10.6092/issn.1561-8048/9925
This report wishes to explore the dimension, quality and characteristics of Gig Economy in a comparative way. Platform capitalism represents the most appropriate form to interpret the ongoing capitalistic transformations. But the modalities to analyze this phenomenon and the normative efforts appear as still very much contaminated by the prevalent narratives among public opinion. This comparative analysis looks at the main studies carried out at a European and national level on the quality and diffusion of platform economies, in an attempt to go beyond mainstream narratives, and therefore offer a new angle for policy actions. This study is divided transversally by topic (definitions and terminology, occupational comparison, working conditions) and five chapters are dedicated to different platform typologies:Cloudwork as a growing modality for “offline” companies to outsource work and divide work globally;Food delivery, and a gallery on the main existing platforms, followed by an analysis and evaluation of future trends and evolutions in the sector;Domestic work and a European comparison proposing a report on the main platform and a study on growth trends;Digital tourism, to understand the impact on the sector and potential future scenarios.Lastly, the report closes with an analysis on the interaction between Gig Economy and industrial relations, trying to investigate the theoretical underpinnings and the experimentations adopted in the Eu28. Facing a lack of coherent legislation on the platform system, collective bargaining has moved towards the proposal of benchmark standards and the safeguard of working conditions of digital workers. Even though these are still not widespread, there are contractual experimentations dedicated to platform workers going on in various countries (Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland) which try to surpass the hurdle represented by the juridical employment status (autonomous or subordinate) which has often created problems for lawmakers.
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Davide Dazzi
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cloudwork
Gig Economy in Europe
Text.Serial.Journal
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12
Miscellaneous
2019-12-17
2019-10-17
2019-12-17
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67-122
ILLeJ
Davide Dazzi
2019/12/17
10.6092/issn.1561-8048/9925
67
Ires Emilia-Romagna
1561-8048
2
cloudwork
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122
Gig Economy in Europe
https://illej.unibo.it/article/download/9925/10000
12
GIG Economy in Europe                                                             Italian Labour Law e-Journal
Davide Dazzi
 Marco.Biasi@unimi.it                                                                    Issue 2, Vol. 12 (2019)
davide_dazzi@er.cgil.it                                                                        ISSN 1561-8048
                                                                 https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1561-8048/9925



                             GIG Economy in Europe
                                           Davide Dazzi*

 I. Introduction. 1. Gig Economy: Defining a Framework. 2. GIG Workers: a Quantitative
 Dimension. 2.1. Online Outsourcing. 3. Working Conditions of GIG Workers. 4. E-
 commerce in Europe. An Overview of the Extension and Expansion of e-commerce. 4.1.
 E-commerce Strategies. 4.1.1. Pure Players. 4.1.2. Traditional Retailers. II. A Gallery of
 Platforms: Trends. 5. Food Delivery: Overview. 5.1. Food Delivery Platforms and Business
 Models. 5.2. Final Remarks. 6. Household Services: Online Housework. 6.1. Household
 Services Platforms. 7. Digital Tourism. 7.1. P2P Accommodations. 7.2. Platforms and
 Digitalisation in the Tourism Supply Chain: Some Experiences. III. Conclusions. 8. Gig
 Economy and Industrial Relations.

                                                 Abstract
     This report wishes to explore the dimension, quality and characteristics of Gig Economy in a
     comparative way. Platform capitalism represents the most appropriate form to interpret the
     ongoing capitalistic transformations. But the modalities to analyze this phenomenon and the
     normative efforts appear as still very much contaminated by the prevalent narratives among
     public opinion. This comparative analysis looks at the main studies carried out at a European
     and national level on the quality and diffusion of platform economies, in an attempt to go
     beyond mainstream narratives, and therefore offer a new angle for policy actions. This study is
     divided transversally by topic (definitions and terminology, occupational comparison, working
     conditions) and five chapters dedicated to different platform typologies:
         •   Cloudwork as a growing modality for “offline” companies to outsource work and divide
             work globally;
         •   Food delivery, and a gallery on the main existing platforms, followed by an analysis and
             evaluation of future trends and evolutions in the sector;
         •   Domestic work and a European comparison proposing a report on the main platform
             and a study on growth trends;
         •   Digital tourism, to understand the impact on the sector and potential future scenarios.
     Lastly, the report closes with an analysis on the interaction between Gig Economy and industrial
     relations, trying to investigate the theoretical underpinnings and the experimentations adopted
     in the EU28. Facing a lack of coherent legislation on the platform system, collective bargaining
     has moved towards the proposal of benchmark standards and the safeguard of working
     conditions of digital workers. Even though these are still not widespread, there are contractual
     experimentations dedicated to platform workers going on in various countries (Italy, Spain,
     Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland) which try to surpass the hurdle represented by the juridical
     employment status (autonomous or subordinate) which has often created problems for
     lawmakers.
     Keywords: Gig Economy; Crowdworkers; Domestic Work; E-commerce; Food Delivery.



 *
   The Paper is one of the research outputs of the European Union co-funded project "Gig economy and
 processes of information, consultation, participation and collective bargaining" (VS/2019/0040). Researcher
 of Ires Emilia-Romagna and Research Coordinator of OpenCorporation (www.opencorporation.org). This
 article has been submitted to a double-blind peer review process.
Davide Dazzi                                                                               Italian Labour Law e-Journal
                                                                                                  Issue 2, Vol. 12 (2019)
                                                                                                  Section: Miscellaneous


I. Introduction
1. Gig Economy: Defining a Framework


    Digitalization is changing, and has now changed, economic and social processes, and the
definition webplatform capitalism probably appears to be the most appropriate to interpret the
transformations taking place1 because it does not necessarily imply a discontinuity with
capitalist transformations and indicates the appearance on the market of a new type of
enterprise as a "hybrid between a market and a hierarchical organization".2 Platform
capitalism therefore represents a transformation of capitalism whose destination takes on
trajectories that are not yet fully understood, swaying between optimistic and pessimistic
perspectives. While behind the emergence of the sharing economy one could get a glimpse
of post-capitalist scenarios, we have nevertheless reached a very distant reality of "work
without workers"3 and a change in future scenarios, from a jobless future to a bossless future4.
As a capitalist form, platforms express an extractive drive5 in the process of enhancing value
not only of activities that are usually part of the informal economy, such as food delivery or
short-term renting, but also of data,6 the new raw material from which to extract value7. In an
increasingly digital society, data becomes more and more valuable not only in a strictly
commercial sphere but also in an organisational-political one, and its collection, management
and sale becomes a strategic market. Platforms are in fact configured as two-sided markets
where platforms do not directly offer the services sought by the consumer/user/ but create
the conditions for the transaction to take place.8 In this way it is also understood how
platforms offer services at a loss, or free of charge, with the sole purpose of having access to
user profiles and the collection of information giving rise to a trade union saying "when the
price is too low you are the product". The monopoly of the network, or the monopolistic trend,
becomes a forced way of strategic positioning because the more users the platform has, the
more it gains economic value and positions in the market: what is known as the network effect9.
    Although there are different classifications of platforms and different classification
criteria, there is a general convergence on the meaning of platform, i.e. a digital infrastructure
that allows two or more groups to interact, thus giving rise to an activity of online
intermediation. Digital environments that allow to integrate production processes in new
forms, to organize management processes. Virtual spaces governed by algorithms, the so-
called invisible engines, in which the transaction costs - which represent the theoretical and


1 Garibaldo F., Il capitalismo delle piattaforme, in Somma A. (ed.), Lavoro alla spina, welfare à la carte – Lavoro e Stato
Sociale ai tempi della Gig Economy, Maltemi, 2019.
2 Sundararajan A., The Sharing Econoy. The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd Based Capitalism, Mit Press, 2016,

54.
3 Referring to how Friedman G. describes the Gig Economy in “Workers without employers: Shadow Corporations and

the Rise of the Gig Economy, in Review of Keynesian Economics, 2, 2014, 171.
4 Daugareilh I., Degryse C., Pochet P., The platform economy and social law. Key issues in comparative perspective, in

Working Paper 10, 2019, ETUI, 30.
5 Marrone M., Gig Economy e sindacalismo informale, in Somma A. (1).
6 Srnicek N., Platform Capitalism, Polity Press, 2017.
7 Mason P., Post-Capitalismo, il Saggiatore, 2016.
8 Cattero B., Oltre i confini della contrattazione collettiva?, in Quaderni di Rassegna sindacale, 4, 2018, 23-32.
9 Parker G., Van Alstyne M., Two-Sided Network Effects: A Theory of Information Product Design, in Management Science.

51, 10, 2005, 1494-1504.

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                                                                                                      Section: Miscellaneous


economic presupposition of the very existence of the concept of company as a preferable
alternative to free market exchange - are substantially reduced to zero favouring their
attractiveness in practically all sectors. Although formally companies and platforms act and
are comparable to a market where the main product is not so much the service itself but the
reduction of transaction costs10.
    There is no common vocabulary among the EU member states in the semantic sphere
that can be traced back to platform capitalism. The Dublin Foundation tried in 201811 to sort
out the different definitions and the use and meaning of the same term in different national
contexts. Generally speaking, the term sharing economy or platform economy takes on a
broader meaning than that of platform work, since the former usually includes platforms for
the exchange of goods or services without any monetary exchange, while the latter usually
includes also those platforms for financial services and housing. Gig Economy, or the
economy composed of small size jobs, is the most used term in Anglo-Saxon countries and
includes on location, app-based and on-demand services while in Denmark, Italy and the
Netherlands the term refers more to physical tasks (such as domestic work or riders).

Chart 1 – European map of terms used for platform work




Fonte: Eurofound, 2018

   In Italy, moreover, the term Gig Economy has a negative connotation as it is often
associated with precariousness as well as in Finland, Germany, and to a lesser extent in
Austria, where Gig Economy refers to precarious jobs, discontinuous and not necessarily
performed through an online platform. It is interesting to observe how in Poland the concept
of platform work, precisely because it is less widespread and known, is often associated with
distance work, externalizations, outsourcing, freelance and self-employment, while the
Finnish trade union SAK has opted for the term platform economy and has invited its
members to adopt it, trying to define it from above. The term Gig Economy came to the



10 Del Prato F., Stagnaro C., Take it easy, rider! Perché la flessibilità dei lavoretti è un valore e non un limite, in Briefing
paper, 167, 2018, 1-12.
11 Eurofound, Employment and working conditions of selected types of platform work, Publications Office of the European

Union, Luxembourg, 2018.

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                                                                                          Issue 2, Vol. 12 (2019)
                                                                                          Section: Miscellaneous


fore in July 2015 after the following statement12 by Hillary Clinton: "Meanwhile, many
Americans are making extra money renting out a small room, designing websites, selling
products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car. This on-demand or
so-called Gig Economy is creating exciting economies and unleashing innovation. But it is
also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like
in the future”13.
    The worldwide turnover generated by the Gig Economy is estimated to exceed $ 82.4
billion in 2017, with an annual growth of 67% on an annual basis testifying that the trend is
strongly expanding14. Leaving aside here the breakdown by type of work proposed by
Staffing Industry Analysts, a consulting and monitoring company on the Gig Economy - as
it cannot be superimposed on the analytical approach most frequently used in Europe - it
seems however interesting to observe that a large part of the turnover (76 billion, 92.6%) is
represented by Business to Consumer (B2C) platforms and the smaller part (6.4 billion, 7.4%)
by Business to Business (B2B) platforms, recording however an annual growth of 19%. It is
also interesting to note that 75% of the turnover of the Gig economy B2C market is
concentrated in just 3 platforms (Uber 49%, Didi Chuxing 23% and Lyft 9%), while in the
B2B market 5 platforms account for 42% of total annual turnover (Upwork 21%, GLG
8.2%, Work Market 5%, MBO Partners 3.9%, Axiom 3.1%).
    Starting from the outline made by various authors (De Stefano, 2016 and 201815; Graham
and Shaw, 201716; McKinsey & company, 201617) jobs related to the Gig Economy, as also
reported in the INPS 2018 Report, can be grouped into three broad categories:
     - On-demand work through apps, in which each task is assigned to a person who
         performs a material and concrete activity. These are platforms that operate locally,
         such as Deliveroo, TaskRabbit, Handy, Wonolo, Uber, BeMyEye, Lyft, Care,
         Foodora and others;
     - Crowdwork, the so-called work of the crowd: programmers, freelancers, computer scientists,
         professionals, who from home (or from their own studio) make themselves available to perform a
         multitude of different jobs. These are platforms that operate globally, such as UpWork, Freelancer,
         Amazon Mechanical Turk, Twago, GreenPanthera, CrowdFlower, Vicker and others;
     - Asset rental, renting and leasing of goods and property, sharing economy. In these
         cases, the work performance, if there is one, is optional, as in the case of the owner
         of an apartment for rent on AirBnb who also takes care of the reception and final
         cleaning.

  Some authors adopt a more restrictive approach, excluding the third category, asset rental,
while other authors further broaden the definition to a fourth category, the sales platforms

12 “Meanwhile, many Americans are making extra money renting out a small room, designing websites, selling
products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car. This on-demand or so-called Gig
Economy is creating exciting economies and unleashing innovation. But it is also raising hard questions about
workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future”.
13 Howard A., It’s time to talk about the Gig Economy, in The Huffington Post, 14-07-2015.
14 SIA (Staffing Industry Analysts), The Human Cloud, the Gig Economy & the Transformations of Work, 2018.
15 De Stefano V., Nuovi lavori, nuove regole?, Paper presented at the Festival dell’Economia in Trento, 1st June

2018.
16 Graham M., Shaw J., Towards a fairer Gig Economy, 2017.
17 McKinsey Global Institute, Independent work: choice, necessity, and the Gig Economy, Executive summary, 2016.



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                                                                                                            Section: Miscellaneous


such as Etsy, eBay, Dawanda. The first two categories represent two substantially different
types of workers. If on-demand workers via app are matched by an executive off-line
translation (rider) in a physical place, crowdworkers perform their work online and therefore
potentially anywhere with online access. While the former is physically interceptable and
therefore subject to the laws of a State, compared to the latter the legislative attribution
appears more complex. Usually when referring to platform workers we include
crowdworkers (or even cloudworkers) and workers on demand via app whose description
can then take place according to six professional, organizational and content related criteria:
   - Task/activity scale: from highly fragmented tasks to more complex tasks
   - Type of business: software development, translations, design and graphics
   - The form of the service, i.e. services that are provided online or require an offline
translation on location: in many countries the two types coexist, while in Belgium, Estonia,
Finland, Holland and Slovenia the on-location service prevails;
   - Required skill level: high and low professional content;
   - Matching modalities through a tender or an offer;
   - The method of selection and choice of the worker: customer, platform or worker.

Chart 2 – Platform typologies in the EU, 2017
                                   required        form of     scale of                matching      % of total   % of total gig
        type of platform                                                    selector                                             Examples
                                   skill level    service       tasks                  modalities    platforms      workers
on-location client-determined               in person
                                low                          large        client       offer        13,7          1,3         GoMore
routine work                                (offline)
on-location platform-determined             in person
                                low                          large        platform     offer        31,5          31,2        Uber
routine work                                (offline)
on-location client-determined               in person
                                medium-low                   large        client       offer        11,3          10,9        Oferia
moderately skilled work                     (offline)
on-location worker-initiated                in person
                                medium-low                   large        lavoratore   offer        4,2           5,5         ListMinut
moderately skilled work                     (offline)
online moderately skilled
                                medium-low online            micro        platform     offer        0,6           5,3         CrowdFlower
clic-work
on-location client-determined               in person
                                medium                       large        client       offer        2,4           3,3         appJobber
higher-skilled work                         (offline)
on-location platform-determined             in person
                                medium                       large        platform     offer        1,2           4,2         Be My Eyes
higher-skilled work                         (offline)
online platform-determined
                                medium      online           large        platform     offer        0,6           1,9         Clickworker
higher-skilled work
online client-determined
                                medium-high online           large        client       offer        5,4           30,3        Freelancer
specialist work
online contestant
                                high        online           large        client       tender       5,4           4,6         99designs
specialist work

Source: Eurofound JRC database (Fabo et al, 2017) and De Groen et al (2017).

   The Eurofound study (2018) estimates that in terms of workers, the types of platform
work by 2017 with the greatest occupational weight are on-location platform determined
routine work (such as Uber) - and therefore platform with offline operational translation in
which matching is determined by the platform itself and with routine tasks - that collect the
31,2% of platform workers as of 2017 and 31.5% of the total of platforms and online client
determined specialist work (such as Freelancer) - and therefore a platform with online service
provision in which matching is determined by the customer with specialist tasks - with 30.3%
of workers but only 5.4% in terms of number of platforms. Of particular interest is the on-
location client determined routine work type - i.e. platforms with off line performance on


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Davide Dazzi                                                                              Italian Labour Law e-Journal
                                                                                                 Issue 2, Vol. 12 (2019)
                                                                                                 Section: Miscellaneous


site whose matching is determined by the client and for routine work - which accounts for
13.7% in terms of number of platforms and only 1.3% in terms of platform workers.


