The first election of mobility platform worker representatives, dubbed the “historic meeting”, at the opening of the ballot, on May 9, by Elisabeth Borne, then Minister of Labor, rather looks like a missed date, when it closed on May 16. Of the 39,314 VTC drivers and 84,243 two-wheeled and three-wheeled delivery people called to vote, only 3,088 of them took part in the vote, with a 3.91% turnout among VTCs and 1.83% among delivery people.
The offer was however bloated, with a total of sixteen candidate organizations and unions. Among the VTCs, the Association VTC de France (42.81%) is well ahead, among the seven elected lists. Among delivery people, only four out of nine pass the 5% mark of the votes cast to be declared representative, with, in the lead, the National Federation of Autoentrepreneurs (FNAE), at 28.45%, followed by the CGT, at 27, 28%, followed by the Independent Union (of which the CFDT is a founding member), at 22.32%. Among the other unions, only SUD-Commerces is representative (5.39%), CFTC, FO, CFTC, CNT-SO and UNSA being eliminated.
To the Employment Platforms Social Relations Authority (ARPE), a public structure created to organize the election and the consultations that should follow between the platforms and the workers’ representatives, Bruno Mettling, its president, rejoices that “negotiations will be able to begin”even if he admits ” disappointment ” on attendance. But this weakness does not taint, in his eyes, the legitimacy of the elected organizations.
The voting system raises questions
The voting system raises questions. It was an electronic vote for which the workers had to receive an identifier by e-mail from the service provider chosen by the government, then enter it by connecting to the voting site as well as personal data: for VTC, their professional card number; for deliverers, the last five digits of their bank account IBAN number. Gold, “delivery people often have several IBANs, and change them often”explains Joël Blondel, Managing Director of ARPE. “Undeniably, this system could have been a brake on participation. »
“I am delighted with our score, but I am disappointed by the rather complicated modalities” of the vote, reacts Karim Daoud, president of the VTC Association of France. Despite its good result, the CGT speaks of “announced fiasco” : “As we have verified with the hundreds of deliverers we met (…)the vast majority [d’entre eux] not’[ont] could not vote, for lack of having received the identifiers. »
A controversy, which appeared at the start of the ballot, also weighed. Mr. Mettling was, in fact, implicated in an article by Humanity as being “the main author of the contribution of Uber”, during the Frouin mission on the status of workers and social dialogue in the platforms, in 2020, which would have created “a conflict of interest” for the president of ARPE. What the interested party disputes: “The strategy firm AT Kearney brought together digital experts, including myself. Then, this firm handed over my expertise to Uber. I didn’t write Uber’s argument. »