EU gig-workers still exploited, despite landmark laws

In 2021, Spain passed the ‘ley rider’ (rider law), classifying food courier workers as employees, rather than self-employed contractors, as well as setting rules for how algorithms can be used in the workplace. 

While the law is seen at the forefront of addressing issues of false self-employment and algorithmic control in the rapidly growing food delivery platform sector, Fernando García, a Glovo food delivery worker affiliated with the collective Riders X Derechos, describes to EUobserver a long story of struggle for rights within the sector. 

As EU member states transpose the EU’s Platform Work directive into national law, the experience following the Spanish Rider Law reveals the challenges in adapting to an economy increasingly impacted by algorithmically managed digital platforms. 

Continued ‘bogus’ self-employment

Food delivery workers in Spain, referred to as ‘Riders’, established a collective called Riders X Derechos (Riders X Rights) in 2017 to mobilise against what they described as exploitative conditions, including companies being able to deactivate accounts seemingly without recourse, and opaque algorithms determining their pay.  

At the centre of the struggle was the designation of workers as ‘self-employed contractors’, rather than employees, denying them paid holidays, collective bargaining rights, and other protections. 

Organisers described facing significant pushback from the food delivery companies at the time. 

Labour law professor Miguel Rodriguez-Piñero Royo told EUobserver that workers organising with Riders X Derechos could suddenly stop receiving deliveries from the platforms, or in some cases, saw their accounts deactivated. 

Nevertheless, the movement secured several key victories, beginning with a Supreme Court decision in 2020 that determined that food courier workers should be classified as employees. 

One year later, the Spanish government passed the Rider Law, further enshrining employment status for these workers and setting rules for algorithmic transparency. 

But while the law change saw some companies change their employment practices, the largest company, Glovo, continued its model of hiring riders as self-employed contractors. 

‘Chameleonic’ responses

Professor of work and employment Pedro Mendonça told EUobserver that the companies’ responses reflected a "chameleonic labour process."

He was referring to the fact that digital platform companies are highly malleable and swiftly change depending on the countries they work in and the legal institutions that exist there. 

In Spain, there are three main food delivery platforms operating in the market: Glovo (by far the largest in the country, headquartered in Barcelona), Just Eat, and Uber Eats, each of which reacted differently to the law.

Just Eat began employing its workers directly and signed a collective bargaining agreement with unions in late 2021, while Uber Eats hired workers through subcontractors. 

Glovo, however, continued to classify workers as self-employed, while gradually dominating the Spanish market. 

“Glovo ignored both the Supreme Court ruling of 2020 and the Rider Law of 2021 and continued working with bogus self-employed workers, until this year when they finally started to transform”, García told EUobserver.

For its part, a spokesperson from Berlin-based Delivery Hero, Glovo’s parent company, told EUobserver that Glovo has always complied with applicable regulations in Spain, both after the Supreme Court ruling and the rider law. 

Fines and false titles

García told EUobserver that since the Rider Law was passed, Spain’s labour inspectorate has issued numerous fines to Glovo while courts have repeatedly decided in favour of workers claiming their status as employees. 

Earlier this year, Spain’s social security administration announced that it was demanding €450m in fines and unpaid social contributions from the company. 

The Delivery Hero Spokesperson told EUobserver that the decisions surrounding these fines were being appealed and challenged in court, as the company says its Flex model provides a legal self-employed status and that the company remains committed to operating in the country.

Following a change to Spain’s penal code in 2022, designating false self-employment as a criminal offence, Glovo’s CEO Òscar Pierre has been subject to criminal litigation for the company’s employment practices. 

But one day before Pierre appeared in court to testify in the case, Glovo announced that it would be formally employing its workers in line with the Rider Law.

While unions saw the change as related to the court case, Pierre denied this and said that the timing was a ‘coincidence’.

Improvements, challenges 

“Now, I have 30 days of holiday per year, a fixed monthly salary, and union representation so I can negotiate my conditions”, García told EUobserver. 

The algorithmic transparency requirements also mean that unions have the ability to negotiate the terms of how algorithms influence working conditions. 

Nevertheless, challenges remain in the sector, especially for migrant workers, many of whom are undocumented. 

For example, García said that rented accounts were commonplace, where individuals with legal working status rented their accounts to workers without working permits, who then paid the account owners a fee or percentage of the income from the work. 

Roya told EUobserver that another consequence was that, for some, the change to employment may have reduced incomes, “because previously they were working for different platforms simultaneously”. 

However, García argued that this was a form of hazardous self-exploitation, saying it resulted in working excessive hours across different platforms: “If there’s a work hazard, you have to eliminate that danger, not just turn it into money.”

García added that although he saw the Rider Law as a success, it would not protect other, less-visible platform workers.

“Couriers are somewhat symbolic of this because we are hyper-visible. We carry a fluorescent 1m³ backpack on the street, so of course we are visible”, he said.

“The caregivers, the click workers, the content creators, the content moderators, the translators, where are they? Well, they are in homes working with algorithms and an app, so they are invisible”, he added. 

The EU’s rules on platform work should cover workers in these sectors too. 

Transposing EU law

EU member states have until December 2026 to transpose the EU’s Platform Work Directive. 

The lawas a broader scope than Spain’s Rider Law and covers all platform workers.

The European Council estimates that the number of platform workers in the EU will reach 43m this year. 

The directive establishes a presumption of employment for workers in the platform economy, which can be challenged by platform companies. 

It also sets rules limiting how algorithms can be used in the workplace, such as prohibiting the processing of some data, including data on workers’ emotional states, private conversations, predicting the likelihood of workers’ trade union activity, and other sensitive data related to race, ethnicity, and gender. 

Silvia Rainone, senior researcher at the research centre of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), said that the transposition process will likely result in highly varied laws across member-states, as the exact contours of the employment presumption would differ from country to country.

“When you have workers working for intermediaries, the intermediary often does not have control of the app, or access to the algorithmic management system, or the data storage, etc.,” Rainone told EUobserver, adding that the use of intermediaries was a challenge for holding companies accountable for their use of algorithms.

“There must be a duty of cooperation between intermediaries and the platform, but this is not explicitly written in the directive,” she said.

Despite the challenges, García, the Glovo worker in Madrid, saw Spain as an example for the EU. 

“Unions work. Social dialogue works. I would say to states, civil society, unions, and legislators: ’Believe in yourselves’,” he said.

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