2. GIG Workers: a Quantitative Dimension.

   The number of jobs attributable to the Gig Economy seems even more difficult to
determine than the measurement of the number of labour platforms, the number of which
varies from 173 (201718) on the basis of some studies conducted on the European level to
273 of the European Commission (2016)19 depending on the breadth of the starting
definition.
   Some studies20 estimate that for about 2% of the active population in 14 EU Member
States, work for a labour platform represents the main occupation, for 6% it determines a
significant income (i.e. at least 25% of the average salary of a full time worker) and for about
8% it determines a working mode at least once a month. The same studies show an incidence
and frequency of gig workers divided by individual country, with highest peaks in the United
Kingdom, where for about 4% of the population the income from work is determined for
more than 50% by the work of the platforms, and in Spain, however, with a greater dispersion
of work, and with lowest peaks in Finland, Slovakia and Hungary where the share of those
who find in the Gig Economy the main employment is very marginal.

Chart 3 – Impact of gig workers on the active population in the labour market and among internet users
                                                        Main employment
                                                        Employment bringing significant income>25% job income
                                                        Occasional employment
          12    11,6                                    Share of gig workers out of population total
                       10,4           10,6
         9,9                   9,7
                 9,4                                 9,1
         8,5                   8,7            8,9
                        8,1                                  8,1            8,1
                                       7,1    7,1                    7              7,2                6,9
                        6,5    6,5                           6,4                              6,7
                 6,1                                 5,9            5,9                                         6
                                              5,4    5,6                    5,2     5,3
                                                                    4,8                        5       5,1
         4,3                           4,2                                          4,6
                                                             3,8                                       3,7     4,1
                                                                                              3,5              3,3
                               2,9                                           3
                        2,5
                  2                    1,6    1,8    1,6            1,8             1,6
                                                                             1                1,3      0,9
                                                             0,8                                               0,6
         UK      ES     DE      NL     PT      IT    LT      RO      FR     HR      SE        HU       SK       FI
Source: Ires Emilia-Romagna data processing based on COLLEEM dataset, European Commission

    Separate surveys have been carried out in individual countries, the results of which are in
line with the results of the Community surveys.


18 Fabo B., Beblavý M., Kilhoffer Z. and. Lenaerts K, An overview of European platforms: Scope and business models,
Joint Research Centre, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2017.
19 European Commission, Assessing the size and presence of the collaborative economy in Europe, Publications Office of

the European Union, Luxembourg, 2016.
20 Pesole A., Urzì Brancati, C., Fernández-Macías E., Biagi F. and González Vázquez I., Platform workers in

Europe, Evidence from the COLLEEM survey, Joint Research Centre, Publications Office of the European
Union, Luxembourg, 2018.


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                                                                                       Section: Miscellaneous


    Countries        Source                    Year      Results
                                                         37% of the sample searched for work in the last
                                                      year through UpWork, Clickworker or
                                                      MyHammer and only half found it.
                  University    of                       Generally, crowdworkers are only 11%
    Austria       Hertfordshire e              2016   students and 33% are over 45 in contrast to the
                  IPSOS MOri                          common narrative.
                                                         36% of crowdworkers interviewed also use
                                                      digital services, confirming the overlap between
                                                      platform users and platform workers
                                                         In 2017 there were 753,248 platform workers,
                                                      of whom about 10,000 were riders (of which 67%
                  INPS             De
                                                      were under 35 years old). 38% of the platform
    Italy         Benedetti                    2017
                                                      workers declare to have little or no autonomy
                  Foundation
                                                      while 50% declare that their activity is controlled
                                                      and organized by an algorithm.
                                                         About 700 thousand Spaniards consider
                  Research Group                      platform work as the main form of employment,
    Spain
                  PAIDI SEJ-332                       and the main motivation is the absence of other
                                                      possibilities.
                                                         Freelancers registered in 2015 to the main
    Bulgaria      Eurofound                    2018   platforms have gone from 23 thousand in 2015 to
                                                      43 thousand in 2018
                                                         0.3% of the active population who have earned
    Finland       Statistics Finland           2017   more than 25% of their income from platform
                                                      work in the last year
                                                         22% of the working population says they have
                  Huws e Joice                        sought work on online platforms and only 14% of
                                               2016
                                                      them have found it

                  Ohnemus                                77% of companies are aware of the possibility
                                               2016
    Germany                                           of outsourcing online, but only a small proportion
                                                      use it: 6% in the media and 1.2% in manufacturing.

                  Porgratz             e                 The cloudworkers (at least once at least) are
                                               2017
                  Bormann                             between 100 and 300 thousand of which only 5
                                                      thousand considers it the main source of income
Source: Etui



2.1. Online Outsourcing.

   Although this report is more focused on other types of online platforms, the audience of
labour platforms most immediately attributable to crowdwork or cloudwork appears to be
interesting as well, both for the direct impact on the market and for the consequent process
of online outsourcing by the "traditional" economic entities. Some studies show results of



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Davide Dazzi                                                                             Italian Labour Law e-Journal
                                                                                                Issue 2, Vol. 12 (2019)
                                                                                                Section: Miscellaneous


certain value to read the dynamics in place21. Online outsourcing is a win-win solution for
businesses and workers alike:

                -  Companies have access to a highly professional labour market, with flexible
            and fast hiring processes without transaction costs and with 24-hour productivity;
               -   For workers, access to a global labour market with low entry barriers.

   Processes of online outsourcing concern both microwork (where the work project is
segmented into smaller parts - microtasks - and entrusted to a plurality of workers) and
freelancing (where the project is entrusted to profiles with a higher professional content).
The most popular online outsourcing platforms are Freelanceer, Upwork, Crowdflower,
Amazon Mechanical Rurk (AMT) Samasource and Cloudfactory.
   The demand for online freelancing comes mainly from small businesses while the demand
for microwork from medium to large businesses. A survey of Fortune 500 companies shows
that between 2016 and 2017 online outsourcing projects have increased by 26%, that 28%
of Fortune 500 companies have used Upwork in the last year and that in 2017 companies
such as Airbnb, Dropbox, GE and Samsung have posted more than 30,000 projects on
Upwork. According to the Future Workforce Report 201822, 90% of HR managers prefer to
use online freelancing rather than temporary employment agencies for administrative savings
and faster performance. The McKinsey Global Institute23 estimates that by 2025 cloudwork
platforms will produce about 2% of the world's GDP.
   Every single attempt to measure a phenomenon in such strong expansion, however,
suffers from an inevitable delay in detection: today's snapshot risks representing the scenario
of yesterday. Precisely for this reason, ILO has developed an online Labour index capable of
tracking all the online "small jobs" uploaded on the top 5 online English labour platforms,
which represent approximately 60%-70% of the existing cloudwork market24. The index is
normalized by setting the volume of " small jobs " to 100 in May 2016 so as to be able to
constantly track the trend over time. Despite some interpretative precautions also recognized
by the ILO and the difficulty of an exhaustive measurement of such an elusive phenomenon,
the indicator shows that work projects transited by online platforms in the world grew by
about 40 percentage points in about one year (May 2016-June 2017) and then remained
constant in the following two years, with negative peaks in January.



21 Kuek S. C., Paradi-Guilford C. M., Fayomi T., Imaizumi S., Ipeirotis P., The global opportunity in online outsourcing,
in World Bank Group, G.F., & Lehdonvirta V., Platform Sourcing: How Fortune 500 Firms are Adopting Online
Freelancing Platforms, Oxford Internet Institute, 2017. An electronic version is available at:
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/publications/platform-sourcing.
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/138371468000900555/The-global-opportunity-in-online-
outsourcing.
22-https://www.slideshare.net/upwork/2018-future-workforce-report-hiring-manager-insights-on-flexible-

and-remote-work-trends/1 .
23 McKinsey Global Institute, A Labour Market that works: connecting talent with opportunity in the digital age, 2015

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/Employment%20and%20Growth/C
onnecting%20talent%20with%20opportunity%20in%20the%20digital%20age/MGI%20Online%20talent_A
_Labor_Market_That_Works_Executive_%20summary_June%202015.ashx
24 For additional information on methodology: http://ilabour.oii.ox.ac.uk/how-the-online-labour-index-is-

constructed/

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                                                                                        Issue 2, Vol. 12 (2019)
                                                                                        Section: Miscellaneous


Chart 4– Online Labour Index




Source: ILO, Otto Kässi, Vili Lehdonvirta, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume
137, 2018, Pages 241-248.

   Since 2017, the ILO's online labour indicator has also made it possible to map the type
of activity and the country of the person performing the work. This gives a broader view of
the extent and distribution of online work. Although it is a part of digital work, not counting
those "jobs" on demand through the app, you can discern some important data:
    - The global map shows how, except for some areas of Africa, online work is
        distributed all over the globe, thus highlighting its scalability (Chart 5);




Chart 5– Geographic distribution of digital workers by specific activity, 2017




Source: ILO, Otto Kässi, Vili Lehdonvirta, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume
137, 2018, 241-248.




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    -   Although there are geographical differences in terms of specialisation, the trend over
        the years shows that online work focuses mainly on the ICT industry. As ILO
        acknowledges in its reports, if other sectors were to open to the online sector,
        territorial differences would arise;
    -   The global map (figure 5) shows the main activity for each country. If in almost the
        whole continent the prevailing online work concerns the development of software,
        Europe appears more diversified;

Chart 6 – Online Labour Index top 20 per worker's country (% of labour demand),2017




Source: ILO, Otto Kässi, Vili Lehdonvirta, Online labour index: Measuring the online Gig Economy
for policy and research, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 137, 2018, 241-248.

    -    Out of 100, global online job demand in a given period, about 24% find an answer
         in the Indian continent, more than 15% in Bangladesh, about 12% in the United
         States, about 9% in Pakistan and about 6% in the Philippines (Chart 6). In this
         ranking, the first European country to appear is the United Kingdom (with about
         6%), followed by Ukraine, Romania, Germany, Italy and Spain with marginal shares;
     - Asia represents, in the executive phase, 60% of the total European online job
         demand, including non-EU countries, a share between 15-20%;
     - in general, the most requested activities concern software development, multimedia
         and creative industry, sales and marketing, writing and translation, data entry and
         professional services. If the demand for online writing and translation work has
         remained constant over time, the greatest variability is concentrated in software
         development, graphic activity, data entry and office work. But with one distinction.
         While the former expand as demand for labour grows, data entry and white-collar
         work signal an anti-cyclical trend;
if instead of the worker's point of view, the "employer's" point of view is adopted, i.e. the
one who starts the digital labour demand, the geographical map is reversed. Almost 40% of
labour demand comes from the United States, about 8-10% in the United Kingdom and 5-
7% in India. When comparing labour supply and demand, the most obvious imbalances are

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in the United States, where labour demand is higher than supply, and India, where labour
supply is significantly higher than labour demand. Europe, as a continent, seems to maintain
a more balanced position.

Chart 7 - Online Labour Index by employer country of origin (% of labour demand) , 2017




Source: ILO, Otto Kässi, Vili Lehdonvirta, Online labour index: Measuring the online Gig Economy
for policy and research, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 137, 2018, 241-248.



3. Working conditions of GIG workers.

    After approaching a quantitative measurement of gig workers, the report intends to move
to a more qualitative mapping. In this case, as well as on the numerical dimension, there are
different perspectives, surveys and results. There are different national and comparative
studies. For descriptive ease, we prefer, here, to use, once again, the research conducted by
the Dublin Foundation (Eurofound) both for the scope of the analysis and for the level of
updating of the surveys. Furthermore, Euofound's qualitative survey considers three types
of platforms consistent with the sectoral guidelines that this report intends to cover together
with e-commerce: food delivery, domestic work and tourism25.
In fact, three types of platforms were analysed:
    - on location platform-determined routine work, or a job with low professional requirements
         carried out in person (on-location) whose assignment (to the gig worker) is
         determined by the platform. This category is approximate to food delivery and the
         definition already shows a sense of precariousness attributable to dependence on a
         platform;

25As tourism platforms are more consistent with the concept of sharing economy or peer to peer platforms
and not labour platforms, the report here describes the working conditions of the first two types of platform
workers only.

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       - on location worker-initiated moderately skilled work, or a job with medium-low professional
         requirements carried out by a person whose assignment is determined by the gig
         worker himself. This category is approximated to the domestic work which is
         associated with greater discretion in the choice of jobs (or small jobs);
     - online contestant specialist work, works with high professional requirements carried out
         online in which the gig workers are selected by the customer on the basis of a tender.
         Cloudworkers suffer more from international competition and economic
         uncertainty. This third category is useful to offer a comparison between the
         cloudoworkers, and therefore the online workers, and the on-demand workers via
         app whose performance takes place offline, and of which the first two categories of
         platform workers are the expression.
In terms of demographics, gig workers, as it also results from a previous survey,26are
predominantly males, with a medium-high level of study, between 30 and 40 years of age and
predominantly resident in urban areas. The composition of the household is affected by the
type of platform: if on-demand workers and cloudworkers selected by the platform on
average do not have children, for on-demand workers via app whose task is chosen by the
worker (e.g. domestic work), hypothetically for an older age, it is more likely to have children.
    The employment status of gig workers is a determining factor in the sphere of labour law.
If for cloudworks and app-based workers' determination the perception of being either
"casual" or self-employed workers prevails, for those who work via app-based platform-
determination (e.g. riders) studies seem to confirm a trend: the majority of workers are
perceived as employed (on average 60%) and, for a secondary share, self-employed. The
literature of recent years indicates two reasons for this inconsistency between perception and
reality. First, by combining gig workers with different jobs at the same time, subordinate
employment hypothetically refers to a prevailing activity different from platform work.
Secondly, those who work mainly with the platform as the prevailing form are perceived to
be subject to a constraint of occupational subordination despite the fact that contractually it
is configured, instead, with forms of self-employment or para-subordination. Finally, in some
countries, such as Sweden, the tendency to prefer forms of formal subordination is not to
be ignored, even for those gig workers with platform determination. Finally, although they
are not residual also for the other types of platform workers, for the cloudworkers the
interviews reveal a greater frequency of forms of irregular work.
    Autonomy is a dimension of work at the centre of the debate on platform jobs because,
in addition to determining the link of formal subordination, it is a factor impacting job
satisfaction and, at the same time, represents the other side of digital standardization that
technological innovations produce27. But not only that. The topic of autonomy also recalls
the relationship between work and platform, and therefore the control of the algorithm, and
the forms of digital control exercised by the app and in particular the client rating, and
therefore the evaluation of the customer, as a primary form of control.
    Literature indicates that platform pay is usually additional to a student's status (especially
in platform-driven work) or other prevailing occupation. In most cases, pay is considered

26Pesole A., Urzí Brancati M.C, Fernández-Macías E., Biagi F., González Vázquez I., (20).
27Gosetti G., La digitalizzazione del lavoro. Questioni aperte e domande di ricerca sulla transazione, in Economia e Società
Regionale, I, 2019, 91-120.

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insufficient to lead a decent life and is very often conditioned by the tax system (for casual
workers, as in Italy or Germany, annual tax constraints produce "quantitative" maximum
labour thresholds), the form of employment (in Austria employees in food delivery receive
7.6 euros/hour plus 60 cents per delivery while self-employed workers 4 euros/hour plus 2
euros/hour per delivery), the country and the type of work. Usually it is the cloudworkers,
precisely because of the nature of the work, who perceive the greatest uncertainty with
respect to the continuity of remuneration.
    Regarding health and safety, some studies by the European Agency for Safety and Health
at work28 in 2017 identify some specific risk areas in relation to platform workers. In
particular, a higher accident rate for gig workers can be compared to that found for the more
fragile working areas, such as precarious and discontinuous workers. The greater exposure
to occupational risk, whether physical or psycho-social, is linked to the younger age trend of
gig workers, the absence of specific training in health and safety and, generally, the difficulty
of determining a specific regulatory system. Working on online digital platforms involves
risks such as permanent exposure to electromagnetic fields, eye fatigue and musculoskeletal
problems. Psycho-social risks include isolation, stress, techno-stress, technology addiction,
information overload, exhaustion, postural disorders and cyberbullying. All work on online
platforms can increase the risk of stress due to the systems of continuous review and
evaluation of performance, competitive mechanisms for the assignment of work, the
uncertainty of payment and the increasingly blurred separation between personal and
professional life.
    Commitment to platform training is modest. Gig workers, especially "on location"
workers, complain that they are overqualified for their job. On the other hand, cloudworkers,
allowing a glimpse of a greater expressive29 vision of the work, use the most advanced skills
and often use platform races to enrich their skills. Interviews with gig workers show how the
paths of professional growth and skills mainly pass through self-training and tutorials or
resources made available by the network.

