
These people characterised eorts to improve
worker safety, pay and conditions in emotive
McCarthyite terms, more relevant to the fault
lines of recent Lula/Bolsonaro divisions in Brazil
than the domestic situation here in Ireland, in
an attempt to inhibit the involvement of the
exploited workers here who may have arrived to
Ireland from diverse political backgrounds but
are all facing the same problems here.
Sinn Féin’s Louise O’Reilly, who helped the
workers prepare for the Varadkar meeting,
outlines the problems arising from the practice
of bogus self-employment as being the creation
of ‘winners’ in the form of employers who fail to
classify their workers as employees. They win
because they have “no PRSI to pay, no pension
contributions to make, no sick, paternity or
maternity leave to pay, no redundancy
payments, no annual leave or public holiday
pay”.
Meanwhile those losing out are the workers
who have “less entitlement to social welfare
supports if and when they need them, no access
to an occupational pension, no paid sick,
paternity or maternity leave, no redundancy pay,
no fixed breaks or rest periods, no paid annual
leave or public holidays”.
Revenue is the other “big loser” as “huge
losses in PRSI contributions mean serious
consequences for the public finances and the
Exchequer”, O’Reilly says.
Responding to the passage of the
amendments through the Employment
Committee, former MEP and PBP spokesperson
for workers’ rights, Paul Murphy TD, welcomed
the news as the “result of workers and trade
unions at a national and European level pushing
for such legislation...It will also need to be
matched with on the ground organising -
ultimately the best defence of a worker’s rights
is to be organised in a union”.
Labour Senator Marie Sherlock focused on
another key element of the amendments that
were passed, human oversight of artificial
intelligence or algorithmic management of
workers: “We need to recognise that it is a
growing part of the labour market and ensure
that the algorithms managing workers are
transparent and regulated”. Sherlock launched
the ‘Protection of Employment (Platform
Workers and Bogus Self-Employment) Bill 2021’,
in the same month as our meeting with the
current Taoiseach.
Leo Varadkar, who in March 2020 quoted
Terminator’s “There is no fate but what we make
for ourselves”, has yet to say if he will accept and
support the version of the amendments already
Increasing violence and decreasing pay were
the main issues raised by workers present at
these meetings though the problematic issue of
worker misclassification was kicked down the
road by the Department as an issue that would
need to be legislated for at European level
before it could be dealt with here, nationally.
Leo Varadkar stated that before this meeting
he had not had any contact with Deliveroo and
did not know the extent of the exploitation that
occurs through the apps. He suggested
Workplace Relations Commission scrutiny of
Deliveroo practices. He held a subsequent
meeting with Deliveroo and was to get back to
us, as was his Assistant Secretary Clare Dunne
who said she would send on a relevant contact
in the Department of Social Protection regarding
the status of workers. Over two years later and
we are still waiting for both.
After the meeting with Leo Varadkar, workers
and organisers who had been present were
subjected to a series of concerted attacks based
on anti-solidarity disinformation and smears,
violence and bike-theft, leading to at least one
worker being coerced into disavowing activism
and moving out of Dublin. Those behind this
were, among others, individuals who for a
Pltform
workers’ rights
Varadkar held a subsequent meeting with
Deliveroo and was to get back to us, as was
his Assistant Secretary; but over two years
later we are still waiting for both
20 April 2023 April 2023 PB
agreed by consensus twice in the European
Parliament.
Nor has any member of Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil
responded to requests for a statement on these
recent developments from a party perspective.
We do know that in 2021 members from both
of the main coalition parties supported the
introduction of a “third category” of worker,
neither employee nor self- employed, but this
was dropped by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael after
workers made clear that this was not what was
needed nor was it something that had been
asked for by workers.
The only coalition members who responded
to our requests for comment were the Greens,
with Dublin MEP Ciarán Cue stating that he is:
“very happy with the agreement” as it will help
stop “the race to the bottom whereby companies
that treat their workers fairly are crowded out of
the market by their less scrupulous competitors.
The freedom to work whenever and wherever
you want has become a dystopian future for
many. We must ensure that platform working is
regulated and produces decent pay and
conditions for all”.
