The scope and coverage of labour legislation are very wide and overlapping
Answers
The boundaries between dependent employment and self-employment have increasingly become blurred in some areas in recent years, in a context of changing labour markets and the spread of practices such as outsourcing and contracting-out. This process has led to growing interest in 'economically dependent workers'- workers who are formally self-employed but depend on a single employer for their income - and calls from trade unions and other sources for such work to be regulated and social security coverage and employment law protection to be provided. This EIRO comparative study examines the extent and characteristics of employment relationships which may involve such 'economically dependent work' across the EU and Norway, and provides an overview of the debate on the implications of these developments. The study also looks at the impact of economically dependent workers on industrial relations, and notably on trade union representation and collective bargaining.
The concept of 'economically dependent workers' refers to those workers who do not correspond to the traditional definition of 'employee'- essentially because they do not have an employment contract as a dependent employee - but who are economically dependent on a single employer for their source of income. The debate focuses on emerging employment arrangements which are 'midway' between self-employment and dependent employment. 'Economically dependent workers' have some characteristics of both in that: (1) they are formally self-employed (they usually have a sort of 'service contract' with the employer); and (2) they depend on a single employer for their income (or large part of it). In some cases, economically dependent workers may also be similar to employees from other points of view:
lack of a clear organisational separation - ie they work on the employer's premises and/or use the employer's equipment;no clear distinction of task - ie they perform the same tasks as some of the existing employees, or tasks which were formerly carried out by employees and later contracted out to 'collaborators'; andthe 'service' they sell individually to employers falls outside the traditional scope of 'professional services'- ie the tasks are simple, do not require specific skills and no professional knowledge or competence is needed.The existence of such employment arrangements has been highlighted by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) - see for example, the discussion at the March 2001 session of its governing body - and is documented in a number of European countries, such as Italy, the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal. The issue was also mentioned, alongside teleworking, in 2000 in the European Commission's first-stage consultation of the social partners on 'modernising and improving employment relations' (EU0007259N) (though the second-stage consultation focused essentially on telework - EU0104205N). For the Commission, 'the development of a category of 'economically dependent workers', who do not, or may not, correspond to the traditional notion of 'employee' raises a number of difficult issues, for employers, workers and governments.'
The issue is relevant from the industrial relations point of view since economically dependent workers do not generally benefit from the protection granted to employees both by law and collective bargaining, including provisions on health and safety, information and consultation, working time, vocational training and social protection. They also fall outside the traditional reach of trade union representation.
The aims of this comparative study - based on the contributions of the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO) national centres in the EU Member States and Norway - are to analyse:
the scope and relevance of the issue of economically dependent workers in each country;the emergence of demands for regulation of this kind of employment arrangement, as articulated in public debate;where relevant, the ways in which economically dependent employment has been regulated by law, or the contents of existing proposals in this field; andthe role of industrial relations, notably whether trade union representation and collective bargaining are being extended to economically dependent workers.