                                                    Work        via     app
                       Work          via        app
 Working                                            determined by the
                       determined by platform                                                Cloudwork
 conditions                                         worker         (domestic
                       (riders)
                                                    worker)
 Motivational          Low entry barriers           Additional profit and  Organisational
 dimension             Additional          earning possibility to expand the
                                                                           flexibility, consistency
                       possibilities            and customer base          with interests and
                       organisational flexibility                          passions and the
                                                                           possibility           of
                                                                           extending customer
                                                                           base
 Autonomy              Limited flexibility in the More flexibility in the Full discretion (the
 and control           choice of tasks with choice of jobs, but only constraint is
                       negative consequences in especially in the cleaning respect for the rules of

28 EU-OSHA, Protecting workers in the online platform economy: An overview of regulatory and policy developments in the EU,
Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2017 https://osha.europa.eu/en/tools-and-
publications/publications/regulating-occupational-safety-and-health-impact-online-platform/view
29 Dazzi D., Minghini C., Ripartiamo dal lavoro. Autonomia, riconoscimento e partecipazione, Editrice Socialmente, 2014.



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                                                                                     Section: Miscellaneous


               case of refusal of an           services platforms exert        the platforms, such as
               assigned task (hidden or        more control (if some           plagiarism).
               explicit penalties).            standards are not met           Work mainly for
               The responsibility for          several     times      your     objectives      without
               "replacement" often falls       account is suspended).          control      by     the
               on the individual gig           The evaluation is mainly        platform      or    the
               worker.                         determined       by     the     customer.
               Regardless       of       the   customer and on a               The rating is based on
               contractual form, there is a    reliability           index     the client rating which
               high level of traceability      (important for domestic         is usually judged an
               and control of work             work).                          element              of
               performance, with the risk      Usually the client rating is    professional growth
               that an excessively digital     appreciated because it          and not control.
               control system will not be      allows to discriminate on
               able to manage real             the basis of the quality of
               "unforeseen events".            the worker and there are
               Little room for recourse in     spaces for complaint.
               the event of accusations of
               insubordination
 Intensity and The time schedule varies        The working time varies         Working time depends
 working       from country to country         according to the task and       very much on the
 hours         and according to the            in any case depends on          project assigned.
               contractual form: for           the choice of the worker.       Specific (unpaid) time
               employees it varies from a      Work intensity depends          is dedicated to the
               weekly shift (Austria) to a     on the ability to make the      preparation         and
               "calculated" shift based on     client understand the           research     of     the
               the availability of workers     complexity of the work          different competitions.
               (Sweden).                       Cleaning services tend to       The intensity of work
               The shift can be changed        work for the same clients,      can     be    stressful,
               in progress but with            repeating     the    same       depending on the type
               predefined timing and in        pattern of working time         of activity.
               case of non-compliance
               you receive a negative vote
               that     can      lead     to
               disconnection.
               Usually there are no
               interruptions        planned
               (except in Sweden where
               there is a break of 5
               minutes per hour of work)
               and the time taken by the
               platform to assign jobs
               often creates a continuous
               work intensity, opening up
               health and safety issues.
               Non-stressful        delivery
               times, but do not take into



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                   account         unforeseen
                   circumstances
 Physical          Often the workplace            The workplace is often         The workplace is any
 environment       coincides with the street      the customer's home.           place where you can
                   exposing gig workers to        The home-work route            perform the assigned
                   the risk of accident,          often      represents     a    task.
                   pollution, bad weather,        substantial part of the        The equipment (PC,
                   high and low temperatures.     working time.                  camera, software) is
                   Often the platform does        Domestic work, as well as      made available by the
                   not provide the means of       lonely or homeworkers,         worker as part of the
                   transportation (bike) nor      are more at risk at work       "professional capital".
                   smartphones but only           and often there is no form     Complaints        about
                   some personal protective       of control.                    musculoskeletal pains
                   equipment (e.g. helmets)       There is also a chemical       and eye fatigue were
                   No information or training     risk for cleaning services.    reported.
                   on health and safety is        Equipment is not made          Lack of attention to
                   provided by the platforms.     available by the platform      health and safety issues
                   There is no accident           but is part of the
                   insurance         coverage     "professional capital" of
                   extended to all workers but    individual workers.
                   it depends on the              Lack of information,
                   individual cases (platform,    training and awareness of
                   country and form of            health and safety risks
                   work).                         Third-party insurance is
                                                  often provided for in the
                                                  event of damage but not
                                                  insurance for accidents at
                                                  work
 Social            Relationships           with   Relations      with     the    Relations with the
 environment       customers is limited.          platform are limited to        platform are marginal.
 and relations     Relationship with the          communications          and    Relationships       with
                   platform in case of direct     information             and    customers are marginal
                   "inconvenience"           or   assistance.                    and sporadic and are
                   through      other     apps    The relationship with the      limited to feedback on
                   (whatsapp).     Complains      customer has a priority        the work done.
                   have     been      received,   role for both evaluation       Given the private and
                   however, that response         and business continuity.       isolated nature of the
                   times are at odds with the     In order to avoid the          work, the collaborative
                   rapid nature of operations.    repetition of work at the      dimension with other
                   High sense of identity of      same client leading to the     workers is limited with
                   belonging to a working         acceptance      of     jobs    risk of alienation.
                   community (the riders)         outside the platform, the      Minor        risk     of
                   and           collaborative    same platforms introduce       discrimination      and
                   relationships       between    clauses or constraints in      harassment at work.
                   workers using the web.         the rules of engagement
                   Platforms tend to limit        and extending insurance
                   contacts between gig           coverage.



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                       workers and the spaces of          Given the private and
                       aggregation.                       isolated nature of the
                       Higher        risk       of        work, the collaborative
                       discrimination (for greater        dimension with other
                       dependence on "platform            workers is limited with
                       algorithm")            and         the risk of alienation and
                       harassment at work                 reducing their bargaining
                                                          power with the platform.
                                                          Limited        risk     of
                                                          discrimination         and
                                                          harassment at work



4. E-commerce in Europe. An Overview of the Extension and Expansion of E-
commerce.

    There are several online platforms or online shop windows created in the wake of the
expansion of online sales (and commerce). E-commerce is a business model in which
commercial activity is conducted either through a digital electronic network or mainly
through the Internet. Like platforms, e-commerce models can also be classified into different
categories30:
     - depending on the parties involved in the commercial exchange, therefore B2B
        (business to business), B2C (business to consumer), C2C (consumer to consumer),
        B2A (business to administration)
     - depending on the exclusivity of the online mode: the so-called pure players, i.e.
        platforms designed primarily for online sales, and omnichannel players, which
        combine physical sales points with online platform
In this case as well the measurement of the volume of e-commerce along a time axis does
not appear to be a simple operation since, as we have seen, the types and models of business
are different. Drawing on a consolidated source on e-commerce (statista.com), we can risk
some estimates and growth forecasts. For 2019, the total value of online sales is estimated at
$3.45 trillion (or $1000 billion), an annual growth of 21%. Globally, the share of online sales
is 15% but the figure is partly "drugged" by the China effect that exceeds 23% (on 2019).

Chart 8 – Global trend of e-commerce sales
     20                                                                                               17,5        6
                                                                                     15,5
                                                                     13,7
     15                                                 11,9
                                         10,2                                                                     4
              7,4           8,6
     10
                                                                                                                  2
     5
     0                                                                                                            0
             2014          2015          2016           2017        2018             2019             2020

                              e-commerce share on total sales        volume (trilion dollars)

Source: https://www.statista.com/

30Spatari M., E-Commerce: recent trends and impact on labour, in Working paper for Uni Commerce Global Union, June
2019.

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In a global comparison, it is in fact possible to observe how only 5 countries exceed the 10%
threshold of the incidence of e-commerce on total sales, of which 3 in Europe: the United
Kingdom (19.1%), Denmark (12.6%) and France (10%). But it is interesting to note that in
China the so-called user penetration, that is the share of the population that has made at least
one online purchase - is still relatively low (58.4% in 2019) compared to European
competitors, thus suggesting a possible further expansion in terms of consumers. Where, on
the other hand, the use of the Internet is already widespread, e-commerce expansion
strategies will not pass through paths of growth of users but through their persuasion and
the reduction of resistance to online purchasing. In Europe, Italy falls among the last
positions in a ranking for the share of e-commerce in the total with only 3.1%, compared to
an average of 8.9% among the most e-commerce oriented European countries. The online
market shows a continuous growth trend with global average rates close to 9% and with
particular acceleration in the period 2019-2023 in China (+11%), Indonesia, Romania,
Poland, Spain, Italy, Argentina and especially in India (+17%).


Chart 9 – Share of e-commerce on total sales, internet usage rate 2013 and 2019, worldwide comparison
        e commerce, quota %     % on line buyer on population 2019   % on line buyer on population 2013

 100,00%                                                                                              25,00%
  90,00%
  80,00%                                                                                              20,00%
  70,00%
  60,00%                                                                                              15,00%
  50,00%
  40,00%                                                                                              10,00%
  30,00%
  20,00%                                                                                              5,00%
  10,00%
   0,00%                                                                                              0,00%
                          Brazil




                      Romania




                         France

                          World
                        Mexico




                 United States
                           India




                          Spain




               the Netherlands

                      Denmark
                            Italy




                         Poland
                      Australia



                      Germany

                     Indonesia




                          China
                         Russia




                   South Korea
                          Japan
                       Belgium
                   South Africa




                    Switzerland




                       Sweden




               United Kingdom
                     Argentina




Source: https://www.statista.com/

If, on the other hand, the annual share spent on online purchases (ARPU, Average revenue
per user) is considered, the ranking also changes significantly according to the different
purchasing power, going from $2,028 in the United States to $63 in India. In the European
Union the average annual expenditure is equal to $903 but with a lot of internal variability:
from $1,660 in Denmark to $268 in Romania.




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                                                                            Section: Miscellaneous




Chart 10 - Average revenue per user (ARPU)




Source: https://www.statista.com/

By its very nature, e-commerce does not respond to national borders and, on the contrary,
favours international trade. Studies show31 that 38% of online packages purchased come
from China (2018 data) and that online purchases are mainly made through multinational e-
commerce companies such as Amazon (23%), Alibaba (16%), eBay (14%) and Wish (10%).
If we focus the analysis on Europe32, 74% of online consumers buy from abroad, of which
54.6% from China (in 2017 the percentage was 38.7%), 28.1% from the United Kingdom,
26.6% from the United States and 22.9% from Germany. In about 60% of cases it is the
"generally lower price" that pushes the consumer to buy online from abroad. Purchasing
from China is always majority except in cases where a proximity market also prevails for
online purchasing, as in the case of Luxembourg (where online purchasing from the
Netherlands is decisive) and Switzerland and Austria (where online purchasing from
Germany prevails).




31   International Post Corporation, Cross-border E-commerce shopper Survey 2018, January 2019
file:///C:/Users/ddazzi/Downloads/ipc-cross-border-e-commerce-shopper-survey2018.pdf
32-Postnord,    E-commerce in Europe 2018, 2018. Further information at the following link:
https://www.postnord.com/globalassets/global/english/document/publications/2018/e-commerce-in-
europe-2018_en_low.pdf


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                                                                                                       Section: Miscellaneous


Chart 11 – Distribution by country of origin for online purchases from abroad 2018
 100
  90           17                                                                  18      12
       24           22             22                                    24                                  27
  80                          33        32        37     35    35   34        38                  33    32         33
                                             44                                                                         48
  70    7      21        54                                               9        16
                    19             19
  60                                    14                               11                        6    12   19    11
       19                     18                   8     14    18   20        7
                    7                                                                      70
  50                                    11   11   12                          12                        13         17
               31                                        14                        40                        19
  40                          18                               15   11                                                  26
                         21
  30                               59                                    56                       61
       50           52                       45
  20                                    43        43     37                   43                        43         39
               31             31                               32   35                     3                 35
  10                     25                                                        26                                   26
                                                                                           15
   0




                                    China    Uk    Usa        Germany    France    altro

Survey on a sample of 33,589 people who were asked to specify the country of origin of recent
transnational online purchases
Source: International Post Corporation, Cross-border E-commerce shopper Survey 2018, Key
findings: January 2019.



4.1. E-commerce Strategies.

   E-commerce expansion strategies, however, not only bring new players to the market but
also generate drivers of change for the entire world of commerce, whether traditional or
digital. All traditional commerce companies have reacted to the competitive pressure
imposed by online sales by undertaking low price strategies, preparing digital solutions for
purchase or delivery, opening up to platforms of commercial display windows and then
opening up to the world of e-commerce. The expansion strategies of e-commerce are
therefore distinct in the case of pure players or traditional operators.




4.1.2. Pure Players.

   For pure players, i.e. where the exchange takes place mainly online, the main expansive
strategy is based essentially on aggressive sales growth through low price policies in order to
increase market share even at the cost of financial losses and negative cash flows.
Expansionary policies are often accompanied by negative profit dynamics. The corollary of
this strategic approach is wage containment, production flexibility, automation and
robotization driven by anti-union processes and policies: the Amazon case is emblematic of
this strategic paradigm. Unlike Alibaba, which is proposed as an intermediation platform,
Amazon acts as a traditional commercial operator covering the entire supply chain and not
only the sales intermediation: from this derives the difference between the operating margin
of Amazon (2.9%, 2017) and that of Alibaba (61.6%). Amazon's operating result, a measure
of the company's profitability expressed as a % of sales, is equal to 5.3% in 2018, where,


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however, e-commerce has a partial result of 2.5% and Amazon Web Service, the component
with the highest profitability, has an operating result equal to 28.4% of sales, or more than
10 times that recorded for e-commerce. In addition, with regard to e-commerce, there was a
negative operating result on the international market (-3.3%) compared to a positive result
in North America (5.1%). In other words, against more than 207 billion sales in e-commerce
in 2018, profitability indicators continue to show either modest or negative values (for the
international part). This trend shows that Amazon's strategy gives priority to an aggressive
policy of revenue growth at the expense of net profits33.

Table 1 – Amazon profit distribution
                                                    e commerce           Total
                                 North America      International         e commerce   AWS          Total
 Net sales                       141.366            65.866               207.232       25.655       232.887
 Operating profit                7.267              -2.142               5.125         7.296        12.421
 % on sales                      5,10%              -3,30%               2,50%         28,40%       5,30%
Source: Syndex processing Bvd data

   Although extreme, Amazon's strategic orientation does not appear to be an isolated trait
among pure e-commerce players: high sales volumes are offset by low profit margins. The
Chinese company JD.com, with sales equal to Amazon for international e-commerce,
continues to record net losses in the last 4 years for a total of $4.5 billion in the period (2014-
2018). The same can be said for the Argentine MercadoLibre (with a loss of 37 million dollars
in 2018), the Romanian emag.ro with a net loss of about $20 million and the Polish allegro.pl
with a net loss of 32 billion in 2017.

Table 2 - Comparison of balance sheet data between digital and traditional traders
                          AMAZON.C           JD.C    RAKUTE ZALAN                 CARREFO WALMAR
                          OM, INC.           OM      N INC  DO SE                 UR SA   T INC.
                          US                 KY      JP     DE                    FR      US
 EBITDA              20
 margin (%)          18   10,75              0,64    13,27        3,81            3,23             6,35
                     20
                     17   8,76               0,93    17,08        5,47            4,54             6,19
                     20
                     16   9,05               0,57    19           6,98            4,59             6,76
                     20
                     15   7,96               -1,76 37,31          4,17            4,93             6,96
 Turnover            20                      67.418                                                514.405.00
 (.000)              18   232.887.000        .616   9.938.465     6.190.560       89.213.865       0
                     20                      55.644                                                500.343.00
                     17   177.866.000        .042   8.365.580     5.397.808       96.414.091       0



33In this regard, it is not irrelevant to think that the wealth of Jeff Bezos does not come so much from profits
as from the share value of the company. https://www.opencorporation.org/en/ranking/amazon-com-
inc/2019

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             20                   37.428                                                      485.873.00
             16 135.987.000       .654    6.694.486           3.853.472      83.035.639       0
             20                   27.926                                                      482.130.00
             15 107.006.000       .819    5.921.619           3.231.697      85.886.449       0
             20                   178.92
 Employees   18 647.500           7       17.214              15.619         363.862          2.200.000
             20                   157.83
             17 566.000           1       14.845              15.091         378.923          2.300.000
             20                   120.62
             16 341.400           2       14.134              11.998         384.151          2.300.000
             20                   105.96
             15 230.800           3       12.981              9.987          380.920          2.300.000
  Source: OpenCorporation processing Orbis BVD data

    If we compare profitability indicators (EBIDTA34) between pure players and traditional
commercial operators (in this case Walmart and Carrefour) we note that, with the sole
exception of the Japanese company Rakuten, the strong growth in turnover did not translate
into an increase in profitability, but rather a contraction of it. In the case of Amazon, as
already mentioned, profitability is attributable more to its web service component than to e-
commerce.
    Other emerging evidence is the divergence in growth of turnover and employees: while
for traditional traders there are modest growth rates on turnover (6.7% Wal-Mart and 3.8%
Carrefour between 2015-2018) and negative employment (over 4% less between 2015-2018),
Amazon shows a turnover grown in 4 years of +117% and employment of +180%, JD.COM
of +141% and +69% respectively and Zalando with +91% and +56%. The Japanese pure
player shows a trend that is growing but more contained (+67% of turnover and +32% of
employees), showing how less aggressive expansions are associated with higher performance
profitability paths. The ratio between turnover and number of employees is increasing in all
the commercial operators considered (average +30% among digital operators and +10%
among traditional operators) with the sole exception of Amazon, where the number of
workers is growing at a faster rate than turnover.


