Thread by @valeriodeste

So, this is HUGE. The EU Commission has started a process today to allow self-employed workers to bargain collectively THREAD 👇🏼

Under existing case law of the EU Court of Justice, employees can bargain collectively over salaries with no fear of competition law. According to the Court also the “false self-employed”, ie independent contractors who work in conditions similar to those of employees can do so👇🏼

The problem is that under this case law it is not always clear who is a “false self-employed”. This risks excluding many vulnerable workers from the scope of collective bargaining ‘cause they are nominally self-employed (think of platform or domestic workers, in some countries)👇🏼

In the past, Vice-President Vestager has opened to expand access to collective bargaining. However, she had only referred to those who are currently misclassifed as self-employers. This would perpetuate the problems existing with the CJEU jurisprudence about “false self-employed”

Today’s statements, instead, seem to move away from this approach and address explicitly the self-employed more at large, with no limitation only to case of misclassification. This would have momentous consequences 👇🏼

The Commission explicitly states that “Self-employed activities are very diverse, they can cover a wide range of activities and their situation varies during time.”This seems a recognition that some of them should be allowed to bargain collectively,regardless of misclassification

This change of approach might significantly expand the scope and extent of collective bargaining, potentially improving conditions of the most vulnerable workers in our labour markets. Among other things it would be more in line with ILO and Council of Europe’s instruments 👇🏼

It still needs to be seen how this will play out. A consultation has been open and there will most likely be harsh lobbying against including platform workers and other vulnerable people in collective bargaining as entire business models are based on undercutting their salaries👇🏼

Also, the consultation will delay the answer from the EU when the Covid19 crisis made it clear that the workers who would most benefit from this initiative bore most of the brunt of the emergency. This is also why the ETUC has expressed reservations etuc.org/en/pressreleas…

Anyway, the Commission seems to move in the right direction at least in admitting that current competition-law restrictions to collective bargaining are inadequate to deal with the huge heterogeneity of self-employed workers and something should be done about it👇🏼

For more info on how current EU competition law is at odds with the internationally recognized right to collective bargaining and how to reconcile it with that right, you may look at this paper written in 2019 with @UCLLaws’ @IoannisLianos and N Countouris papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…