‘The alligators’: How Croatia legitimised the role of sub-contractors in the platform economy

https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts211/v4/71/ea/d8/71ead892-eb95-c168-f6c9-9194625a2c0b/mza_15011924562606221412.jpg/600x600bb.jpg

The Gig Economy Project

39 episodes

3 days ago

The Gig Economy Project is a media network for gig workers in Europe, seeking to promote efforts to transform work in the digital age. We publish on the the Brave New Europe website, see here: https://braveneweurope.com/the-gig-economy-project Bike couriers, ‘micro-taskers’, home care workers, & many more who work on-demand in the digital platform economy & have few job protections are at the sharpest edge of capitalist exploitation, but are also providing some of the most creative and powerful forms of resistance in the working class today. This podcast provides insight into that resistance.

Technology

RSS

All content for The Gig Economy Project is the property of The Gig Economy Project and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Technology

https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/staging/podcast_uploaded_episode/20409729/20409729-1682075671321-af5636861a342.jpg

‘The alligators’: How Croatia legitimised the role of sub-contractors in the platform economy - Interview w/ Sunčica Brnardić

The Gig Economy Project

36 minutes 53 seconds

2 years ago

‘The alligators’: How Croatia legitimised the role of sub-contractors in the platform economy - Interview w/ Sunčica Brnardić

Sub-contracting in the platform economy is an increasingly pertinent issue in numerous countries across Europe, but no more so than in Croatia. In the south-east European nation, 80% of platform workers operate through sub-contractors, which are known locally as ‘aggregators’.

The aggregator system has been widely condemned by unions and workers in Croatia due to the shady, and sometimes illegal, practices of the managers, The fact that they also take around 10% of the workers’ wage, despite offering very few services to the worker, has led many workers to describe them as ‘the alligators’.

In December, the Croatian Government passed legislation which formalised the role of aggregators in Croatia’s platform economy. The law is due to come into force in January 2024. The Croatian Government has also advocated for the role of intermediary companies at EU level, in the context of the Platform Work Directive, which remains under debate among member-states at the Council of the EU.

To discuss all of this and more, the Gig Economy Project spoke to Sunčica Brnardić, Executive Secretary for Labour and Social Law at the Union of Autonomous Trade Unions of Croatia (SSSH/UATUC). Brnardić has been lobbying the Croatian Government to amend the law so that the platforms are the direct employers, not the aggregators. In this podcast, we discuss:

1:41: The Croatian platform economy

06:28: What is the aggregator system in Croatia?

15:20: Croatia’s new platform work law

22:50: Sub-contracting and the EU Platform Work Directive

26:11: Wolt, sub-contracting and strikes in Zagreb

34:05: Key challenges for union organising in the gig economy