4.1.2. Traditional Retailers

   The expansion of e-commerce has also led to a reorganization of traditional commercial
channels. Among the top 250 commercial operators in the world, only 31, and therefore a
small part, had not yet adopted omni-channel solutions, i.e. conjugation of sales in physical
and virtual places, by 2015. There's much intertwining between traditional channels and e-
commerce solutions and different synergistic bidirectional strategies, i.e. alliances from e-
commerce to traditional operators or from traditional operators to e-commerce. An example
of the first case is the acquisition by Amazon of the American Whole Foods for a value of
13.7 billion dollars. The merger between the e-commerce giant (Amazon) and the

34Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization. EBIDTA margin indicates the ratio of % to
turnover.

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supermarket chain (physical) aims both to expand its market share and to offer Amazon a
ground for the diffusion of its line of business of online grocery (B2B) and private label
offers. At the same time Amazon has opened a chain of highly automated "convenience
stores", Amazon Go, in which all activities (entry, choice, payment) are recorded and digitally
processed without any intervention of "human" workers.”35 The push towards increasing
automation also seems to be taken on by the German multinational retailer ALDI (acronym
of ALbrecht-Discount)36 which has opened in the Chinese market37 its first two markets in
Shanghai with a SCAN&GO system (without checkouts, the customer scans the barcode
and pay with WeChat) and offers a delivery service.
   Examples of the second case, i.e. of omni-channel strategies of traditional operators, are
very diverse. In particular, Wal-Mart, after the acquisition of pure e-commerce players such
as Jet.com, ShoeBuy, Moosejaw, ModCloth and Bonobos, is now investing in the online
grocery store (https://grocery.walmart.com/). Wal-Mart's strategic focus on e-commerce is
also visible in its alliances with major global e-commerce players in fast-growing consumer
markets: in 2016, it acquired 10% of the shares of the Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com
and in 2017, it completed the purchase of the majority stake in the Indian e-commerce leader
FlipKart. Similarly, Auchan has formed an alliance with the Chinese Alibaba in the food
sector in order to explore the potential of the Chinese market through the enhancement of
Sun Art Retail Group, of which Auchan is already a major shareholder. The other French
retail leader, Carrefour, continues its expansion into e-commerce through the acquisition of
the French retail leader in online sales of Rue du Commerce and Greenweez (European e-
commerce for eco-friendly and organic products), the development of innovative delivery
services that allow home delivery within one hour and the strengthening of the network of
the Carrefour Drive system to 569 sites throughout France.
   In general, the Drive Supermarket system (online shopping, digital purchase and
collection within a set time from supermarkets or distribution centres) has found a field of
strong experimentation and expansion in France. According to some surveys38 it is estimated
that in 2015 in France about 205 Drive Supermarkets were created with a total turnover of
5 billion euros of which 45% represented by the E.Leclerc group alone.
   The solutions for approaching e-commerce do not therefore appear to be unequivocal.
There are many ways to go about it. However, a comparative analysis of the behaviour of 22
traditional retailers allows us to trace some evidence:
            -    with the sole exception of the Casino Guichard Perrachon Sa group (France)
         for which the company of the Cdiscount group dedicated to e-commerce accounts
         for 18% of sales and Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize NV (Netherlands) sales through
         the bol.com platform account for 10%, the omni-channel and e-commerce solutions
         usually do not exceed 5% of the value of total sales. However, it is interesting to note

35 According to Bloomberg estimates in 2018, more than 3 thousand Amazon Go will be opened in the United
States by 2021.
36 Multinational company based in Essen (Aldi Nord) and Mülheim an der Ruhr (Aldi Süd), founded in 1946

by the Albrecht brothers, with a total turnover of about 67 billion euros in 2015 for a total of 40,100 employees
in Germany, 124,000 worldwide (Aldi Süd - 2016) 58,179 (Aldi Nord - 2015)(2016).
37https://www.retaildetail.be/fr/news/food/longues-files-d%E2%80%99attente-lors-de-

l%E2%80%99ouverture-des-premiers-magasins-chinois-
d%E2%80%99aldi?fbclid=IwAR0DyQDaSPfLu8yl_EJvdRXJ7bk1J2xvm0Vt0tE-luZvsczfF2QKUGUaDEU
38 https://www.interroll.com/it/blog/automated-drive-supermarkets-in-france/



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            that the two exceptions (Cdiscount and bol.com) were initially developed as well as
            players and subsequently acquired;
                -    for some companies, the development of e-commerce solutions has led to
            modest profit margins or even net losses due to software and organisational
            investments not offset by an increase in sales volumes, as in the case of the Japanese
            Seven & I Holdings Co Ltd, which recorded a loss of $219.5 million;
                -    the main path towards e-commerce, as we have seen, is the creation of
            alliances or partnerships with so-called pure players. In this scenario, in addition to
            the cases already reported, the case of Distribuidora Internacional de Alimentacion
            SA (DIA SA) is of interest, having reached an agreement with Amazon according to
            which Amazon Prime users can order and purchase DIA SA products online with
            favourable delivery times. At the same time, DIA SA has opened a Digital
            Transformation School for the training of its employees, offering a response, the
            training, to one of the most important challenges of digitization: rapid obsolescence
            of skills;
                -    e-commerce policies do not always go hand in hand with low price policies:
            in the case of Estrablissement Franz Colryut, studies show that products ordered
            online (collect@go) cost more than shelf products.


II. A Gallery of Platforms: Trends.

5. Food Delivery: an Overview.
   Online food-delivery services can be divided in two groups:
    - Restaurant-to-Consumer delivery, where meals ordered online are delivered directly from
        the restaurant, whether it is a platform order (e.g. Just Eat, Delivery Hero) or from
        the restaurant website itself (e.g. Domino's) and all online orders collected from the
        restaurant;
    - Platform-to-Consumer Delivery, where the online order and delivery are made through a
        platform (e.g., Deliveroo).
   Based on estimates by Statista.com39 in 2018, the volume of online food-delivery
amounted to approximately $92 billion, of which approximately $17.5 billion related to
online distribution through platforms (approximately 18.8% of the total volume). The sector
is expected to grow strongly in the coming years (+57% between 2018-2023) with an
acceleration in online distribution via platform (+89% between 2018-2023) compared to
online distribution via restaurants (+50%). By 2023, the weight of platform distribution is
estimated to grow by about 4 percentage points to 22.7% of the total annual value of online
food-delivery. Delivery via restaurant, regardless of how the order is collected, is the main
method, but all this leaves exponential margins for growth in the world of platforms.
Scenarios of progressive migration towards online distribution via platform are not
unrealistic.


39     Statista,    eServices   Report   2018  –     Online   Food   delivery,  September           2018
https://statistacloudfront.s3.amazonaws.com/download/pdf/OnlineFoodDelivery_Preview.pdf

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Chart 12 – Overall value of online food delivery (millions of euros)
                         Restaurant-to-consumer delivery          Platform-to-consumer delivery



                                                                                                    32.983
                                                                                  30.583
                                                                 27.741
                                               24.514
                             21.018
           17.449

                                                                 100.689         107.499           112.299
                             84.188            92.885
           74.944



           2018               2019              2020              2021            2022               2023

Data refer only to observer countries included in the outlook.
Source: Ires Emilia-Romagna elaborations on Statista Digital Market Outlook 2018 data.

    Based on a study by the McKinsey Institute in 201640 it is confirmed that traditional
methods of delivery continue to be predominant, about 90% overall, of which about ¾ still
by telephone at a global level. Digitalisation processes, however, are transforming the market
in terms of both demand (consumption) and supply (delivery). On the supply side, two types
of platforms have imposed themselves on the market: the "aggregating" platforms, created
about 20 years ago as an intermediary between the consumer and the restaurant, and the so-
called "new delivery" platforms which, in addition to intermediation, also provide the
logistics network for delivery to restaurants that do not have them.
    The "aggregating" platforms are based on a traditional delivery model offering access to
a plurality of restaurants through a single online portal. The platform keeps a fixed margin
on the order and the restaurant takes care of the delivery without an additional cost for the
consumer. This business model guarantees very high profit margins (with an EBIDTA of
40-50% of turnover).
    New delivery players open up to a new segment of the home delivery market by
incorporating a downstream part of the supply chain. These platforms receive a double
contribution, from restaurants and consumers and despite operating costs maintain a high
profitability (EBITDA equal to 30% of turnover).
    The McKinsey Institute study hypothesizes how the development of new online delivery,
as an expression of a strategy aimed at incorporating growing pieces of the catering supply
chain, produces a significant acceleration in the online mode of food-delivery: if in 2016
online has exceeded the threshold of 30% of the total food delivery, in 2020 the threshold
of 50% should be exceeded, progressively increasing to 65%, following a growth trend
approximating to that recorded in the online booking of air flights.
    In a global comparison, China is the driving force behind the market both in terms of
online delivery methods with a current value of 41 billion and growth at an average annual
rate of 9.4% to exceed 65 billion dollars in value in 2023. In China's growth, the weight of
online platform deliveries is estimated to grow by more than 1 percentage point, rising from
11.6% to 12.9% of the total value of online food delivery. China alone represents 70% of the

40   The McKinsey Institute, The changing market for food delivery, 2016.

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                                                                                         Section: Miscellaneous


value of platform-to-consumer delivery by 2018, the United States 11.2% and Europe 9.7%.
In terms of growth trend, Europe has the highest average rate of 9.5% between 2008 and
2023, with a significant acceleration (+88% overall growth between 2008 and 2023).

Chart 13 - Online food delivery growth trend in the U.S., China and Europe (millions of dollars)


  60.000                               60.000                                60.000
                                                                22.03
  50.000                               50.000                     3          50.000

  40.000                               40.000      12.07                     40.000

  30.000                               30.000        8                       30.000
                          2.980                                 43.39
  20.000                               20.000                     6          20.000                  3.197
               1.958                               29.60
                          20.16                      6                                  1.701        16.36
  10.000       14.87                   10.000                                10.000     10.73
                            6                                                                          4
                 5                                                                        3
      0                                        0                                 0
               2018        2023                     2018        2023                     2018        2023

     Platform-to-consumer delivery         Platform-to-consumer delivery       Platform-to-consumer delivery
     Restaurant-to-consumer delivery       Restaurant-to-consumer delivery     Restaurant-to-consumer delivery

Source: Ires Emilia-Romagna processing of Statista Digital Market Outlook 2018 data.

   In Europe, the market segment is led by the United Kingdom, which alone represents
about 26% (2018) of online food-delivery in Europe, followed by Germany (with 16.1%)
and France (11.8%). The United Kingdom also represents 30% of the online market via
platform, followed by France (21.6%) and Italy (10.6%). In this ranking it is interesting to
note that Italy has a share of online deliveries via platform (27% in 2018) of the total online
food-delivery market comparable to the Chinese one (29%) and misaligned with the
European average (13.7%). In terms of dynamics, Spain is the market in which the fastest
growth of online deliveries via platform is estimated (+127% in the period 2018-2023)
compared to an important but more contained European average (87.9%) and with different
speeds: in the United Kingdom growth is estimated at +46%, in Germany at +32%, in Italy
at +91.7% and in France (+64.1%).




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                                                                                                Section: Miscellaneous


Chart 13 – Online food delivery growth trends in main European countries (millions of dollars)



                                                                     761



                                                 519

                          202                                       4.339                                      604
          153
                                                2.820                                       368
         1.848           2.058                                                                                1.985
                                                                                           1.105


         2018             2023                   2018               2023                   2018               2023

      Platform-to-consumer delivery            Platform-to-consumer delivery             Platform-to-consumer delivery

      Restaurant-to-consumer delivery          Restaurant-to-consumer delivery           Restaurant-to-consumer delivery




                                 227
                                                                                                   347
           100                1.088                                          181
           624                                                               483                   806

           2018                 2023                                         2018                  2023

         Platform-to-consumer delivery                                     Platform-to-consumer delivery
         Restaurant-to-consumer delivery                                   Restaurant-to-consumer delivery

Source: Ires Emilia-Romagna processing of Statista Digital Market Outlook 2018 data.

   Overall data shows that online food delivery via platform is not yet a mature market,
accounting for about 19% of the total value of online food-delivery worldwide. However,
there are significant territorial asymmetries (if we only think of the weight of platform-to-
consumer delivery in China and Italy), partly explained by a different rate of penetration of the
online market (rate of active online customers on the total population), partly by rapidly
changing consumption patterns and partly by aggressive policies of expansion of the
platforms themselves. Because of the higher operating costs, compared to the restaurant-to-
consumer delivery mode, the growth strategies of the platforms are focused, in fact, on an
extension of the delivery coverage and an entry in the large urban agglomerations. The
studies show that the main strategic guidelines are focused on the development of user
profiling, data collection and their integration in an IoT (Internet of Things) environment to




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enhance the potential (voice-ordering) and on a more automated and robotized delivery
thanks to digital technologies41.

Chart 14 – The online food-delivery penetration rate in 2018 by country




Source Statista Digital Market Outlook 2018.


5.1. Food Delivery Platforms and Business Models.
   The business models of the food on demand market, as already mentioned, have a
disruptive impact on the traditional market and proceed by incorporating pieces of the supply
chain into an incremental logic. In theory, three different phases of the food on demand
chain can be identified:
    - Ordering, or customer orders collected via app, portal or telephone
    - Cooking, or the preparation of food according to the orders received
    - Delivering, the delivery of food at home



 EXAMPLES                       ORDERING                COOKING                    DELIVERY
 Just Eat, Grub Hub,                                            Restaurants have their
 FoodPanda, Delivery Managed directly by In collaboration with own delivery channels
 Hero                 the platform        restaurants           or entrust to third
                                                                parties
 Munchery,
                      Managed directly by Managed directly by Managed directly by
 SpoonRocket, Sprig,
                      the platform        the platform          the platform
 Maple
 Postmates, Doordash,
                      Managed directly by In collaboration with Managed directly by
 Caviar, Deliveroo
                      the platform        restaurants           the platform




41In the United States, many companies in the sector are experimenting with delivery via driverless vehicles.
Domino's, the world's leading pizza delivery company, has developed a self-driving robot and delivery via
drone, as well as Ele.me (Alibaba) in some areas of China.

