scholarly journals ‘Platformisation’ of Work: An EU Perspective on Introducing a Legal Presumption

2021 ◽  
pp. 203195252110631
Author(s):  
Miriam Kullmann
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Employment Status ◽  
Burden Of Proof ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Potential Benefits

For some time now, the European Commission has stressed the need to address the ongoing misclassification of employment status in platform work and has thus considered introducing a rebuttable presumption of employment status or a reversal of the burden of proof. This contribution focuses on the benefits and limitations of introducing a rebuttable legal presumption in EU labour law as an evidentiary means to improve the working conditions of platform workers. In doing so, some general remarks on rebuttable legal presumptions will be made, while also offering some comparative legal insights, before exploring their potential benefits and limitations in the context of EU labour law in general and platform work in particular. This contribution will finish with an analysis of how such a presumption could be integrated in the current EU social acquis.

scholarly journals Precarious or Protected? Evaluating Work Quality in the Legal Sex Industry

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 173-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Orchiston
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Industry Regulation ◽  
Regulatory Model ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Legal Sex

Decriminalising (or legalising) sex work is argued to improve sex workers’ safety and provide access to labour rights. However, there is a paucity of empirical research comparing how different regulatory approaches affect working conditions in the sex industry, especially in relation to venues that are managed by third parties. This article uses a mixed methods study of the Australian legal brothel sector to critically explore the relationship between external regulation and working conditions. Two dominant models of sex industry regulation are compared: decriminalisation and licensing. First, the article documents workplace practices in the Australian legal brothel sector, examining sex workers’ agency, autonomy and control over the labour process. Second, it analyses the capacity of each regulatory model to protect sex workers from unsafe and unfair working conditions. On the basis of these findings, the article concludes that brothel-based sex work is precarious and substantively excluded from the protective mantle of labour law, notwithstanding its legality. It is argued that the key determinant of conditions in the legal brothel sector is the extent to which the state enforces formal labour protections, as distinct from the underlying regulatory model adopted.

scholarly journals The Rolls of Oléron, Maritime Assizes of the Kingdom of jerusalem

2019 ◽  
pp. 129-137
Author(s):  
Marcin Böhm
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Safety Culture ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Maritime Safety ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Maritime Labor

The essence of this paper is to illustrate the genuine link between the norms contained in the medieval twenty-four first laws of oléron that have survived to modern times, binding certain legal solutions in the space over the ages. The Laws of oléron contain norms relating to contemporary maritime labour law. Certainly they are not a model fully reflected in the maritime labor Convention (mlC 2006). nevertheless, these principles can be an interesting starting point for discussions on the importance of decent working conditions and the lives of seafarers on ships from a few centuries perspective and the importance of maritime safety culture.

The Unbearable Precarity of Pursuing Freedom: A Critical Overview of the Spanish sí soy autónomo Movement

2021 ◽  
pp. 136078042110400
Author(s):  
Tiago Vieira
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Employment Status ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Labour Legislation ◽  
The Government ◽  
Wage Earners ◽  
Critical Overview

Throughout 2020, the Spanish Government initiated the process of regulating all activities related to platform work with the purpose of ‘chasing the fraud of bogus self-employment’ (PSOE and Unidas Podemos, 2020). Somewhat surprisingly, this initiative was met by a substantial wave of protest from the workers who the government proclaimed to be attempting to protect. In this light, the present research explores the arguments of the Spanish sí soy autónomo (yes I am self-employed) movement in its struggle against the Spanish Government. Drawing from a critical discourse analysis of semi-structured interviews to couriers of Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Glovo, as well as to a representative of an association in favour of the preservation of the self-employed status (N = 20), the main finding is that the pursuit of self-employment status is primarily informed by workers’ attempt to escape the precarious working conditions offered to wage-earners in the Spanish labour market as a whole, rather than by an empirically grounded claim. This suggests that new labour legislation addressing the challenges posed by platform work must not overlook the broader context in which it is intended to unfold – otherwise, it may not only fail to improve the workers’ situation, but also drive them to demand what are, actually, further deregulated legal arrangements. As such, this article’s main contribution to the sociological knowledge consists of pointing out that platform work, specificities notwithstanding, cannot be seen as detached from the broader Work landscape.

19. Labour and equality law

2020 ◽  
pp. 612-642
Author(s):  
Mia Rönnmar
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Flexible Work ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Worker Participation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Eu

This chapter discusses a number of key EU labour and equality law issues. These include restructuring of enterprises; information, consultation, and worker participation; how national collective labour law is affected by the four freedoms; flexible work and working conditions; the EU and national labour law in times of economic crisis; and gender equality, comprehensive equality, and protection against discrimination on other grounds.

