Platform Work in Europe: Toward Harmonisation?

This book is the culmination of fruitful discussions that began at a 2018 conference in Milan on platform work. It contains national reports (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom) in which the respective authors provide expert analysis and insight as concerns some important questions that arose during the conference, impacting the various European countries considered in a similar manner.

These questions are:

• What are the diffusion data of the phenomenon in the considered country?
• Have special rules been developed by the legislator or are there landmark cases with regard to these platform workers in the legal system of the considered country? and
• What role do unions play and what is the relevance of platform workers’ collective rights?

In the background of these questions, a crucial one appears: Is the notion of subordinate work, as it emerged and consolidated itself during the 20th century, still able to encompass and provide workers in this new millennium with suitable protection?

In addition to chapters on some notable European jurisdictions, the book also contains other more transversal reports dealing with the issue of fundamental (collective) workers’ rights, as well as the applicable European legal framework.