EC to allow bargaining for self-employed

The European Commission is looking at making changes which would make it easier for the self-employed to negotiate collectively. EU competition rules intended to stop company price-fixing through illegal cartels have sometimes been used to stop self-employed workers coming together to negotiate higher pay.

This has been a concern for the European Trade Union Confederation, which said in a report in 2019 that self-employed workers trying to improve their lives cannot be decently considered as an “illegal cartel”.

The commission has now, in the words of competition commissioner Margarethe Vestager, launched a process “to ensure that those who need to can participate in collective bargaining without fear of breaking EU competition rules”. As she points out, “in today’s labour market the concept ‘worker’ and ‘self-employed’ have become blurred … We therefore need to provide clarity to those who need to negotiate collectively in order to improve their working conditions”.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_20_1237