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    Gig Worker Protections Get a Push in European Proposal

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    A proposal with widespread political support would entitle drivers and couriers for companies like Uber to a minimum wage and legal protections.LONDON — In one of the biggest challenges yet to the labor practices at popular ride-hailing and food-delivery services, the European Commission took a major step on Thursday toward requiring companies like Uber to consider their drivers and couriers as employees entitled to a minimum wage and legal protections.The commission proposed rules that, if enacted, would affect up to an estimated 4.1 million people and give the European Union some of the world’s strictest rules for the so-called gig economy. The policy would remake the relationship that ride services, food delivery companies and other platforms have with workers in the 27-nation bloc.Labor unions and other supporters hailed the proposal, which has strong political support, as a breakthrough in the global effort to change the business practices of companies that they say depend on exploiting workers with low pay and weak labor protections.Uber and other companies are expected to lobby against the rules, which must go through several legislative steps before becoming law. The companies have long classified workers as independent contractors to hold down costs and limit legal liabilities. The model provided new conveniences for traveling across town and ordering takeout, and gave millions of people a flexible new way to work when they want.A courier in Paris last year, when lockdown measures highlighted the fragile nature of gig work.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesBut in Europe, where worker protection laws are traditionally more robust than in the United States, there has been growing momentum for change, particularly as the pandemic highlighted the fragile nature of gig work when food couriers and others continued to work even amid lockdowns and rising Covid-19 cases.While there have been some important legal victories and laws passed in some countries targeting Uber and others, the policy released by the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, is the most far-reaching legislative attempt to regulate companies to date.The rules would affect drivers, couriers, home cleaners, home health care aides, fitness coaches and others who use apps and online platforms to find work. As employees, they would be entitled to a minimum wage, holiday pay, unemployment and health benefits, and other legal protections depending on the country where they worked.“New forms of work organization do not automatically translate into quality jobs,” Valdis Dombrovskis, the bloc’s commissioner for trade, said as he presented the new rules. “People involved in platform work can sometimes find themselves exposed to unsafe living and working conditions.” The European Union estimates that 28 million people work through digital labor platforms in the bloc, with their number expected to grow to 43 million by 2025. The commission said on Thursday that 5.5 million workers were at risk of what it called misclassification, and that up to 4.1 million of them could be reclassified as employees through the directive.“This is not just bike riders in big cities,” said Johanna Wenckebach, a lawyer and scientific director at the Hugo Sinzheimer Institute for Labor and Social Security Law in Germany. “This is a phenomenon with millions of workers and many more ahead.”The rules are part of a broader digital agenda that European Union leaders hope to pass in the coming year. Proposals include tougher antitrust regulations targeting the largest tech companies, stricter content moderation rules for Facebook and other internet services to combat illicit material, and new regulations for the use of artificial intelligence.The new labor rules follow a landmark case in February, when Britain’s top court ruled that Uber drivers should be classified as workers entitled to a minimum wage and holiday pay. In the Netherlands, a court ruled in September that Uber drivers should be paid under collective rules in place for taxi drivers.Dutch Uber drivers calling for expanded workers’ rights outside a court in June that would later rule in their favor.Koen Van Weel/EPA, via ShutterstockSupporters of the new worker regulations said companies like Uber behave like employers by controlling workers through software that sets wages, assigns jobs and measures performance — a practice the commission called “algorithmic management.”The new European rules would require companies to disclose more about how their software systems made decisions affecting workers. For those who may remain independent, the new rules would also require companies to grant more autonomy that self-employment entails.The policy threatens the business models of Uber and other platforms, like the food delivery service Deliveroo, that already struggle to turn a profit. The E.U. law could result in billions of dollars in new costs, which are likely to be passed on to customers, potentially reducing use of the apps.Uber opposes the E.U. proposal, saying it would result in higher costs for customers. The company said roughly 250,000 couriers and 