BEERG Newsletter - EU: Parliament wants to up the ante on algorithm bargaining

The European Parliament’s rapporteur on the draft Directive on the employment status of platform workers, Elisabetta Gualmini, is proposing that human resource algorithm decisions must always be subject to human review and that employees’ representatives be given significant information, consultation, and bargaining rights when it comes to algorithm management. 

While Gualmini’s report is mainly focused on the employment status of platform workers, what will concern the wider employee relations community is any suggestion that extensive details of algorithms be made available to union representatives. Such algorithms are often the source of a company’s competitive advantage and an obligation to share such data could be seen as a major commercial risk. This would be even more the case if union representatives were allowed to share the information with outside “experts”, heightening the risk of leaks. 

At the time of writing the Gualmini opinion is not yet available and we are working from Brussels press reports. We will come back to this when we have the report. In December, the European Commission published a Directive on the employment status of platform workers. The Commission estimates that 28 million people are currently working in the gig economy in Europe, a figure set to reach 43 million by 2025. The Commission’s draft suggested the gig economy workers should be classified as employees unless the platform could prove otherwise.