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 RocketFood,                                        In collaboration with
                                Managed directly by                       Managed directly by
 ExtraPlate                                         Home Chefs
                                the platform                              the platform
                                                    (crowdsource)

Different business models incorporate different stages of the supply chain:
    - The model focused on the management of orders mainly recalls to the so-called
        "aggregating" platforms such as JustEat, Grubhub, Delivery Hero where the
        preparation of the food and its delivery remains in the hands of the restaurant directly
        or indirectly. In this model, the factors of quality and competition depend very much
        on the relationship with the network of restaurants;
    - The business model that integrates the management of orders and delivery and refers
        to the so-called new delivery players. Unlike the simple management of orders, this
        business model implies higher management costs but can enjoy greater barriers to
        entry for any competitors and can act on the price. The preparation of food is
        entrusted to a network of restaurants or, as in some cases, to a network of cooks
        hired through crowdsourcing;
    - The full cycle model, where the platform manages not only orders and delivery but
        also the cooking phase: delivery can be instantaneous or immediate depending on
        the customer's needs. Obviously, the configuration of the supply chain imposes
        higher management costs but also the possibility of reducing transaction costs in the
        various steps.
    The integrated cycle model has been tried by some platforms and in particular Munchery,
SpoonRocket, Sprig, Maple. The model, probably, is the most fragile from a financial point
of view. Munchery, a chef's platform set up in 2010 in San Francisco, was closed for
bankruptcy in March 2019 after firing 30% of its employees (about 672 registered in 2018)42.
Similar fate for the Brazilian SpoonRocket (bankrupt in 2016), the American Sprig (bankrupt
in 2017, leaving more than 200 workers at home) and the New Yorker Maple (closed in
2017), which was unable to withstand the competition and was acquired by the multinational
Deliveroo.
    Even for the other business models the competition is always very high, so much as to
kick out of the market Amazon Restaurant, meaning the food part of the giant of e-
commerce Amazon, in June 2019. Opened in 2015, Amazon Restaurant has not been able
to impose itself on the food-delivery market on the global market due to competition from
the main world players Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash and Deliveroo. After the closure of
the London delivery business in November 2018, Amazon Restaurant is forced to close also
the American office in 2019.43
    The online food-delivery market sees an oligopoly of major world players:
    - Delivery Hero was founded in 2011 in Berlin (Germany) and has become the world
        leader in online food ordering platforms. Today the platform operates in more than


42 It is interesting to note, however, that in the face of bankruptcy the CEO of the startup wanted to reward
himself with 250 thousand euros as a "success fee" for the sale of mobile assets and real estate of the company.
https://sf.eater.com/2019/5/9/18563459/munchery-sells-south-sf-headquarters-ceo-payment
43 It is interesting to note that the exit of Amazon Restaurant from the market was welcomed by a 5% increase

in the share value of Grubhab. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/amazon-exits-restaurant-
delivery-grubhub-stock-pops-2019-6-1028269857

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            40 countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East with more than
            250,000 catering centres as partners processing more than 369 million orders in 2018.
            The strong push towards internationalization has developed mainly through
            acquisitions and mergers of the various national and transnational competitors with
            an aggressive strategy of expanding its coverage and adopting a multi-brand approach
            (approximately it moves on the market with 30 different global brands). Since its
            merger, under the impetus of its founders, the platform has entered the market in
            Australia and the United Kingdom and then expanded into Germany, Sweden,
            Finland, Austria and Poland and landed in 2012 in South Korea and China through
            YoGiYo and Amifan and increased investment in TastyKhana. In 2014 Delivey Hero
            enters Latin America acquiring control of PedidosYa and strengthens its position in
            Germany (with the acquisition of pizza.de and Foodora, in 2015, from the Rocket
            Internet incubator), South Korea (with the acquisition of Baedaltong) and Turkey
            (with the acquisition of Yemeksepeti for €530 million). In 2016, for a value of
            approximately 3 billion euros, Delivery Hero acquires Foodpanda and sells the
            English Hungryhouse to Just Eat. The rapid rise resulted in the listing on the
            Frankfurt Stock Exchange on 30 June 2017 with a value of more than one billion
            euros. During 2018, Takeaway.com, the Dutch platform that entered the stock
            exchange in 2016, acquired the German Delivery Hero business to stop its expansion
            in the German market for a value of one billion euros44. Before the listing on the
            Stock Exchange, the equity investments of the group have changed significantly
            seeing the participation of the Rocket internet incubator from a peak of 39% to a
            threshold well below 10% in 2019, while the shareholding of Nasper, South African
            giant of e-commerce with a threshold of shares with voting rights equal to 22%, and
            therefore majority shareholder of Delivery Hero, has risen. At the end of 2017,
            Delivery Hero became the majority shareholder of the largest food-delivery platform
            in Latin America (Rappi), it also invested in the Spanish Glovo platform and in 2019
            it also acquired Zomato, a restaurant search service founded in 2018 and active
            globally;
       -    Glovo, a Spanish platform founded in Barcelona in 2015 and rapidly developing
            globally: by 2019 it was already operational in 20 countries, penetrating all continental
            markets. Food-delivery remains the core-business of the platform and the central
            business model, but services are also extended in a multi-product logic (detergents,
            clothes, letters, pharmaceuticals) and integrated business models are tested
            (cloudkitchen) with catering and cooking spaces for restaurateurs and chefs who
            want to expand their customer base. The opening to e-commerce involves the
            development of dark stores, or warehouses closed to the public, whose products can
            be ordered through the platform app. It is interesting to note that the statements of
            the company do not exclude the entry of private label products, which would ensure
            higher margins45, thus seeing the platforms also enter the food chain directly as
            producers. It is interesting to observe how, on an experimental basis, in Italy

44   https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/la-borsa-sceglie-takeaway-olandesi-triplicano-prezzo-dall-ipo-ABhMgkrB
45https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/gig-economy-glovo-non-solo-pizze-ma-anche-detersivi-e-lettere-

domicilio---ABCvsLlB

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        collaborations are being opened with actors of the large-scale retail trade for home
        delivery. In 2018, Glovo started the acquisition of Foodora, the delivery company of
        the German holding company Delivery Hero, to establish itself in the Italian market
        in which it had already entered with the acquisition of the Foodinho platform (the
        founder of which became CEO of Glovo Italia in 2018), thus pursuing an expansive
        strategy for aggregation;
    -   Uber Eats, the food delivery platform of UBER Technology (2009), created in 2015
        after UberFRESH's experimental entry into the online delivery market in California.
        The platform, independent from the platform of the parent company Uber, enters
        in 2016 in London and in 2018 the same company announces plans to triple the
        workforce in the European market. The growth of Uber Eats is difficult to track as
        the food-delivery business is not always separable from the parent company's balance
        sheet. In preparation for the listing of Uber on the Wall Street for a value of over
        100 billion, the document prepared for the IPO (Initial Public Offering) includes
        some separate information for food-delivery: 15 million meals delivered, a network
        of 220,000 restaurants and present in over 500 cities internationally expected to rise
        to 700, according to the company's plans for expansion. The food delivery service
        reached in 2018 a Gross Booking (i.e. revenues from races and deliveries) of 7.9
        billion dollars and represents one of the main growth vehicles of the Uber Group
        since 50% of new accesses arrive at the Uber platform through UberEats. As an
        expansive strategy, Uber Eats announced its intention to open "virtual restaurants"
        in the UK (cloud restaurants);
    -   Deliveroo (or Roofoods Ltd), the online food-delivery platform founded in London
        in 2013 by American founders (Will Shu and Greg Orlowski) and active in over 200
        cities worldwide through partnerships with large restaurant chains or manufacturers
        (such as the 2016 agreement with Heineken International for the exclusive delivery
        of their products). In 2017 Deliveroo was one of the first to open up to the so-called
        dark kitchens (the project is called Deliveroo Editions), i.e. kitchens without
        restaurants, where food is produced exclusively for online orders: through the
        analysis of customer data, the platform is able to analyze the order market and
        establish the optimal distribution of dark kitchens in the territory. To date, the project
        has landed in the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong
        and Australia. In London alone, there are more than 12 Deliveroo Editions, often
        obtained from prefabricated buildings and warehouses. In Italy it is is active in Milan,
        Turin and Rome. Also in 2017, Deliveroo entered into a collaboration agreement
        with TripAdvisor following the example of what was concluded with the American
        platform Gruhhub: a process of integration between restaurant research and the
        ordering service. In May 2019, Amazon, world leader in e-commerce, consolidated
        its position in the capital of Deliveroo with an investment of 575 million dollars,
        bringing the total capital invested from 2013 to 1.3 billion;
    -   DoorDash, a platform created in 2013 in San Francisco with predominantly
        American coverage, recorded rapid growth in 2019. Its market share in the United
        States is growing very rapidly (from about 15% to almost 30% from March 2018 to



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            February 2019)46 eroding important positions at GrubHub and becoming the
            American market leader. After the last capital increase in 2018, the value of the
            platform is estimated to be $1.4 billion. During 2018, DoorDash entered into a
            partnership with Walmart, a global retail giant, proposing itself as a player also in the
            distribution of food products from the retail sector;
       -    GrubHub, born in 2013 from the merger with Seamless (founded in 1999) and
            Grubhub (founded in 2004), the new online and mobile food ordering and delivery
            platform registers 19.9 million users, 115 thousand associates in 2200 cities in the
            United States. The growth strategy has been developed along a happy expansion by
            acquisition or merger of local delivery platforms (Delivered Dish in 2015, LAbite in
            2016, Eat24 in 2017, LevelUP and the Israeli Tapingo in 2018). In 2014, after the
            merger, it will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2017, it entered into a
            distribution agreement with TripAdvisor47, so that consumers can also place orders
            directly from the page of a restaurant on the review portal. In March 2018, however,
            he bought Uber in Southeast Asia, incorporating Uber Eats48. Currently, GrabHub
            services in the United States, including the GrabHub app, Seamless, Eat24,
            MenuPages, Allmenus and DiningIn, account for about half of total food delivery;
       -    Just Eat, founded in 2000 in Denmark and then moved to the UK in 2005, currently
            has around 21.5 million customers and over 82,300 takeaway restaurants. The
            platform with a clear internalisation orientation expands first in the Netherlands
            (2007) and then in Ireland (2008) and since 2011 has been developing strategic
            partnerships for global market positioning (www.eat.ch in Switzerland, ClickEat in
            Italy, RestauranteWeb in Brazil and Alloresto in France) and acquisitions to
            strengthen the presence in the United Kingdom (Urbanbite), Canada (YummyWeb
            and GrubCanada). Confirming a strategy oriented towards aggregation, in 2012 it
            proceeds with the acquisition of the Spanish competitor SinDelantal, which ended in
            2015 to ensure access to Latin America, in 2014 it strengthens its position in the
            French and Brazilian markets by promoting a merger with iFood and its subsidiary
            RestauranteWeb and in 2015 it sells to FoodPanda the shares of the Indian JV. In
            2014 it will be listed on the London Stock Exchange. In 2016, Just Eat sells its
            Benelux operations for 22.5 million euros to the fast-growing European platform
            Takeaway.com in the Netherlands and buys HangryHouse from Delivery Hero. Also
            in 2016, Just Eat reached an agreement with Rocket Internet, the European industry
            giant based in Berlin, to acquire four businesses, and with Foodpanda, another Berlin
            startup active in the sector (supported by Rocket Internet), for an amount of 125
            million euros. The acquisition concerns the online delivery of food at home in Italy
            (HelloFood Italia and PizzaBo), Spain (La Nevera Roja), Brazil (HelloFood Brazil)
            and Mexico (HelloFood Mexico). In 2019 the company buys Flyt, a software house
            for food and beverage services. During 2019, the Ceo resigned under pressure from
            investment funds - even though they hold non-majority shares of the group -
            oriented towards an option to merge with another partner - hypothetically the Dutch

46 https://fortune.com/2019/03/11/doordash-tops-grubhub-on-demand-food/
47 https://fortune.com/2017/05/09/grubhub-tripadvisor-partner/
48 https://mothership.sg/2018/03/grab-acquires-uber-explained/



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         Takeaway - to be able to heal the losses recorded in recent years: Just Eat has gone
         from a market value of 5.5 billion pounds in 2017 to the current 4.87 billion, and its
         shares have lost about 13% in one year.
Moving from a more qualitative research to an analysis of the balance sheet data,
confirmations and interpretative lines of some interest emerge. The following is a discussion
of four49 Global platforms with complementary business models.
First of all, there is the rapid growth in terms of turnover with growth rates of up to 1000%
(for Delivery Hero) and with a significant acceleration recorded in 2017. The number of
employees does not indicate the complexity of the workforce involved - as many of those
who work for the platforms are either self-employed or para-subordinate workers or
occasional workers and therefore not contractually dependent on the company - but it is
proposed as an indicator of comparison with the dynamics of turnover. If we compare the
volume of turnover to the number of employees, we can see that for Delivery Hero the ratio
over the years has fallen (from 89 thousand euros/employees to 53 thousand
euros/employee) while for Grubhub (from 191 thousand euros/employee to 323 thousand
euros/employee) it has grown and for Just Eat it remains more stable (about 250 thousand
euros/employee). Where it grows, it implies that the turnover increases at a faster rate than
the employment increases, with a constraint of subordination, while where it decreases, it
implies that the employment dimension increases more rapidly than the turnover volume.
Where it grows rapidly or where the ratio is higher, an outsourced use of the labour force
through forms of autonomous or para-subordinate work is conceivable.
Despite the most impressive revenue growth for Delivery Hero, the largest gross profits are
structurally higher for Grubhub. Profitability indicators (EBITDA) show both in absolute
terms and as a percentage (of turnover) consistently negative values for Delivery Hero and,
to the extent of data availability, also for Deliveroo a symptom of a negative cash flow and
greater financial fragility. The profitability indicators also show structurally more modest
values and growth trends compared to the dynamics of turnover. It is interesting to observe
how the sales data, and therefore the revenues directly attributable to the sales of the products
and services of the observed company, almost always explain the totality of the total revenues
with a single exception recorded for Delivery Hero in 2018 when, instead, the sales revenues
explain 72% of the total revenues.

Table 3 – Financial Statements data of some food delivery players (thousands of euro)
                            DELIVERY HERO SE GRUBHUB INC.               JUST EAT PLC          DELIVEROO
                            DE               US                         GB                    GB
 Turnover  2018             1.069.500              879.700              864.624               n.a.
           2017             609.700                569.555              615.471               314.665
           2016             299.138                468.012              438.465               150.115
           2015             200.734                332.346              337.297               n.a.
           2014             90.734                 209.104              250.941               n.a.
 Employees 2018             19.834                 2.722                3.290                 n.a.
           2017             12.882                 2.125                2.116                 1.664
           2016             6.848                  1.518                1.621                 1.049
           2015             2.843                  1.105                1.443                 n.a.

49The companies were selected based on the availability of information about the group consolidated financial
statements on the Bureau Van Dijk’s database.

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               2014     1.018                  1.090           1.018                 n.a.
Gross
profit         2018     756.800                879.700         678.682               n.a.
               2017     414.500                569.555         550.577               74.883
               2016     254.037                468.012         397.385               1.342
               2015     166.525                332.911         324.093               n.a.
               2014     73.981                 212.032         237.957               n.a.
EBITDA         2018     34.700                 155.286         168.312               n.a.
               2017     -199.700               122.737         163.472               -183.546
               2016     -105.982               114.141         113.789               -157.274
               2015     -165.474               83.743          68.330                n.a.
               2014     -71.500                62.537          81.247                n.a.
Sales          2018     765.300                879.700         864.291               n.a.
               2017     584.200                569.555         615.471               n.a.
               2016     297.026                468.012         438.465               n.a.
               2015     199.507                332.346         337.024               n.a.
               2014     88.008                 209.104         201.833               n.a.
EBITDA
%             2018 3,3                         17,7            19,5                  n.a.
              2017 -32,8                       21,6            26,6                  -58,3
              2016 -35,4                       24,4            26,0                  n.s.
              2015 -82,4                       25,2            20,3                  n.a.
              2014 -78,8                       29,9            32,4                  n.a.
Source: our elaborations on Orbis Bvd data.


5.2. Final Remarks.

   The market for online food delivery platforms is an oligopoly with high barriers to entry
for possible competitors and where growth strategies are mainly oriented towards the
aggregation of national and international competitors by merger or acquisition, especially in
the first phase of expansion, and consolidation in different markets - or abrupt retreat in case
of difficulties in penetration - through a progressive strengthening and investment in the
capital of local players.
   Acquisitions and disposals between large oligopolist groups are very frequent in a
perpetual pursuit for maximum coverage, constantly recomposing the corporate structure:
an example is the operations on Foodora, FoodPanda, HangryHouse. On the international
scene, the Dutch Takeaway platform is emerging, whose turnover has tripled in a very short
time and on which various attempts at alliances are concentrated within a logic of progressive
centralisation to guarantee, paradoxically, the maximum decentralisation in the territory.
   The growth strategies do not only move in an intersectoral environment, and therefore
between players in the same sector, but we are looking for alliances with players in e-
commerce, such as Amazon - interested in entering the food-delivery after the closure of
Amazon restaurant -, the large-scale retail trade, such as Walmart, or even looking for
pathways to integrate the tourism sector such as the collaboration with Tripadvisor.
   Compared to business models, the prevailing strategies see more and more continuous
experimentation towards an integrated cycle model, including the cooking phase (dark
kitchen), a multi-product distribution (not only food) and an opening to direct e-commerce

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(dark store). It is interesting to observe the entry of on-demand delivery platforms also in
private labels as they would testify to their positioning in the food supply chain even as
producers.
   The shareholding structures change very rapidly over time with the entry and exit of
banks, investment funds and incubators from the corporate structure, testifying to the
dynamism of the platforms in terms of investment, on the one hand, but also the financial
exposure of the same, on the other, especially if listed on the stock exchange.


6. Household Services: Online Housework.

    The Gig Economy has developed into a plurality of activities. Not only food-delivery,
transport services or cloudwork, but a so-called "uberisation" process has also been produced
for domestic work. In a recent report50 which brings together the results of 14 surveys carried
out in 13 European countries between January 2016 and May 2019 are proposed different
measures of the online community in a European comparison. Compared to a size of the
online community that takes into account a wider use of online platforms for some form of
income, Europe is essentially divided into two areas: high levels of online income in Central
and Eastern Europe (specifically the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia) and Southern
Europe (Italy and Spain), on the one hand, and a low-income online generation in Northern
and Western Europe (France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom).
The report not only proposes a geographical mapping of online communities but also
questions which variables significantly explain their distribution. It is absolute poverty that
pushes a larger proportion of people to look for different forms of online income, not only
labour platforms but also, and above all, platforms for the sale or rental of mobile and real
estate: in fact, there is a correlation between the highest prevalence of forms of online income
(from work or capital) and the incidence of absolute poverty.
    In addition to outlining the incidence of platforms as a revenue lever in Europe, the report
limits the field of observation only to work through platforms, identifying 4 categories of
activity: transport and delivery, domestic work, online work - which collects a wide spectrum
of high and low-content professional work - and commissions via platform (errands). The
first evidence that emerges is that those who work through an online platform usually do not
only one type of work but do on average 2.25 per week (2.34 for males and 2.13 for females).
This figure suggests that workers on online platforms mainly seek additional forms of income
by accepting any type of work.
    In a counter-intuitive form, domestic services appear to be more widespread than
platform work and delivery. The centrality of food-delivery (Foodora, Deliveroo, Glovo) and
transport (Uber) in public debate and academic discussion therefore seems to depend more
on the public visibility of the phenomenon than on its real diffusion. The comparison
between national statistics, in fact, shows how domestic work via platform, certainly a


50Huws U., Spencer N., Syrdal D., Holts K., The Platformisation of Work in Europe, Results from research in 13
European countries, FEPS, UniGlobal and University of Hertfordshire, 2019 https://www.feps-
europe.eu/attachments/publications/the%20platformisation%20of%20work%20in%20europe%20-
%20final%20corrected.pdf .