135,000 drivers across Europe would lose work under the proposal.Rather than help workers, Uber said the proposal “would have the opposite effect — putting thousands of jobs at risk, crippling small businesses in the wake of the pandemic and damaging vital services that consumers across Europe rely on.”Just Eat, the largest food-delivery service in Europe, said it supported the policy. Jitse Groen, the company’s chief executive, said on Twitter that it would “improve conditions for workers and help them access social protections.”The E.U. rules are being closely watched as a potential model for other governments around the world. Negotiations could last through 2022 or longer as policymakers negotiate a compromise among different European countries and members of the European Parliament who disagree about how aggressive the regulations should be. The law is unlikely to take effect until 2024 or later.Enforcement would be left to the countries where the companies operated. The policy contrasts Europe with the United States, where efforts to regulate app-based ride and delivery services have not gained as much momentum except in a few states and cities.A protest in Bakersfield, Calif., against Proposition 22, a 2020 state ballot question backed by gig economy companies.Tag Christof for The New York TimesLast year, gig economy companies staged a successful referendum campaign in California to keep drivers classified as independent contractors while giving them limited benefits. Although a judge ruled in August that the result violated California’s Constitution, his decision is being appealed, and the companies are pursuing similar legislation in Massachusetts.The Biden administration has suggested that gig workers should be treated as employees, but it has not taken significant steps to change employment laws. In May, the Labor Department reversed a Trump-era rule that would have made it more difficult to reclassify gig workers in the country as employees.In Europe, Spain offers a preview of the potential effects of the E.U. proposal. The country’s so-called Riders Law, enacted in August, required food delivery services such as Uber and Deliveroo to reclassify workers as employees, covering an estimated 30,000 workers.Uber responded by hiring several staffing agencies to hire a fleet of drivers for Uber Eats, a strategy to comply with the law but avoid responsibility for managing thousands of people directly. Deliveroo, which is partly owned by Amazon, abandoned the Spanish market.The companies prefer policies like those in France, where the government has proposed allowing workers to elect union representation that could negotiate with companies on issues like wages and benefits. Uber also pointed to Italy, where a major union and food delivery companies struck a deal that guarantees a minimum wage, insurance and safety equipment, but does not classify the workers as employees.Kim van Sparrentak, a Green lawmaker in the European Parliament who helped draft a report on platform workers that was published this year, praised the commission’s proposal as “quite radical.”“It can set a new standard for workers’ rights,” Ms. Van Sparrentak said.Adam Satariano More

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    E.U. Delays Digital Levy as Tax Talks Proceed

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    The postponement came as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in Brussels to continue pushing for a global minimum tax.BRUSSELS — The United States secured a diplomatic victory in Europe on Monday when European Union officials agreed to postpone their proposal for a digital levy that threatened to derail a global effort to crack down on tax havens.The delay removes another potential obstacle to the broader tax agreement, which gained momentum over the weekend after finance ministers from the Group of 20 countries formally backed a new framework. That deal, which officials hope to make final by October, would usher in a global minimum tax of at least 15 percent and allow countries to tax large, profitable companies based on where their goods and services are sold. If enacted, the changes would entail the biggest overhaul of the international tax system in a century.With those negotiations in their final stretch, the European Union was planning to propose a 0.3 percent tax on the goods and services sold online by all companies operating in the European Union with annual sales of at least 50 million euros. That was intended to help fortify a fiscal recovery fund and had been in development since last year, when the international talks taking place at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development appeared to be on life support.But that new levy had been unacceptable to U.S. officials, who viewed it as disproportionately hitting American firms. As Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen arrived in Brussels to pressure the European Union to drop or delay the plan, officials announced on Monday that it would be shelved.