A spokesperson for the Department of
Enterprise, Trade and Employment stated:
“Ireland has mechanisms for the determination
of employment status and supports the
ambition behind this EU proposal on improving
working conditions in Platform Work”.
To square this circle the national governments
are going to have to solve the interdepartmental
Rubik’s cube of work permissions for non-EU
migrants. In Ireland the bulk of this work is done
by those on Stamp Two visas trying to provide
for their education and survival in Irish cities.
Stamp 2 workers are prohibited by the terms of
their visas from being self-employed and
therefore cannot legally be platform workers
even if companies such as Deliveroo insist on
purporting to designate them as such. Such
companies are of course aware that their
business models flout such basic employment
rules.
They often earn less than the minimum wage
doing deliveries, and are currently prohibited
from owning their own accounts on platforms
such as Deliveroo and UberEats, forcing them to
‘rent’ these accounts from Europeans or Stamp
4 visa holders who, unlike Stamp 2 visa holders,
can legally work full-time and can be legally
“self-employed”.
This results in a passive income for the ocial
account owners from the labour of more
vulnerable Stamp Two workers who have to risk
life-and-limb, uninsured. From what can be
observed, these companies have built their
business model on such “grey-area” dynamics.
Whenever they make a rare appearance to
distribute their branded bags and clothing to
workers here in Ireland, those working on behalf
of management, at least in the case of Deliveroo,
conspicuously refuse to identify themselves nor
do they make any attempt to identify the workers
who seek this equipment from them. From 2019
the estimated number of Deliveroo accounts in
Ireland has jumped from 2500 to 5000, while
the basic payment per delivery for a Deliveroo
worker in Ireland has dropped by 30%, from
€4.39 to €2.90.
At a mouse-click in London, significant drops
in pay often come without warning, and always
with zero consent from workers here. Moreover
the company closed its Dublin oce during the
same period and now operates everything in
Ireland, including the gathering of metadata
from workers here, remotely from London. It is
unclear as to what extent they have been paying
any corporation tax here, despite Deliveroo
having vastly expanded its business here. Irish
Amazon Prime members are now being oered
free deliveries via ‘Deliveroo Plus’ following a
deal with Amazon, as pay and conditions
continue to deteriorate. ‘The Invisible Ones’ is a
short YouTube documentary on the plight of
Dublin delivery workers by Jesús Tiscareño and
fellow Grith College Stamp Two students.
Minds have again focused since February 28
when Revenue sent out tax demands to delivery
account holders, after over five years, on the
very same day that the European Court of Justice
ruled against Only Fans’ attempt to avoid paying
similar taxes, by passing them on to account
holders.
The interdepartmental Rubik’s cube of work
permissions for migrants yields a passive
income for the official account owners
from the labour of vulnerable
non-European workers who have to
risk life-and-limb while working without
insurance, leading the basic payment per
delivery for a Deliveroo worker in Ireland to
drop from €4.39 to €2.90
Success to date has only been possible
through meaningful multi-lingual engagement
between migrant workers of all backgrounds, the
International Transport Workers Federation and
others, with the welcome support of parties
across the Irish political spectrum.
Workers appreciate when parties and
politicians listen to their concerns without trying
to impose their own ideological or party agendas,
respecting the space in which an interlingual
consensus is sustainably built within this
emerging demographic of precarious workers in
Ireland.
Platform workers will remain at risk from
evolving technology for the foreseeable future.
For example the National Artificial Intelligence
Strategy was recently launched by former junior
minister, Robert Troy and Tánaiste Micheál Martin
who pushed for the use of artificial-intelligence
technologies in the workplace. Unsurprisingly,
there was no mention of safeguards.
In the era of plutocracy and technocracy,
workers are always at least one step behind.
Notwithstanding this, meaningful engagement
and international organisation is bearing fruit,
proving that deference to algorithmic management
and exploitation by platform giants is not
necessarily the fate for vulneralable workers.
Fiachra Ó Luain is Co-Founder of ELSU.ie, the
English Language Students’ Union of Ireland
de-pltformed pltform workers