The universality and effectiveness of labour law

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-338
Author(s):  
Keith D Ewing ◽  
John Hendy QC ◽  
Carolyn Jones
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Employment Status ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Short Article ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Intractable Problem ◽  
Employment Rights

This short article considers the Workers (Definition and Rights) Bill drafted by the Institute of Employment Rights as a possible solution to the intractable problem of employment status in the United Kingdom, to which Countouris and De Stefano refer. It does so in the context of ILO principles of ‘universality’ and ‘effectiveness’ of labour law, and three important ILO Declarations.

Work Practices and Fatigue in the Long Distance Road Transport Industry in Australia

1992 ◽  
Vol 36 (13) ◽  
pp. 975-979
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Feyer ◽  
Ann M. Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Road Transport ◽  
Truck Drivers ◽  
Work Practices ◽  
Driver Fatigue ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Transport Industry ◽  
Potential Benefits

A Questionnaire was used to obtain information from 960 long distance truck drivers about the drivers” experience, type of employment and their working conditions, type of driving operation, as well as details of their last trip and their last working week. Operations specifically designed to combat driver fatigue by provision of a relief driver in a team operation did not appear to achieve their intended outcome. The potential benefits of such operations appeared to be outweighed by the greater distances and lack of flexibility that characterised these trips.

Digital collaborative platforms: A challenge for both the legislator and the social partners in the Nordic model

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annamaria Westregård
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
New Economy ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Collective Agreements ◽  
Employment Conditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Security Regulations

This paper focuses on the specific problems in the labour and social security legislation as it relates to crowdworkers in the digitalised new economy, analysing their place in labour market, and especially in the collective agreements which are the standard means of regulating working conditions in the Nordic model. Sweden has a binary system where a performing party is as either an employee or self-employed. The law on working and employment conditions offers only limited protection to those on short, fixed-term contracts; instead, it is social partners that have improved crowdworkers’ conditions in some industries by using collective bargaining. However, there are no collective agreements in the digital economy, or indeed for platform entrepreneurs. The complications of the parties’ positions will be analysed, especially as platforms do not consider themselves to be employers, but rather coordinators of the self-employed. It is not only labour law regulations that are important to prevent precariat among crowdworkers. It is also very important that the social security regulations adapt to the new labour market as the social security legislation is an important part of the Nordic model.

scholarly journals A Dataset Quality Assessment—An Insight and Discussion on Selected Elements of Environmental Footprints Methodology

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (16) ◽  
pp. 5004
Author(s):  
Anna Lewandowska ◽  
Katarzyna Joachimiak-Lechman ◽  
Przemysław Kurczewski
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assessment ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Raw Milk ◽  
Special Procedure ◽  
Environmental Footprints ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Quality Rating ◽  
Entire Dataset

One of the most recently developed life cycle-based methods is an environmental footprint of products and organisations established by the European Commission. A special procedure of data and dataset quality assessment has been developed as a part of the environmental footprints methodology. The procedure may be recognised as vital and powerful but, at the same time, a bit complicated and time-consuming. It is worth discussing this subject and looking for potential simplification. In this paper, we suggest a possible way for simplification. We propose to remove an impact-assessment-based step from the procedure of company-specific datasets quality assessment. There are two potential benefits: a reduction in the need for expert knowledge and time savings. The threats posed are connected to the fact that all data influences the Data Quality Rating indicator of the entire dataset to the same degree. With a higher volume of data included in the assessment, there is a risk of greater differentiation in their quality. In this paper, an example of raw milk production is presented. The assessment of quality of the dataset was performed in three variants: pursuant to the approach established by the European Commission in the pilot phase, transition phase and with certain modifications employed.

scholarly journals A global labour constitution?

2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-301
Author(s):  
Ruth Dukes
Keyword(s):  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Economic Globalisation

This article explores the argument that the idea of the labour constitution, as developed by Hugo Sinzheimer, offers a useful perspective for thinking about labour law today. With reference to the work of Wolfgang Streeck and Karl Polanyi, it highlights the potential benefits of the labour constitution as a framework for analysis. With a view to developing and updating Sinzheimer’s blueprint for a – national – labour constitution, it then engages with two lines of theoretical enquiry into the  nature of constitutionalism under conditions of advanced economic globalisation. It concludes by outlining an agenda for further research, informed and inspired by the idea of a global labour constitution.

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