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segment of the market not much debated in political and trade union forums, is actually more
widespread. It is therefore possible to induce that the most intimate dimension of domestic
work, precisely because it takes place inside the walls of the house, does not manage to
receive the same attention even though it has a greater presence.
    Those who carry out domestic services via platform have a higher percentage weight than
the most medially visible category, i.e. "taxis and deliveries", in France, the United Kingdom,
Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. This confirms that
it is more widespread. Following the geographical pattern of the spread of the online
community, domestic work reached its highest levels in the Czech Republic (11.8%), Spain
(11.6%) and Italy (8.9%).

Chart 15 – Share of the active population carrying out different types of platform work at least weekly
                          1,9
         Sweden                   4
                            2,4
                        1,4
                         1,6
 The Netherlands                 3,9
                             2,5
                        1,4
                           2,2
       Germany                        4,9
                                 3,8
                            2,3
                                    4,4
         Austria                                            8,2
                                               6
                               3,3
                                        4,5
     Switzerland                                                8,4
                                                   6,4
                                  3,5
                                                     6,9
            Italy                                                       10,4
                                                                 8,9
                                               5,8
                            2,6
         Estonia                            5,4
                                        4,5
                                         4,7
                                   4
         Finland                                          7,5
                                        4,6
                                         4,8
                                                                  9,2
           Spain                                                                        14,3
                                                                           11,6
                                                                         10,9
                                                   6,3
        Slovenia                                                                             15
                                                      7
                                                           7,9
                                                              8,7
  Czech Republic                                                                                                              23,5
                                                                               11,8
                                                                                 12,3
                                  3,5
  Unitek Kingdom                                           7,8
                                             5,4
                                            5,1
                             2,8
          France                                6,1
                                        4,4
                                   4
                    0                   5                         10                    15                     20               25

                        Commissions                Online work           Housework           Taxi/deliveries

Base: 2155 respondents in France, 2226 in the UK 2019 survey, 1991 in Czechia, 1990 in Slovenia,
2173 in Spain, 1996 in Finland, 1978 in Estonia, 2185 in Italy, 1995 in Switzerland, 1955 in Austria,
2171 in Germany, 2118 in the Netherlands, 2139 in Sweden and 2234 in the UK 2016
survey(weighed).
Source: Huws, U., Spencer, N., Syrdal, D., Holts, K. (2017), The Platformisation of Work in Europe,
Results from research in 13 European countries, FEPS, UniGlobal and University of Hertfordshire
(2019).

   The processing of online commissions via platform remains a generally minor form of
income, but achieves significant shares higher than the one of those who work in transport
and online deliveries in Italy, Austria and Switzerland. In general, the most widespread form


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of working via platform is, generally, cloudwork (online work), or a form of online work
open to global competition. Although it is possible for an online worker via platform to
perform several activities at the same time, clouworkers represent the majority type of work
in all countries, with peaks in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Italy and Switzerland.
   The reports also allow a gender reading for the types of work via online platform. This
perspective allows us to make three main points:
            -     For male workers, the percentage of those who carry out transport and
         delivery activities is always higher, with the sole exception of Italy, where the
         percentage of women exceeds (6.3%) the percentage of men (5.4%);
            -     cloudwork always remains the most frequent type for both genders but for
         the female component there are significantly lower percentages;
            -     Contrary to what a superficial reading might suggest, domestic work shows
         always higher incidences for male workers, with the sole exception, also in this case,
         of Italy where domestic work among women reaches 9.8% compared to 8% for the
         male gender. The figure in itself is not surprising because within domestic work are
         classified both jobs with a higher propensity for women (such as cleaning or
         babysitting) but also jobs with a higher propensity for men (such as electrician,
         carpenter, plumber, etc.).).


6.1. Household Services Platforms.

   There are several online platforms for domestic work. And as with all platforms, market
volatility remains very high due to margins of profitability that are always very squeezed and
aggressive market competition. This is the case, for example, of the U.S. platform Homejoy,
founded in 2010, which had 100 employees and thousands of self-employed in the cleaning
sector. Despite rapid growth thanks to funding from incubators, such as Y Combinator, and
venture capital funds, such as Google Ventures, Homejoy ceased operations in 2015 due to
a difficulty in maintaining a constant profitability and managing labor lawsuits focused on
the recognition of the subordination of employees (after the ruling of the California State
Labor Commission in the Uber case, 2015) and part of the technical staff of the platform
was hired by Google LLC. Other platforms, on the other hand, are being honoured by trade
union successes, such as the Danish platform Hilfr as the first example of collective
bargaining in an online platform. The Hilfr startup, oriented to the intermediation of cleaning
and caregiving services, signed in 2018 an agreement with the Danish trade union 3F
introducing minimum wage standards (a minimum wage of about 19 euros per hour), social
security contributions, paid holidays and coverage in case of illness for the so-called
superHilfr, or those who have exceeded a certain seniority of work on the platform (100
hours of work)51. Others, on the other hand, for behaviour that respects the quality of work,
such as the Italian Le Cicogne (www.lecicogne.net) for the babysitting service, whose rates



51  A cleaner may request coverage under the collective agreement if it has not exceeded the threshold of 100
hours, but after this threshold, coverage is automatically triggered, unless the worker himself explicitly rejects
it.

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are in accordance with the National Collective Agreement (CCNL) for domestic work,
respect the minimum union rates and are updated every year.
There are many intermediation platforms for domestic work and the best known are:
    - Task Rabbit, American platform founded in 2008. Born from the experience of
        RunMyErrand, another platform for the management of daily commissions, Task
        Rabbit expands rapidly throughout the U.S. supported by several venture capital
        companies (Sasha ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, Floodgate). In
        2013, the company introduces "TaskRabbit Business" that allows companies to hire
        temporary workers from the database of the platform itself. In 2013, the company
        will enter the European market, experimenting with a new matching system in
        London, no longer based on the idea of a tender but on the willingness of the
        "taskers" to accept before the other jobs consistent with the professional profile
        uploaded on the platform. Thanks to this new selection metric, applications to be
        "taskers" have increased from 4,000 in 2014 to 15,000 in 201552. In 2017, the Ikea
        group acquired the Rabbit task platform and launched a specific service dedicated to
        furniture assembly. It is estimated that the "taskers" currently active are about 60
        thousand covering a wide range of professional profiles and in about 45 cities in the
        United States and United Kingdom53;
    - Handy (Hanybook the name until 2014), founded in 2012 in the United States with
        current headquarters in New York is a platform primarily dedicated to cleaning jobs
        and other domestic activities. It is active in 28 cities in the United States and Canada
        and, by 2015, has a staff of about 160 full-time employees and about 10 thousand
        employees for a total of about 1 million online bookings of which about 80% from
        regular customers. The platform was launched thanks to financial support from the
        Harvard Innovation Lab incubator and supported over time by venture capital funds
        (General Catalys Partners and Highland Capital Partners) and investment funds
        (Revolution Growth). In 2014, Hany buys Mopp, a similar platform on the London
        market, and enters the European market. In 2018, Handy was acquired by ANGI
        Homservices former owner of HomeAdvisor and Angie'List. In 2016, Handy builds
        alliances with Amazon, for "voice" booking through Amazon Alexa, in 2017 with
        Wayfair, for an integrated service when purchasing through the e-commerce leader,
        and in 2018 with Walmart, the global leader in retail;
    - Helpling, founded in 2014 in Germany, is Europe's leading marketplace for domestic
        service management. Among its main founders (for a total estimated funding of 57
        million euros) are Mangrove Capital, Lakestar, Rocket Internet, Unilever Venturs and
        Accel partners, already investors in Facebook, Spotfy and Dropbox. Helplig is active
        in 10 countries and three continents: Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy,
        Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.
        In 2015 Helpling acquires Hassle.com - the UK market leader in the sector - and in
        2018 the Swiss Book a Tiger through the investments of Tamedia AG, Switzerland's
        leading media group;

52 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/technology-companies/12026750/TaskRabbit-How-an-app-can-
relieve-you-of-all-your-chores.html
53 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TaskRabbit#cite_note-:0-40



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       -    Care.com, American platform launched in 2007 mainly specializing in home
            babysitting and care and other home activities. The site gathers almost 33 million
            customers in about 20 countries, has reached 111 million euros of investment and
            was listed on the stock exchange in 2014. The initial investment for the launch of the
            platform comes from private Matrix Partners, private equity funds. To date, the
            company says that 13.9 million caregivers have entered the platform to find work,
            more than 9.1 million families have sought care, and more than 1.6 million workers
            of their customers have benefited from their services. Care.com services are often
            used by digital leaders as benefits (e.g., Google and Facebook). In 2012 it opened up
            to the European market, entering the UK and Germany, and Canada. Also, in 2012,
            it introduced a new model of private social networks via mobile (Karoo) through
            which to connect caregivers and families and launched Care.com recruiting Solution to
            facilitate the intermediation of labor in care work. In 2013, it is collaborating with
            Knowledge Universe, a non-profit company specializing in childcare services and
            training.;
       -    Housekeep, platform for work interactions in cleaning services and other domestic
            work activities (laundry, ironing) founded in 2014 in the UK. Again, embracing more
            quantitative methods of analysis on two of the most important online platforms for
            domestic work intermediation (Angi Homeservices Inc and Care.com) shows rapid
            growth over time. Since their inception, growth in terms of revenues has increased
            exponentially, with +280% for Angi Homeservices Inc and +84% for Care.com, but
            with very different trends: while Care.com shows a more continuous and structured
            trend, Angi Homeservice shows a strong acceleration, especially in the last 2 years,
            that is, after the listing on the stock exchange in 2017 following the merger between
            HomeAdvisor and Angie's List in a mutibrand strategy (11 total on specific areas of
            services)54. However, the rapid growth does not correspond to the same performance
            of the company's profitability (EBITDA as a % of turnover) and for Angi
            Homeservices the year of the listing shows a negative Ebitda rate.

Table 4 – Consolidated financial statements of two international platforms (in thousands of euros)
              Year                        ANGI HOMESERVICES INC. CARE.COM, INC.
                                          US                                       US
              2018                        988.856                                  167.913
 Turnover 2017                            614.013                                  145.160
              2016                        306.735                                  153.452
              2015                        316.088                                  127.382
              2014                        259.460                                  91.188
 Employees 2018                           4.500                                    678
              2017                        3.900                                    749
              2016                        1.567                                    628
              2015                        1.730                                    673
              2014                        1.852                                    853
 Ebitda       2018                        13,6                                     5,57
              2017                        -14,95                                   6,54

54   https://www.angihomeservices.com/brands/

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                    2016                           3,11                   3,75
                    2015                           5,71                   -7,36
                    2014                           -1,52                  -26,49
Source: our elaborations on Orbis Bvd data

Obviously, workers do not grow with the same dynamics as turnover, as they grow in relation
to management (or production) costs, but not in relation to turnover, which is more strictly
dependent on the volume of intermediaries managed through the "external" workforce (self-
employed, semi-subordinate, casual workers). However, the trends between the two
platforms observed are distinct, in that Angi Homeservices INC, which has almost 1 billion
turnover in 2018, records an increase in the number of workers of +140% while Care.com,
in the same period and against a more limited turnover trend, shows a decrease of -20%. The
ratio of turnover to employee inevitably falls from 150 thousand euro/employee (2014) to
136 thousand euro/employee (2018) for Angi Homeservices while it rises from 135 thousand
euro/employee (2014) to 214 thousand euro/employee (2018) for Care.com.



7. Digital Tourism.

   In digital tourism, the world of platforms does not present itself as a labour platform, but
very often as online booking platforms or peer-to-peer platforms that more closely reflect
the original concept of sharing economy. The collaborative economy is developing in a
context of rapid growth of international tourist arrivals worldwide and also in the European
Union (EU). Compared to 331 million arrivals in 2000, the 28 EU Member States hosted
478 million international tourists in 2015.55 In the same period, the number of international
tourist arrivals worldwide increased from 674 million to almost 1.2 billion. In the long run,
these figures are expected to grow both in the EU and worldwide, leading to increased
demand for tourist services.
   Tourism in the EU and in many other regions of the world is also evolving in response
to the changing behaviour of tourists. As the OECD pointed out in a 2016 report, tourists
are, in general, more open to self-guided holidays and seek more information from other
tourists (friends and relatives or anonymous tourists posting reviews on the Internet) than in
the past. According to the Flash Eurobarometer Report on tourism preferences and choices
of European citizens in 201656, consumer choices regarding tourist destinations continue to
be increasingly influenced by personal experiences (about 1/3 of respondents) and by the
advice of friends and relatives (always more than 50% of respondents).




55   https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284418145
56   https://data.europa.eu/euodp/it/data/dataset/S2065_432_ENG

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Chart 16 - Sources of information before choosing a tourist trip (2009-2016)

                                Guides and magazines
                                                                  9

                                Newspapers, radio, tv
                                                                      11

                                          Social media
                                                                      12

                         Travel agencies/tourist office
                                                                       13

          Institutional websites of destination country
                                                                            17

                                  Personal experience
                                                                                          33
 Websites with comments, opinions and evaluations by
                  other travelers
                                                                                          34

                      Suggestions by friends or family
                                                                                                           51
                                                          0      10         20     30          40     50        60       70

                             2009      2010     2011      2012   2013       2014   2015        2016

Source: Eurobarometer 2016.

    In particular, there is an inverse relationship between the growth of websites and social
media and a reduction in the importance of travel agencies and tour guides, suggesting a
substitution effect between the two trends (Chart 17) - although only data as of 2016 is
available for websites and social media. It should also be noted that travel experience sharing
sites in particular (about 1/3 of respondents in 2016) are the preferred information channel.
Many tourists use digital technology and social media to plan, buy or review travel
experiences. Again, digital consumption is affected by different personal inclinations and
national trends towards digital accessibility and usability: the use of traveler rating platforms
and sites exceeds 40% of respondents in France, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United
Kingdom and the Czech Republic, while it remains around 20% in Portugal, Romania,
Hungary and Slovenia.
    Digital consumption becomes even more disruptive if you look at how you book your
holidays. Online booking is the main mode, whether through tour operator search engines
or private accommodation platforms (Figure 18).




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Chart 17 – Booking procedures for travellers in 2015 (% share)




Source: Eurobarometer 2016.

   Tourism has always been a sector with a high technological impact, if you consider the
transformations induced by the so-called OTA online travel agencies, i.e. online travel
agencies such as Expedia or TripAdvisor, Booking, and more recently by the so-called peer-
to-peer accommodation57.




57   People who provide accommodation directly to clients through online platforms.

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7.1. P2P Accommodations.

   Based on a report by the World Bank58, P2P accommodation reaches approximately 8
million beds worldwide, or 7% of the global offer, with an estimated growth rate of 31%
from 2013 to 2025, or 6 times the growth rate of the traditional offer (B&B and Hotels).
Some studies estimate the growth of the P2P economy (independent studies of Mastercard)
in about 75 billion dollars in 2017 with growth to 139 billion dollars in 2020. Growth,
however, will be more concentrated in emerging markets while the trend will remain stable
in mature markets. Processed data provided directly by Airbnb shows that the number of
guests in low-income countries has grown by 1.160% from about 323,000 in 2014 to over 4
million in 2017 (Indonesia, Philippines).

Chart 18 – Growth in arrivals of Airbnb guests in low and middle income countries, 2014-2017




Source: World Bank Group using Airbnb data

   The trend shown here confirms what has already been observed with respect to the
increase in domestic work, i.e. how the expansion of the platform economy also depends,
and above all, on the opportunity connected with it of incremental or substitute forms of
income/wage to the traditional ones. In a recent report by Uniglobal on the platforming of
the economy, it is shown that the share of the workforce that uses the various online
platforms as a source of income is growing rapidly. It is interesting to note that it is not so
much labour platforms that are used as a source of income as asset platforms for selling
products (such as Amazon, on average about 40% of the workforce or E Bay, with about
50%) or renting housing (such as Airbnb, with an average of 20% of the workforce, with
peaks of over 30% in Spain and the Czech Republic and a rapidly growing trend - in the
United Kingdom it goes from 8.2% to 18.7% from 2016 to 2019)59.
   Moreover, the P2P economy has not only changed relations with commercial operators
but also and above all the relationship with other digital tourism players such as the OTAs
themselves. The offers of P2P platforms and the offers of online travel agencies (such as
Expedia and Booking) are becoming increasingly similar. The initial difference, offered by
private individuals and offered by commercial operators, is gradually disappearing. For

58  For further information see: World Bank Group, Tourism and the Sharing Economy, 2018
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/161471537537641836/pdf/130054-REVISED-Tourism-and-
the-Sharing-Economy-PDF.pdf
59 Huws U., Spencer N., Syrdal D., Holts K., (50).



