Happy Tuesday!

📝 Focus

• Gig Employees

📊 In the Markets

• More Bull; Unsweet Lollipop; UK mortgages; Nio cracks; China Property Gold

• R-I-P CS

📖 MoneyFitt Explains

🎓️ The STOXX 600... which is not Europe's S&P 500

📝 Focus

Gig Employees

The EU member states have reached an agreement that could provide greater employment protection for their 28mn gig economy workers. Companies controlling workers' hours, what they wear at work, and who restrict whether they can accept or turn down work will need to classify workers now registered as self-employed as employees and bear additional costs like social security and other benefits like parental leave. The platform work directive is not yet a done deal: discussions with the European Parliament are up next, with an aim to sign it before Summer 2024. (Brexited UK is unique in having an intermediate “worker” category between employee and self-employed.)

.....▷ The definition of Uber drivers and Deliveroo riders as employees would have huge cost implications for the ride-hailing and food delivery platforms across Europe. Inevitably, the lobbying machine has been in overdrive in Brussels, with the companies stressing the need to make sure their workers have protections (which, if any had been provided in the first place, would have meant none of the above would have been needed) without being forced into employment and losing "flexibility and control."

..... ▷ The platforms run rating algorithms based on availability and consistency (cancelling or refusing rides), so drivers who switch too much between rival platforms the way we riders do (or get really lousy rider scores) get rated down and would eventually get "deactivated" off the system entirely. Worker advocates say that acting like a real independent contractor, free to take or refuse ride requests at will, is a quick way to get booted off the platform.

..... ▷ Over in the US, over 55 million people or a third of the workforce, are gig workers. Back in October, shares in Uber, Lyft, Grubhub and DoorDash absolutely tanked when the Labor Department proposed a similar new rule making it more likely that gig workers (now "independent contractors") will be classified as employees, massively increasing wage costs. The implication is that the platforms have built their businesses by exploiting an arbitrage opportunity in existing (some argue antiquated) labour laws since they could avoid ​​minimum wages, overtime pay, and contributions to unemployment insurance and social security. And even then, they're struggling to make any profits at all (see MFM.)