Documents Rosin, Annika 11 results

"The initial aim of traineeships (or internships) is to ease the transition of young people from school to work by providing them with hands-on work experience. Although traineeships are intended to be educational experiences, employers have started to use trainees as a form of cheap or unpaid labour. Instead of including trainees within the scope of labour laws, they are regarded as non-employees, and traineeships are regulated by traineeship agreements. However, it is not clear whether the rights of trainees working in the framework of a traineeship agreement are sufficiently protected to exclude them from the scope of labour law and prevent their precariousness in the labour market. The aim of this article is to address this question. Taking European Union (EU) law (especially the Quality Framework for Traineeships) as a starting point and then considering the laws of Estonia, Finland, and France, it is argued that at EU level, as well as in Estonia and Finland, trainees working in the framework of a traineeship agreement are not sufficiently protected to prevent their precariousness in the labour market. Trainees working in the framework of a traineeship agreement are exposed to precariousness due to the special features of the agreement as well as their limited labour rights. However, the example of France shows that with more protective regulation of traineeships, the precariousness of trainees can be prevented even without including them within the scope of labour law. It is proposed that at EU level and/or in the other Member States (MS) under examination, more protective regulation of traineeships should be adopted in order to prevent the precariousness of trainees or, alternatively, their inclusion in the scope of labour law should be considered. "

"In recent years most of the discussion among labour law scholars about platform workers has concentrated on their employment status. However, it is unclear which norms regulate platform work in cases in which the worker is classified as an ‘employee'. Platform work resembles temporary agency work (TAW) due to its fixed-term and triangular nature, giving rise to the question of whether provisions regulating TAW should be applied to platform work. The aim of this article is to analyse whether it is possible to apply the Temporary Agency Work Directive (TAWD) to platform workers and whether it would improve their employment conditions. It is argued that the automatic application of the TAWD to platform workers would be complicated and would not improve their employment rights. The main obstacles include the problems arising from the assignment of supervision and direction to the user; issues relating to the determination of working time; the identification of a comparator for the purposes of equal treatment, and the derogation from the principle of equal treatment based on qualifying periods. Other possibilities for the regulation of platform work need to be identified."

"Automated decision-making (ADM) and monitoring are central features of platform work and undoubtedly shape platform workers' working conditions. Yet, platform workers are often unaware of how they are monitored, how their actions influence working conditions, and on what basis and how the decisions affecting them are made. Increasing the transparency of ADM and monitoring systems can raise the awareness of platform workers and allegedly improve their working conditions.
The Platform Work Directive (PWD) seeks to improve platform workers' conditions by strengthening their rights to transparency in ADM and monitoring. However, it remains uncertain whether the PWD offers a substantive advancement over existing legal frameworks. This article examines whether the PWD enhances the transparency of algorithmic management in platform work and thereby improves the position of platform workers. We compare the transparency regulation in the PWD with the relevant provisions in the General Data Protection Regulation, the Platform to Business Regulation, the Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive and the Artificial Intelligence Act.
We conclude that the PWD clearly contributes to the improvement of the transparency rights of platform workers. The personal and material scope of the PWD's transparency rights is broader than that of the other instruments, as it covers all platform workers, regardless of their actual employment status, and extends to both ADM and monitoring. The transparency obligations imposed on platforms under the PWD are also broader and more clearly defined than those in the other instruments examined in this article."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Automated decision-making (ADM) and monitoring are central features of platform work and undoubtedly shape platform workers' working conditions. Yet, platform workers are often unaware of how they are monitored, how their actions influence working conditions, and on what basis and how the decisions affecting them are made. Increasing the transparency of ADM and monitoring systems can raise the awareness of platform workers and allegedly improve their working conditions. The Platform Work Directive (PWD) seeks to improve platform workers' conditions by strengthening their rights to transparency in ADM and monitoring. However, it remains uncertain whether the PWD offers a substantive advancement over existing legal frameworks. This article examines whether the PWD enhances the transparency of algorithmic management in platform work and thereby improves the position of platform workers. We compare the transparency regulation in the PWD with the relevant provisions in the General Data Protection Regulation, the Platform to Business Regulation, the Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive and the Artificial Intelligence Act."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"As a rule, labour law protection, including protection of the employee occupational safety and health (OSH), extends to telework. While it is usually the employer's responsibility to ensure OSH, fulfilling this obligation can be complicated in the case of telework. The unconventional workplace, combined with the employees' constitutional rights, can restrict the employer's possibilities to guarantee the protection of the OSH. Thus, the question of whether the employer OSH obligations should be reduced and the employee responsibilities for their own OSH increased arises. This article examines what the OSH obligations of the employer and employee should be in the case of telework. The article is based on an analysis of European Union (EU), Finnish, and Estonian regulations. While the EU regulation on OSH does not allow for any differential treatment of teleworkers in terms of their OSH protection, in practice, the employer cannot fulfil these duties in the same way as it can in traditional work. Hence, it is reasonable to allow some exceptions. Finnish and Estonian regulations enable the employer to refrain from fulfilling certain OSH obligations, increasing employee responsibility for OSH. In both countries, the employer remains primarily responsible for the protection of OSH, and only the duties that cannot be fulfilled because of the special features of telework are limited. These exceptions must be interpreted restrictively to avoid unnecessarily increasing the employee obligations. In addition, supplementary employee OSH duties must be dependent on and accompanied by significant obligations on the employer ' information and training concerning potential risks and their prevention. The revision of the current EU regulation on OSH also needs to be considered to guarantee that OSH duties are fulfilled as much as possible and to avoid the infringement of the regulation because of objective, practical constraints. Since the employee is more autonomous than usual when organising telework, compliance with OSH rules also requires a relationship of trust rather than control between the parties to the employment contract. If the employer suspects that the employee cannot ensure OSH, the employee must be employed on the employer's premises. However, when placing greater responsibility on the employee, care must also be taken to ensure employers do not force employees to telework."

