Policy recommendations to promote fairer industrial relations in the platform economy

17 April 2025 By

Extensive empirical work conducted in several EU countries as part of the INCA project shows that the changes and challenges induced by platformisation on industrial and labour relations require continuous reflection on how to adequately protect workers in the platform economy. Even though EU and national policymakers and regulators have already started to account for the challenges encountered by workers in the platform economy, further fine-tuning of legal and other mechanisms is necessary to offer adequate protections.

We identify several policy recommendations to promote fairer industrial relations in the platform economy. In the context of EU and national legislation, we believe it is key to continue to invest in an interpretation of existing labour standards in line with their intended goal as well as in effective monitoring of compliance and proper enforcement. While relevant labour protections exist, and are even being expanded, platforms are still sometimes able to circumvent or ignore them. Having proper legal rules in place is therefore not sufficient. Effective interpretation, monitoring of compliance and enforcement is at least as important. This includes national labour rules as well as EU rules to properly classify workers in the platform economy as part of the Platform Work Directive and rights relating to algorithmic management in the General Data Protection Regulation, AI Act and Platform Work Directive. The need to ensure effective interpretation of the protections in the General Data Protection Regulation and AI Act is especially relevant, considering that workers in warehouses and call centers controlled by platforms are not covered by the Platform Work Directive.

Beyond these more legally oriented recommendations, we ask attention for further supporting the development of trade unions among platform workers to make collective bargaining more effective as an instrument to obtain stronger protections and to ensure the effective involvement of workers’ representatives in evaluating the impact of algorithmic systems – as facilitated by the Platform Work Directive. Beyond this, it is worth considering to specify alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for workers in the platform economy at the EU level. Even though such mechanisms exist at the national level, this would provide a common channel for workers to resolve disputes quickly without having to go to court and to enforce their rights under EU law.

While several protections already target workers in the platform economy, our analysis shows that they all have certain gaps or difficulties that limit their impact in practice. As it is unlikely that any one type of protection suffices to offer adequate protection, we conclude that it is crucial to ensure the availability of multiple legal and other mechanisms in parallel to ensure effective protection of workers in the platform economy.

Inge Graef & Friso Bostoen, Tilburg University