“I think we will work together to reach this global agreement,” Paolo Gentiloni, European commissioner for economy, told reporters after a meeting with Ms. Yellen. “In this framework I informed Secretary Yellen of our decision to put on hold the proposal of the commission of a digital levy to allow to us to concentrate, working hand in hand to achieve the last mile of this historic agreement.”A European Commission spokesman suggested that the delay would remain in place until October, a time frame that is in line with the deadline set by the O.E.C.D. to complete a global tax agreement.Ahead of a meeting with the Eurogroup, a club of euro-area finance ministers, Ms. Yellen had waved off questions about the significance of the digital levy delay. A Treasury Department spokeswoman said she had no comment.At a news conference in Venice on Sunday, Ms. Yellen made clear that she believed that the new E.U. proposal ran counter to the broader talks over a minimum tax and the elimination of digital services taxes in Europe and other countries.“It’s really up to the European Commission and the members of the European Union to decide how to proceed, but those countries have agreed to avoid putting in place in the future and to dismantle taxes that are discriminatory against U.S. firms,” Ms. Yellen said.Other finance ministers indicated that the delay was another sign of progress.“It’s very, very good that we are now going to the next step, discussing how we will implement this at the European Union and that the European Union is deciding not to go with its own proposal to the public today,” Olaf Scholz, Germany’s finance minister, said as he entered the meeting.The E.U. digital levy proposal faced a difficult path to becoming law in Europe, but the prospect of a new proposal that could be construed as a tax that targets American companies would have been another distraction for the fragile negotiations.The United States has already been angered by other digital taxes that countries like France, Italy and Britain have enacted, which are separate from the new proposal. More than a dozen countries have enacted or announced plans in recent years to move forward with their own digital taxes.The Biden administration has asked countries to immediately drop their digital taxes and has prepared retaliatory tariffs on a wide swath of European goods, including cheese, wine and clothing. As part of the global tax negotiations, countries have said they are willing to do so in exchange for additional tax on the largest and most profitable multinational enterprises, those with profit margins of at least 10 percent, that would be based on where their goods or services were sold, even if they had no physical presence there.France, Europe’s biggest proponent of a digital tax, had no comment Monday. Its finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, had said during the weekend that France would legally commit to withdrawing its digital services tax only after an agreement was in effect, which is unlikely to happen before 2023.In remarks at the meeting on Monday, Ms. Yellen emphasized the importance of a close relationship between the United States and the European Union and underscored the importance of the global tax agreement that she has been helping to broker. She argued that a deal over a global minimum tax would help European nations make important investments in their economies and reduce inequality.“Long-run fiscal sustainability is critically important, which is one of the reasons why we need to continue working collectively to implement a global minimum tax of at least 15 percent, in line with the commitment the G20 made just days ago,” Ms. Yellen said. “We hope all E.U. member states will join the consensus and the European Union will move forward on this issue at E.U. level.”Ms. Yellen made the case that fiscal sustainability should be achieved by taxing multinational companies, adding: “We need sustainable sources of revenue that do not rely on further taxing workers’ wages and exacerbating the economic disparities that we are all committed to reducing.”The meeting also offered Ms. Yellen an opportunity to persuade Ireland to join the global agreement. Ireland, Estonia and Hungary have yet to sign on to the deal, which is now backed by 132 countries. Because support must be unanimous within the European Union, their resistance could scuttle the entire agreement.The United States has been trying to make the case to Ireland that the proposed tax changes in the United States that aim to curb profit shifting would nullify many of the benefits Ireland had gained from having a tax rate of just 12.5 percent. They are also trying to convince Ireland that its status as a corporate hub would be secure even if it raised its tax rate, hoping to alleviate Irish concerns that joining the agreement would upend its economic model.O.E.C.D. officials believe that Ireland is withholding its support for the agreement until the Biden administration demonstrates that it can pass tax legislation in the United States. Ms. Yellen will return to Washington on Tuesday and work with members of Congress to win support for the deal.After a meeting with Ms. Yellen, Paschal Donohoe, Ireland’s finance minister and president of the Eurogroup, offered an optimistic tone but made no commitments. He said that he had a “very good engagement” with the Treasury secretary and that there was “further work ahead.”“I affirmed to Secretary Yellen that Ireland remains very committed to the process,” Mr. Donohoe said, promising that he would remain “constructively engaged.”Liz Alderman More