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example, Airbnb itself also lists hotel rooms, second homes and B&Bs as possible options,
allowing commercial operators to constantly monitor the availability of rooms in their hotel
structure. Likewise, the OTAs, like TripAdvisor itself, also offer apartments and
accommodation. In 2018, Booking.com announces that among the 27 million ads, about 5
million are related to homes, apartments, housing. In this direction should therefore be
considered the purchase by Airbnb in 2019 of HotelTonight, a website for booking last-
minute hotel rooms, for over $ 400 million.

                                   Established                Geographic
 Platform                                      Ads                           Guests/visits
                                   in                         coverage
 P2P accommodation
 Booking.com                       1996        5 millions*    226
                                                              countries
 Airbnb                            2008        4,85 million   191       200 million guests
                                                              countries
 HomeAway (Expedia)                2005        2 million      190
                                                              countries
 TripAdvisor Rentals               2009        830.000        200
                                                              countries
 Tuja                              2011        300.000        China
 9flats.com                        2011        250.000        140
                                                              countries
 Homestay.com                      2013        50.000         160       750 thousand beds
                                                              countries
 OYO Rooms                         2013        8.500          India     40 million beds
 Omefinestay (AccorHotels)         2009        2.500          USA, EU
                                                              and AUS
 Xiaozhu                           2012        250.000        China
 Reciprocal accommodation
 GuestToGuest                      2011        280.000        197
                                                              countries
 Love      Home      Swap 2009                 100.000        140
 (Wyndham)                                                    countries
 HomeExchange          (di 1992                67.000         150            135              thousand
 GuestToGuest)                                                countries      exchanges
 Free accommodation Exchange
 Couchsurfing              2004                400.000        200.000        4 million guests per
                                               hosts          cities         year
 Trustroots                        2014        6.000 hosts
 WarmShowers                       1993        61.000 hosts   161
                                                              countries
 BeWelcome                         2007        35.000
                                               members
Sources: Platform websites, December 2017
* Booking.com has 27 million ads, of which 5 million classified as alternative or non-hotel
accommodation.
** The HomeAway portfolio include HomeAway.com, VRBO.com e VacationRentals.com
*** The TripAdvisor Rentals portfolio include FlipKey, HolidayLettings, HouseTrip, Niumba e
Vacation Home Rentals.


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The digital platforms for housing can thus be divided into three categories:
    - P2P accommodation, where the provider, who rents the accommodation, asks for a
         payment and the guest pays the provider directly (as for the Homestay.com platform)
         or through the platform (as in Airbnb). In addition, the platform retains a transaction
         fee from the provider, guest or both. New platforms are also emerging in emerging
         economies such as the Indian OYO network which also entered the Chinese and
         Indonesian markets, the Xiaozhu and Tuja platform in China and other smaller
         platforms operating at regional and national level. Of this category of course the best
         known is Airbnb with 4.85 million ads in 65 thousand cities and 191 countries along
         with HomeAway, which also includes VRBO, which offers 2 million ads and
         TripAvisor Rental with 830 thousand ads. In comparative terms, consider that the
         largest hotel chain in the world, the Marriott International group, has a potential offer
         of 1.2 million rooms.;
    - Reciprocal accommodation platform: The platform facilitates the exchange of
         temporary accommodation between two or more people and holds a commission for
         transaction costs. For example, HomeExchange charges $150 for 12 months while
         the largest platform in this category, GuestGuest, retains 3.5% of the deposit, which
         is the amount that the owners pay and the platform retains until the end of the
         exchange of homes. Overall, it is estimated that the reciprocal platforms have a total
         tourist offer of 500,000 beds globally;
    - Free accommodation platform: where the exchange of accommodation is without
         commissions and currently has about 500 thousand beds. The best-known platforms
         in this category are Couchsurfing and WarmShowers.
In general, hoteliers claim to have suffered loss of revenue due to the rise of housing sharing
platforms. A 2015 University of Boston study60 estimated that Airbnb reduced its hotel
revenues on the examined market (Austin, USA) by 8-10 % between 2008 and 2014. The
biggest impact was on lower priced hotels and hotels without conference facilities. But the
effect is not only competitive but also urbanistic-organizational and economic-redistributive.
Several studies have been conducted to understand the effects and externalities generated by
the uncontrolled rise of Airbnb, and of the platforms for sharing private accommodation for
a fee. The explanation of the different effects, however, requires a context premise aimed at
highlighting how all the transformations of urban organizations were, in reality, already
underway even before as a result of a sprawl started after the Second World War and
continued until the 90s through various waves of building speculation, but also by mass
tourism, low-cost flights, habits that change61. The phenomenon of short-term rents,
however, has boosted and accelerated these distorting effects on the environment:
    - the re-conversion of the use of housing from long-term to short-term renting and
         the progressive process of "hotelisation", i.e. uploading cheaper housing than hotel
         rooms online, not only creates unfair competition with respect to traditional
         accommodation structures but removes the real estate market from residents and
         leads to higher property prices themselves;

60 Georgios Zervas et al., The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Estimating the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Industry, in
Journal of Marketing Research, 1, 2017, 249-275.
61 D’Eramo M., Il selfie del mondo, Indagine sull’era del turismo, Feltrinelli, 2017.



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       -the phenomenon of short-term rents also generates a process of gentrification or
        segregation62 encouraging residents, especially those on low incomes, to live in areas
        of the city not affected by tourist flows and in any case outside the city centres and
        to "disneyfy" the historic centres63, the transformation of historical city centres from
        places of art and culture to "consumption citadels" with the aim of keeping tourist
        consumption close to the accommodation and thus encouraging the distance
        between the centre and the periphery, the desertification of historical centres64 and
        the change of identity of the city itself65;
     - the governance of city services becomes particularly difficult to plan as the identity
        of city centres has changed from areas of residents or long-term rents to areas of
        consumption for short-term rents, making it urgent for local authorities to have
        access to online platform databases;
     - from an economic point of view, the expansion of the phenomenon of short-term
        rents increases inequality and the processes of concentration of wealth. As shown by
        some research66 the initial nature of the sharing economy that seems to inspire some
        online platforms (e.g. Airbnb) seems to be threatened by the entry into the market
        of large players (brokers, real estate agencies, international economic agents) who
        manage increasing shares of housing on platforms for third parties. The costs of rents
        also show an inverse relationship with the distance from the city centre, highlighting,
        therefore, how the greatest profits are concentrated in the central areas, that is, where
        the real estate wealth is already concentrated, exacerbating, and not reducing,
        inequality.
    Faced with the effects triggered by the growth of the phenomenon of short rents, many
local governments have reacted in an attempt to put up barriers or build legislative and fiscal
instruments capable of regulating the phenomenon. The different orientations mainly include
the introduction of limits on the number of overnight stays (Amsterdam), the inclusion of
hosts in special registers (Barcelona), limits on the conversion of accommodation from long-
term to short-term rentals (Berlin), limits on the use of Airbnb in certain central areas of the
city (Paris), subdivision of the urban area into areas with differentiated use of tourist licences
(Barcelona), direct acquisition of buildings for rent regulation (Barcelona and Berlin) or
specific forms of taxation on rents (Italy)67 or by extending or raising the tourist tax
(Barcelona). Faced with different requests, the Airbnb platform has proved very often
collaborative, but not without tensions even bitter negotiations (think of the comparison

62 Guttentag D., Airbnb: disruptive innovation and the rise of an informal tourism accommodation sector, in Current Issue on
Tourism, 18, 12, 2013, 1192-1217.
63 Semi G., Tutte le città come Disneyland?, Il Mulino, 2015.
64 Mammone L., Cultura: la desertificazione dei centri storici italiani e il fenomeno delle sponsorizzazioni dei beni culturali. A

chi giova?, in LaRiscossa, 2017, http://www.lariscossa.com/2017/02/24/la-desertificazione-dei-centri-storici-
italiani-ed-fenomeno-delle-sponsorizzazioni-dei-beni-culturali-cui-prodest/
65 Sans A.A., Quaglieri Domínguez A., 2016, Unravelling Airbnb: Urban Perspectives from Barcelona, in Russo A.P.,

Richards G. (eds.), Reinventing the Local in Tourism: Producing, Consuming and Negotiating Place, Channel View
Publications, 2016, 209-228.
66 Picascia S., Romano A., Teobaldi M., The airification of cities: making sense of the impact of peer to peer short term letting

on urban functions and economy, Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the Association of European Schools of
Planning, Lisbon 11-14 July 2017.
67 It should be noted, however, that non-progressive taxes, such as the 21% fixed tax present in Italy, lead to a

worsening of inequality by favoring the central areas and penalizing the peripheral areas.

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between Airbnb and the City of Barcelona68), offering local administrations their own
databases to promote the programmability of services and the control of tourist flows (as in
Barcelona), collecting tourist tax (as in several Italian cities including Bologna) or automating
the limits of rent per host in accordance with local regulations (London). The attention to
the requests of local administrations shown by the platform is a symptom of a policy that is
attentive to reputation, also in view of the forthcoming listing on the stock exchange. In
2018, some of the main European cities69 have joined forces to create a network to request
the European Union to go beyond the pressure already exerted by the European
Commission on Airbnb for greater consumer protection70 (price transparency and
elimination of unfair terms) and to encourage the American multinational to share its data in
order to facilitate the planning of cities. Along with pressure from cities, several digital
initiatives to make the platform and its data on temporary rentals more accessible are
flourishing on the net, among which Inside Airbnb stands out (http://insideairbnb.com/)
created in 2014 by Australian photojournalist Murray Cox to map, monitor and critically
review Airbnb ads.


7.2. Platforms and Digitalisation in the Tourism Supply Chain: Some Experiences.

   However, the tourism supply chain is not limited to accommodation but includes a range
of diversified services and activities that are also under pressure from the processes of
digitalisation and transformation of the platform economy:
    - TripAdvisor was founded by Stephen Kaufer in February 2000 and was purchased
         by Sebastian Mendoza in 2004. The original financing was obtained from Flagship
         Ventures, Paletto Group and private investors. The site collects the evaluations
         written by the users of the structures; each review is evaluated by the staff that judges
         if it is consistent with the guidelines of the site; otherwise it is not published. Today
         its community reaches 455 million users for an amount of about 570 million
         contributions per minute, according to what reported by the site itself. The App
         intervenes in the supplier-customer relationship. For the supplier it represents an
         important showcase and at the same time it is an indicator of the "brand reputation"
         of the structure/service. For the customer, travel advice. Reviews, however, can be
         extremely subjective and personal, and can confuse the future consumer or even
         mislead him. Finally, the "review" tool also lends itself to being a sort of "marketing
         lever", which legitimizes the customer to demand special treatment under penalty of
         bad review. If on the one hand TripAdvisor is an alternative to travel agencies, as we
         have seen above, with regard to advice on destinations and services and
         accommodation facilities, on the other hand has also fed a market aimed at enhancing
         the reputation of tourist facilities and services with the creation of dedicated agencies;


68http://temi.repubblica.it/micromega-online/la-citta-come-bene-comune-cosi-barcellona-contrasta-il-regno-

di-airbnb/
69 Among which Amsterdam, Barcellona, Vienna, Bruxelles, Berlino, Parigi, Bordeaux, Valencia, Monaco and

recently also Bologna.
70 https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4453_it.htm



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    -   Expedia is an online travel agency of Expedia Group for booking trips, hotels, and
        holiday packages. Launched in 1996 as a Microsoft Division and formally launched
        in 2011 following the acquisition by Usa Network Inc. Expedia is one of the world's
        leading online travel agencies and offers access to more than 435,000 bookable hotels
        worldwide (including luxury hotels and major chains and over 218,000 in China
        through eLong), more than 400 airlines and a wide range of car rentals and on-site
        activities;
    -   E dreams is an online travel agency based in Madrid, founded in 2000 it allows you
        to identify and choose flights, hotels, cars, package holidays and insurance working
        with over 450 airlines, 855 thousand hotels in over 40 thousand different destinations
        worldwide. In 2011, edreams is the first online travel agency in Europe with over 14
        million customers and a value of 3.9 billion euros in booking volume. In 2014,
        edreams was listed on the Spanish stock exchange in Madrid and in 2015
        performance grew to 4.5 billion euros in booking volume for a total of 10.7 million
        online purchases, growing in 2017 to 11.7 million (+3%). E dreams is part of a
        competitive logic for offline travel agencies and in 2011 it was fined in Italy, together
        with Expedia, for unfair business practices;
    -   Several apps and websites are dedicated to tourist guides such as Freetour.com and
        Paesionline.it, where you can find tourist information, multimedia travel guides and
        diaries, events and useful tips for travel (destinations, hotels, flights). In Paesionline.it
        you can browse through the pages dedicated to about 10 thousand destinations in
        the world: guides, stories, maps and videos are available. Established in 2001, the site
        is also available in English, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese, and available
        in apps for Android and iOS; it has about 2 million visits per month, 650 thousand
        registered users, over 864 thousand fans on Facebook and the page is followed by
        851 thousand people. Directly from their website you can assess the strength of the
        brand in the social world and online in general, with particular attention to the target:
        almost 60% of users are over 45 years. Travel portals, from promotional to booking
        ones, have replaced the physical location of the travel agency. And with it also the
        staff. They have replaced the paper guides, some of which are still in use, but have
        collected the information in a few large containers that can handle it. They have
        intercepted the needs of customers: always little time to choose, desire for quick and
        simple bookings, certainty of the result among thousands of options. To satisfy many
        tourists, this is one of the solutions available. For tailor-made travel, on the other
        hand, the direct relationship with the trusted travel agent continues to be preferred;
    -   Born in 2016 in Florence, Keesy is an app that allows you to check in and check out
        online without spatial and temporal constraints. It is a flexible, easy and automatic
        way to check in and check out in extra-hotel facilities, from B&Bs to room rentals,
        to home sharing rooms. It's a depersonalized service, especially convenient for the
        owners of the accommodation, who entrust the Keesy Point with the keys to their
        apartment. The Keesy Point is in fact a physical place, where tourists come and go
        from and to every place, supported 24 hours a day and 7 days a week by an online
        operator. The result is an automated reception for a type of accommodation that
        does not have reception, concentrating in a limited place access to thousands of beds,


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        wherever scattered. At the moment the app is confined to some Italian cities and for
        non-hotel facilities. Future scenarios would allow us to glimpse the application also
        for traditional accommodation facilities replacing, in synergy with Pepper robots, the
        role of the reception;
    -   Tested in 2017 and then applied in all the Best Western Chain Hotels in Italy (160
        hotels), Best Friend, the Best Western chatbot is a service that connects the user to
        his hotel and a tool for support and automatic response to customer questions, also
        able to sell additional services and perform check-in directly. A booked customer can
        then check in, request information on activities and events in the area, thanks to the
        partnership with Musement - another tourist app - have a personalized support from
        the bot, which is able to manage, as reported by the same hotel chain, 80% of requests
        in total autonomy. It is integrated with the Messenger Facebook platform: the service
        is therefore available and immediate 24 hours a day, thanks to the fact that Messenger
        has an interface for the direct exchange of data between the web user and the online
        service;
    -   Classpass Inc. founded in New York in 2013 provides access to gyms, yoga centers,
        fitness, boxing and health centers with a single subscription that promotes the ability
        to continue physical activity even during tourist trips. In 2017, the start-up was valued
        at €470 million with a total of online bookings of more than €45 million per year;
    -   Packing Pro is a more widely used app for those who want to prepare their suitcase
        in a "scientific" way: from a simple system for compiling the list of items to take on
        the trip, Packing Pro has become a very precise tool that allows, for example, to
        calculate the weight of baggage to avoid paying extra costs at the time of boarding.
        Other functions of Packing Pro include: management of baggage lists, object
        databases, compilation of automatic lists based on the type of participants and the
        destination, sharing via iTunes and email and the possibility of customizing the
        design;
    -   Monument Tracker, application that sets the itinerary, choosing the monuments and
        attractions to visit. Monument Tracker proposes quizzes to learn more about the city
        you are visiting and, when the user is near an interesting monument, sends push
        notifications that provide stories, anecdotes and curiosities;
    -   Musement, an Italian app born in 2013 and acquired in 2018 by Tui Group, European
        leader in tourism and leisure. Musement selects the best activities for every type of
        tourist proposing to view and book panoramic tours, trekking, diving, balloon trips,
        food and wine activities in more than 30 countries around the world. The company
        is based in Milan and its main competitors are Viator (acquired by TripAdvisor),
        GetYourGuide, in Berlin, Klook, based in Hong Kong, and Peek.com, based in the
        United States.




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III. Conclusions.

