A year after the elections of representatives of platform workers, in May 2022, the first agreements are painfully emerging. On April 20, three texts, notably setting a minimum income of 11.75 euros per hour for two-wheeled delivery people, were signed with platforms such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats. “ An important first step in the social dialogue of this sector”welcomed the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt. “A bogus agreement », denounced five organizations (CGT-Livreurs, Collective of autonomous platform deliverers, CNT-SO, FO-JustEat and SUD-Livreurs euses). Considered insufficient by the latter, the agreement on the tariff was only signed by the National Federation of autoentrepreneurs and microentrepreneurs.
Despite the initial shaky steps, these negotiations are opening up an unprecedented social dialogue in the fragmented community of the self-employed, unaccustomed to traditional trade union negotiations and long ignored by traditional trade union organizations. “In their eyes, there was nothing outside of the wage system”summarizes Martin Richer, founder of the firm Management & RSE, who has worked in particular on the evolution of trade unionism.
The explosion in the number of auto-entrepreneurs finally prompted the unions, faced with the erosion of their workforce, to look into this category of assets: the National Union of Autonomous Unions set up a drivers’ union in 2015 private sector, a union for bicycle couriers was created in 2017 at the CGT, and the Communication, Consulting and Culture Federation of the CFDT launched a site in 2016 for self-employed workers. A first step towards the creation, in 2019, of Union-Indépendants, an offshoot of the CFDT. It remains to reach this category of workers: “We have to make them understand that the collective is more effective than individual action”admits Fabien Tosolini, project manager at Union-Indépendants.
“Neo-unions” on the Web
The self-employed did not wait for them to organize themselves. Faced with the void left by the traditional unions, a myriad of collectives have emerged. A long-time observer of the movement, Jean-Guilhem Darré, general delegate of the Union of Independents (SDI), believes that “more than a thousand” the number of organizations defined “by area of activity or by region”, which have been built over time to defend the independents. In the absence of official data, it is difficult to know what these collectives weigh.
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