Date
20 April 2023

Tag

Active

Country
France France
Geographical scope
National
Type
  • Type

    Negotiation of working conditions

    Voluntary
  • Type

    Employment contract

    Legal
  • Type

    Algorithmic management

    Legal
View Initiative

Description

On the 20th of April 2023, the National Federation of Autoentrepreneurs and Microentrepreneurs in France (FNAE), the Independent Union, and the Association of Independent Platforms (API) have signed a collective agreement determining the terms under which platforms may terminate their business relationships with platform workers in the form of account deactivation.

Accordingly, a platform can only deactivate a workers account if procedures prior to the deactivation have been implemented by the platform. Moreover, if a platform deactivates a workers account, the worker needs to be informed prior to the determination, and the reasons for the account deactivation, such as any incidents attributable to the individual platform worker, must be explained in a more transparent way than before. The necessity of human intervention in each deactivation procedure is also reiterated, as the agreement prohibits algorithms from deactivating an account without human intervention.

The agreement obliges platforms to develop a communication system between them and the platform workers to create the possibility of reporting difficulties or an incident during a delivery. Platforms must also put tools in place to ensure that workers are not penalised for false customer declarations, which has previously happened if customers marked an order as not having been delivered to avoid payment. Lastly, a platform worker needs to be given the opportunity to contest the decision to deactivate their account and reasons provided for this decision in a timely manner. In addition, an account cannot be deactivated without notice for administrative reasons, such as a document expiring, any longer.

The background of this collective agreement is the goal to improve the working conditions of platform workers engaged in deliveries. It has been organised by the Employment Platforms Social Relations Authority of the French government. Through this social dialogue, the FNAE, which represents over 80,000 microentrepreneurs in France and is the first union representing these workers, is brought to the negotiation table with the API, which is an organisation with platforms such as Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Stuart as members.


Additional metadata

Keywords
representation, industrial relations, social dialogue, algorithm, algorithmic management, working conditions
Actors
Platform, Employee organisation
Sector
Transportation and storage

Sources

Citation

Eurofound (2023), Terms and conditions for platform worker account deactivation established (Initiative), Record number 4419, Platform Economy Database, Dublin, https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/platformeconomydb/terms-and-conditions-for-platform-worker-account-deactivation-established-110168.