8. Gig Economy and Industrial Relations.

     The relationship between Gig Economy and industrial relations is strictly dependent on
the very nature of the theoretical assumption that underlies the definition of digital platform,
namely the theory of transaction costs (Coase, Williamson) in which the conceptual duality
of hierarchy (system of rules and mechanisms of operation of an economic entity such as the
company) and market (freedom of initiative of individuals) is constantly oriented to the
progressive decrease of transaction costs, or all those costs not strictly productive but related
to the organization of an activity and caused mainly by information asymmetries, limited
rationality and opportunism (moral hazard). Digital platforms, as mentioned above, are
placed, in the framework of this theoretical approach, in a hybrid space of "hierarchy" and
"market" when they offer intermediation services through which the transaction takes shape.
The theoretical justification that limits a principle of hierarchical subordination between
platform and platform workers appears "theoretically founded" but does not seem to strike
at the heart of the problem71: “How does a platform manage to bring supply and demand together
efficiently?” If in asset platforms the network effect is the main guarantee of transaction
efficiency, in platform works, generally understood, the transaction is efficient if the
availability of the workforce is guaranteed. It follows that the "platform" company,
understood as a hierarchical unit, recovers the organizational and control tools of a hetero-
direction and hetero-organization Tayloristic approach, enhancing them through the digital
tool: "the "hierarchy" elegantly leaves by the “front door” of the contract, returns from the
window with the hetero-algorithmic and remote determination”. And the "market" generated
by the platform is asymmetrical because it is hierarchized in terms of the relationship between
the platform and gig workers".
     If, therefore, one leaves the formality of the legal status and enters the dimension of work
organization, digital works are not so far from workers in "hierarchical" enterprises, since
both are subject to the pressure of making more flexible and optimizing labour costs.
Industrial relations, therefore, meet the main challenges in facing a new phase of capitalism,
with new invisible formal subjects (algorithms) and with new strategies of alliances. But, at
the same time, they encounter a field of confrontation that is certainly insidious but not
foreign to the contractual life of a trade union organization. Topics of a trade-union nature,
such as autonomy, control and organisation, are re-proposed in new ways, but for the
management of which there is no lack of experience and contractual instruments to draw on.
     Moreover, the development of industrial relations in the platform economy is becoming
increasingly urgent as a means of countering an increasingly aggressive and growing form of
capitalism in which, unlike past forms, the process of accumulation is continuous through
the extraction of constant value in real time from the very life of human beings. It is the
capitalism of surveillance 72. Its purpose is to transform human experience into behavioural
surplus by promoting its commodification as well as work, land and currency according to


71Cattero B., (8), 23-32.
72Zuboff S., The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power, Profile Books
Ltd, 2019.

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Polany's theory of the Great Transformation. Digital platforms are an extraordinary tool for
the transformation of the individual into human capital without, however, an awareness of
the value assumed by that capital on the market and of the process of continuous
expropriation of the individual. Like a parasite, this economy occupies every behavioural
space of the individual and transforms its nature. It is not only an exploitation practised by
an external power, but it is the unconscious adhesion of the exploited to the exploiter.
Industrial relations would therefore serve to restore an identity and a negotiating role to the
parties and an instrument for balancing powers and for a re-appropriation of the individual's
conscience with respect to the processes of capitalist accumulation.
   The literature and the various interviews conducted on the profiles of the gig workers
confirm that the figures most easily organized in terms of representation are those who
perform online work in person to determine the platform (on-location platform-determined
work)73. As we have already seen, among them the sense of identity of belonging to a
community, the collaborative relationship and the sense of sharing a condition of
precariousness are more evident. Other types of gig workers (such as domestic services or
cloudworkers) do not show a high propensity for representation, whether union or self-
organized, precisely because of the very characteristics of their work: peer-to-peer
competition, job isolation and professional individualism.
   Compared to the economy of platforms, trade unions have reacted at different speeds,
with different new and traditional tools and with different timeliness depending, among other
things, on the propensity to trade union innovation and the degree of interaction between
the sphere of industrial relations, judicial action, legislation and, more generally, with the
ability to build relationships and alliances with new actors (self-organized workers'
representatives and associations) at a territorial or national level.
   In general, a number of trends can be observed:
   in the face of the lack of organic legislation on the platform system, collective bargaining
has moved towards proposing reference standards and protecting the working conditions of
platform workers. Although they are not yet widely disseminated, there are contractual
experiments dedicated to platform workers in several countries (Italy, Spain, Sweden,
Denmark, Switzerland), emerging from the legal blockade on employment status (autonomy
or subordination) in which legislation very often gets stuck;
   - new actors enter the arena of industrial relations, establishing a conflicting or
collaborative relationship with traditional trade union organisations. In particular,
autonomous and self-organising forms of worker representation are developing, a
phenomenon with which traditional trade unions will necessarily have to deal in a
collaborative and not antagonistic logic;
   - all trade unions show a certain dynamism in trying to intercept the workers of the
platforms, but also the trade unions have a general public debate unbalanced on the forms
of online work "on location" with public visibility: the theme of food delivery is mainly at
the heart of the trade union commitment, when, in reality, cloud work and domestic work
are the most widespread forms of online work;


73Kilhoffer Z., Lenaerts K., Beblavy M., The platform economy and industrial relations, in CEPS Research Report n.
2017-02, 2017.

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    - if trade unions, generally, are still not able to make a common stand because of internal
frictions between sectoral categories (as in the case of the Netherlands) or external harshness
with new forms of worker representation (as often happens in Spain or Italy), online
platforms try to build a compact front by meeting in associations (as in Italy) or by lobbying
against public actors.

 Austria
 Despite the fact that, from a legal point of view, the regulation of the structures of employee
 representation provides for a constraint of subordination, Foodora has recognized as a
 representative subject the works council set up spontaneously by its freelance collaborators.
 Some research studies show the willingness of the Chamber of Commerce, an institutional body
 whose bargaining has an erga-omnes sectoral extension, to begin a path to a sectoral collective
 bargaining for work in platforms, and specifically in food-delivery.
 In November 2018, the Austrian confederal trade union (ÖGB) placed at the centre of the
 contractual debate the possibility of introducing also in Austria the mechanism provided for in the
 Danish contract in the Hilfr platform, i.e. the transition from self-employment to employee, with
 the consequent application of the national collective agreement, once more than 100 hours of
 work for a platform.
 Belgium
 In January 2019, the CNE trade union, a member of the national trade union confederation CSC,
 set up experimental pathways of organizing self-employed workers of the platforms. Apart from
 this and a few other isolated initiatives, trade union organisations do not seem to have developed
 clear strategies for organising and representing platform workers. This difficulty is undoubtedly
 linked to the presence of the cooperative in the digital world. SMART which offers services and
 social protection to freelance and platform workers and whose role is often interpreted, even in
 the Italian debate, as a "third way" in the combination of employment law and self-employment.
 France
 First country to have a labour law in online platforms (2016). The law (the so-called El Khmori
 Act) also regulates and recognises the three fundamental collective rights of platform workers: the
 right to strike, the right to association and the right to collective bargaining.
 There are already experiences of platform workers' unions such as those of the Bordeaux riders, a
 local union affiliated with the CGT transport union. Although the law provides a point of reference
 for rebuilding relations between the trade union and platform workers, it does not always guarantee
 the desired result. The unionized workers tried to open a bargaining table with Uber, but he refused
 the confrontation on the pretext that the negotiating delegation from the world of drivers was not
 representative.
 Trade unions were generally oriented towards providing services to platform workers. In this
 regard, one of the most important initiatives concerns the trade union platform developed by the
 CGDT in 2016 for services and advice to self-employed workers (against a payment of 1% of
 turnover).
 Italia
 Although several proposals have been presented in Parliament at least in the last three
 governments (Renzi, Gentiloni, Conte), only in 2019 the new Government (the so called Conti II)
 introduced law provisions for platform delivery workers establishing a presumption of ‘quasi-
 subordinate’ work and introducing a set of labour and social security rights for self-employed
 platform delivery workers whose core aspects are not in force yet (Act 128/2019), with a view of
 regulating a wide and varied contractual phenomenology: Deliveroo prefers to hire through casual
 or self-employment, Foodora through para-subordination, and Just Eat through service contract
 to a third company. In the absence of initial and systematic national legislation, the Lazio Region
 (and initially also the Piedmont Region) have produced regional laws regulating digital workers,
 although they do not have specific expertise.

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 In terms of industrial relations, 5 are the elements of interest:
 - the budding of self-organized worker representatives among riders (Riders Unions) with local
 bodies strongly interconnected through the digital network. Several public protests were self-
 organized by the riders' workers between 2016 and 2018 (Turin, Milan and Bologna, the main cities
 of mobilizations) turning the media spotlight on their condition;
 - the Charter of Fundamental Rights of Digital Workers of Bologna (2018), signed by the self-
 organized unions, the Municipality of Bologna, some food-delivery platforms and the local unions
 (Cgil-Cisl-Uil). Territorial agreement that introduces minimum wage standards, linking them to the
 sectoral, information and insurance CCNL
 - In 2018, also as a reaction to the protagonism of self-organized movements, the CCNL for
 transport and logistics signed by CGIL, CISL and UIL introduces and regulates the figure of the
 "rider";
 - In 2019, LaConsegna (a food-delivery company) of Florence signed a company agreement with
 CGIL, CISL and UIL in which the subordination of the riders is recognized and the consequent
 application of the national contract (Transport and Logistics). The agreement aims to be a
 contractual reference point for the entire regional territory (Tuscany).
 - In July 2018, the main digital platforms (Deliveroo, Glovo, JustEat, Uber Eats, Social Food)
 formed Assodelivery, the Federation of Platforms, and presented a Charter of the values of food-
 delivery in which they reaffirm the formal autonomy of the riders and generally commit themselves
 to ensuring an adequate and fair wage.
 The Netherlands
 Despite the lack of a tradition of collective actions - according to a restrictive jurisprudence of the
 Dutch Supreme Court - one day of collective action was organized against Deliveroo, however
 isolated initiative. In this regard, it should be noted that the company has in any case proceeded to
 the transformation of the form of work from subordinate and autonomous and has created a
 "Riders Forum" to inform and consult the riders, thus placing an alternative tool, but outside the
 sphere of industrial relations, to the works council.
 Among the riders, representatives of the self-organized workers "Riders Union" have been
 developed, in particular in Deliveroo, but supported by the FNV union.
 In the catering service, the FNV catering federation has entered into collective bargaining with
 Temper, a freelancer platform, which has led to the elimination of the commission paid to the
 platform, thus increasing the income of workers. The contractual path has opened up an internal
 conflict within the trade union, as the FNV Flex, which represents temporary and administered
 workers, considers Temper not as a platform but as a labour administration agency to which the
 dedicated national contract should be applied.
 Spain
 The main experiences of industrial relations in the economy of the platforms are:
 - The development of forms of worker representation self-organized as in the case of
 RIdersXDerechos, or a platform for riders born as contractual partner of Deliveroo, in Uber or
 Cabify. In the case of Deliveroo, however, it should be noted that the same company has not
 recognized the platform as a contractual subject and has, indeed, disconnected the main promoters.
 - The relationship with the traditional trade union is contradictory: in the case of Deliveroo no
 support was sought from the more structured trade union organisations while in smaller cases
 alliances were sought.
 - There is a strong capacity to network self-organised representations at European level.
 - The more traditional trade unions have adopted digital information tools for digital workers -
 such as the portal launched by UGT in 2017 as an information and participation tool - and have
 co-supported lawsuits and activated labour inspectors using the so-called "colectivo conflict
 process" (a sort of collective lawsuit that determines future jurisprudence) against Glovo in 2018.
 - The most significant contractual experience is that of the Intersectoral Agreement of Catalonia
 (AIC) 2018-2020, signed by the social partners most representative of the territory. The agreement


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Davide Dazzi                                                                 Italian Labour Law e-Journal
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                                                                                    Section: Miscellaneous


 includes a section dedicated to the workers of the platforms, which establishes that in terms of
 work the applicable law is that of the country in which the service is provided and recognizes a
 commitment to study ways to promote the collective rights of gig workers.
 - In 2018 Deliveroo and the Spanish Association of Riders (ASO) signed a first "professional
 interest agreement", a defensive agreement in which two key concepts are re-proposed - platforms
 are not employers and riders are not employees - to exclude platforms from the perimeter of
 collective bargaining
 Switzerland
 In February 2019, an agreement was signed between Syndicon, the Swiss ICT trade union, and its
 employer counterpart (SML, Swissmessengerlogistic) for city riders and couriers recognising
 minimum wages, night and Sunday allowances, working hours, sickness and other social protection
 schemes (including paternity leave). The agreement covers 600 workers but is not implemented by
 Uber Eat and Notime, leading delivery platforms.
 Germany
 The discussion that began in 2015 with the publication of the Green Paper on Work 4.0 has also
 affected gig workers, or rather cloudworkers, has not found in the White Paper, published in 2016
 after the process of consultation with all stakehodlers, a continuation as it is not considered the
 phenomenon of primary urgency.
 On the other hand, trade unions and primarily Ver.di and IG Metall have developed strategies for
 inclusive bargaining, dialogue and dedicated services for gig workers. In particular, together with
 other European trade unions, the "faircrowdwork" platform was developed in which, in addition
 to information and advice for cloud workers, a platform evaluation system based on the assessment
 of registered workers was built.
 Of particular interest was the case of Delivery Hero, which, with more than 2000 employees, fell
 within the scope of the German Codetermination Act. First Delivery Hero rejects its application
 but is then forced to introduce it after a legal action. It is then transformed into Societaes Europea
 (SE) by introducing a European supervisory committee of six members, three of whom are
 members of the works council, one of whom is a rider.
 Another element of interest is the establishment of a works council in Deliveroo as the final trait
 of a claim process that saw the initial use of Whatsapp as a tool for collective communication, the
 support of the NGG food union and a Facebook campaign entitled "Delivering at the limits".
 Deliveroo, however, has transformed workers from employees to self-employed, who do not have
 the right to set up a works council.
 Denmark
 There are two collective agreements of major interest in the area of platforms:
 - The Hilfr cleaning platform and trade union 3F concluded an agreement in 2018 which
 introduced a minimum wage (€19 per hour), pension contributions, paid holidays and sickness and
 above all a mechanism for switching from self-employed to employed after exceeding 100 hours
 of work for a platform;
 - A Danish interpreter platform Voocali and the trade union HK have concluded a collective
 agreement which regulates not only pay and working conditions for employees but also certain
 organisational aspects of the self-employed. The agreement introduces a minimum hourly wage,
 guaranteed payment for cancelled assignments, transport allowances, and an obligation for the
 platform to provide objective justifications for the possible exclusion of a worker from the
 platform.

  The trade union attitude towards the e-commerce phenomenon is still uncertain74. On the
one hand, management often uses the spectre of e-commerce competition to reduce working


74   Spatari M., (30).

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Davide Dazzi                                                                 Italian Labour Law e-Journal
                                                                                    Issue 2, Vol. 12 (2019)
                                                                                    Section: Miscellaneous


conditions and, on the other hand, some studies show that the retail crisis stems from factors
other than the competitive push of e-commerce and in particular from:
- expansionary pressures beyond the threshold of economic sustainability
- Private Equity, which imposes an excessive level of debt from companies
- Cultural resistance to change and investment in innovation
   Despite the downward challenges that e-commerce giants are launching, online sales still
remain a marginal mode of sales that does not exceed 10% of total sales volumes in EU
countries, with a few exceptions including the UK and Denmark. The particular contractual
difficulty encountered by European trade unions in comparing contracts with individual e-
commerce platforms or in the omni-channel processes of commercial operators consists of:
     - the ability to rebuild, under the contractual sphere, a supply chain that is very
         dispersed in terms of workers and value generation. The attempt by the Belgian trade
         union ACV Plus to map the value chain of large commercial operators and propose
         sector-specific standards to be met with resistance from management and the efforts
         of the Dutch trade union FNV to organise the bol.com e-commerce platform clashes
         with strategies to outsource warehousing activities (to Ingram Micro) and customer
         service (to Teleperformance);
     - in contrasting the growing cultural drift oriented towards the loyalty of workers by
         pure players, such as Amazon, whose expansive strategies naturally imply the
         contraction of working conditions. The cooperative dimension is used to create a
         sense of identity of belonging (in Amazon workers are "associates") to maximize
         flexibility and gather maximum availability.
   Again, the Swedish trade union (in this case Handels and Unionen) stands out because it
takes a non-biased negative view of the phenomenon of e-commerce. Many of the small e-
commerce companies in Sweden are organised or open to trade union membership: the
Handels trade union has recently concluded an organising campaign by unionising 3500
people and signing 250 collective agreements. In addition, given the environmental impact
of e-commerce, the Swedish commerce trade union together with its employers (Svenk
Handel) have allocated an annual budget of €1.9 million to support research projects on the
relationship between commerce, distribution and e-commerce.




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Copyright © 2019 Davide Dazzi. This article is released under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.




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