EU eyes improving conditions for digital app workers

BRUSSELS: The European Commission on Wednesday launched a consultation aimed at improving conditions for those working through digital labour platforms, such as ridehailing app drivers or delivery people.

“It can offer increased flexibility, job opportunities and additional revenue, including for people who might find it more difficult to enter the traditional labour market,” the commission said.

“However, certain types of platform work are also associated with precarious working conditions, reflected in the lack of transparency and predictability of contractual arrangements, health and safety challenges, and insufficient access to social protection.”

The coronavirus pandemic has sped the development and use of apps offering a variety services – like Uber or Deliveroo – as consumers have turned online during lockdowns across the 27-nation bloc.

The first phase of the EU initiative will see six weeks of consultations with trade unions and employer organisations about their views on improving working conditions.

If labour and business representatives do not wish to enter negotiations on the issue, there will be a second round of consultations on possible measures the EU could take.

If the two side still do not come to the table after that then the commission said it will “put forward an initiative by the end of the year”.

“We should make the most of the job-creating potential that comes with digital labour platforms, while ensuring dignity, respect and protection for the people that work through them,” said Nicolas Schmit, Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights.

Companies working in the sector are frequently accused of taking advantage of the selfemployed status of workers to avoid covering social security payments and other benefits.

The centre-left S&D group in the European Parliament called on Wednesday for these workers to be “recognised as employees with all the resulting rights in terms of remuneration, social protection, security and collective bargaining”.

“It is so easy, with one click on the phone to have a meal served at home, a car available, or a person to do the housework. But some people pay a very high price for this comfort,” said MEP Elisabetta Gualmini.

The EU estimates that one in ten people on the bloc’s labour market have got work through digital platforms. — AFP

MEXICO CITY: Mexican state energy giant Pemex reported a loss of around US$23 billion in 2020 as it grappled with a slump in oil demand caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The company said it had faced “the worst crisis in its history” last year due to the health crisis sweeping the planet.

It blamed “the unprecedented combination of low prices for crude oil and petroleum products” and “a steep fall in fuel consumption that eroded the cash flows of all oil companies.”

Pemex announced an annual loss of 481.0 billion pesos, an increase of 38 per cent compared with 2019, despite returning to profit in the second half of the year.

Revenue slid 32 per cent to 953.7 billion pesos.

Pemex joins oil firms worldwide that suffered massive losses as the Covid-19 pandemic grounded passenger jets, sparked an economic slump and caused oil prices to briefly turn negative for the first time.

For the fourth quarter of 2020, the group posted a profit of 124.2 billion pesos (US$5.9 billion), helped by favorable currency movements, tax breaks and gains on financial instruments, it said.

That compared with a loss of 171.5 billion pesos in the same period of the previous year.

Pemex, which returned to the black in the three months to September, said it was the first time in more than four years that it had posted two consecutive quarterly profits.

Leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has sought to help the firm regain its footing with a series of cash injections and other measures following years of declining production.

The company said that in 2020 it had achieved a “small but very significant increase” in oil production, which stood at around 1.7 million barrels per day on average. Pemex said its debt rose to US$113.2 billion, an increase of 13.9 per cent from the end of 2019.

Rating agencies Fitch and Moody’s have downgraded the company’s credit rating to junk status due to its vulnerability in the face of low oil prices and its need for greater government support. Mexico, a country of 126 million people, has registered almost 184,000 known Covid-19 deaths – the world’s third-highest toll.