"Because of the high rates of youth unemployment, governments and international organisations are searching ways to help the youth to enter into the labour market. Among other means, traineeships are promoted for this purpose. However, the legal status of trainees is not clear. The twofold nature of a traineeship (including working as well as learning) makes it difficult to determine whether a trainee should be regarded as an employee or should be left outside the scope of labour laws. This article attempts to answer this question. As a result, it is concluded that it is difficult to distinguish trainees from employees on the basis of traditional characteristics of an employment relationship. It is suggested that the legislature and courts should work out other criteria for distinguishing between trainees and employees (possibly according to the example of the US) or consider the explicit exemption of trainees from the regulation of labour laws and to provide separate regulation of traineeships."

"The amendments of labour and social law provisions adopted due to Covid-19 in Finland reflect balancing the interests of the employers and the employees. The measures adopted have been agreed with labour market organisations. On one hand, the Government has aimed to maintain jobs by broadening the possibilities for temporary lay-off, on the other hand, the livelihood of employees has been guaranteed by unemployment benefits. Also, the flexibilization of the employment contract during probationary period has been accompanied with the stricter rules concerning the re-employment of the dismissed employee. Finally, the Government has broadened the unemployment security to entrepreneurs, that has especially contributed to the livelihood of self-employed entrepreneurs."

"Although platform work has been studied by many labour law researchers, mainly the unclear labour law status of platform workers as well as possible new avenues to ensure their protection have been discussed. However, platform work is similar to already-regulated atypical work arrangements and the possibilities of the application of these regulations needs to be analysed. The aim of this article is to analyse the applicability of the Fixed-Term Work Directive (1999/70/EC (FTWD)) to platform workers. The question of whether platform work can be regarded as fixed-term employment according to the FTWD is analysed, and also whether the measures to prevent the abuse of successive fixed-term contracts ensure that platform workers avoid being placed in a precarious position. In the example of four platforms (Uber, Deliveroo, TaskRabbit and Amazon Mechanical Turk), it is argued that many platform workers can be regarded as fixed-term workers for the purposes of the FTWD. The existence of a bilateral fixed-term employment relationship between the platform and the worker can be detected in the case of platforms providing transportation and food delivery services. A bilateral relationship also forms between the client and the worker in the case of platforms providing universal services. In the case of crowdwork, a tripartite temporary agency work relationship forms between the platform, the worker and the user, and the Temporary Agency Work Directive (2008/104/EC), rather than the FTWD, should be applied. The measures foreseen in the FTWD to prevent the abuse of successive fixed-term contracts effectively protect platform workers. Nevertheless, if the Member State only restricts the total period of successive contracts, their working conditions are not improved."

"he employment status of platform workers has been vividly discussed in recent years. Digital platforms often argue that the workers' freedom to decide whether and when to work speaks to their self-employment. The scarce case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) as well as the new proposal for a Directive on platform work appears to indicate that opinion is shared. However, the Member States can guarantee better protection to platform workers. The working arrangements of platform workers are similar to zero-hours work in which the worker also has the right to refuse offered tasks. In some countries, such as Finland, zero-hours workers are explicitly considered as employees. Nevertheless, the general definition of the employment contract requires the commitment on behalf of the employee to perform work. This contradiction makes the employment status of zero-hours workers as well as platform workers unclear.
In this article I analyse whether and how the right to decide whether and when to work affects the employment status of food delivery couriers working through digital platforms. I use Wolt and Foodora as examples. The issue is analysed in the light of Finnish regulation and European Union law.
I argue that even though the case law of the CJEU and the proposal for a Directive on platform work regard the right of a food delivery courier to decide whether and when to work as evidence against their employee status, the couriers can obtain this status through the regulation of zero-hours contracts. Regardless of the fact that generally the conclusion of an employment contract requires the commitment on behalf of the worker to perform work, zero-hours workers are explicitly and exceptionally exempted from this requirement. As the couriers can be classified as zero-hours workers, their freedom to choose whether and when to work does not preclude their classification as employees."