Mixed feelings about Italy’s new law on delivery riders
By: Giacomo Lev Mannheimer
Tags: Italy, Regulation, Gig Economy, Riders, Policy

After years of debate and declared intentions, since last November 2nd Italy has a regulation that deals specifically with the work of delivery riders. Is it good or bad regulation? Hard to say. The premises were very negative. Unfortunately, the voice of very few people — who had worked as riders for no more than a few hours, in most cases — had generated a strong negative prejudice on the sector, preventing politics from learning to know it and understanding its enormous opportunities, and not only the risks.

The two governments that have followed one another in the last year have thought that making riders’ work stricter would have made them happier. They got quite shocked when, this summer, hundreds of riders all across the country finally expressed their opinion, strongly opposed to measures such as the prohibition of piecework or the obligation of a public insurance. And indeed, even if very little has emerged in the public debate, already today all the riders collaborating with major platforms work legally, have an insurance, earn well; and all this with a freedom unthinkable in almost any other job.

The new Italian law recognizes that riders are self-employed. It is this formal characteristic that gives them the freedom to choose whether, when and for how long to work, and fortunately the legislator has taken this into account. It is an important recognition, which gives a solid foundation to what almost all platforms have been claiming for some time: the problem of regulating the gig economy is not to guarantee safeguards that everyone is indeed happy to provide, but to make rigid what today is appreciated by all parties… precisely because it is not.

That said, the new law requires the platforms to reach a collective agreement within twelve months, on which to base the working conditions of the riders. In an ideal world, this is a desirable solution. In reality, however, there are two problems linked to each other. First: working as rider is a temporary solution in the vast majority of cases, and this means that almost no rider is registered with trade unions. Therefore, why should the platforms sign an agreement with unions that do not represent the actual interests of the workers for which the agreement is concerned? It would certainly have been preferable to clarify, in the law, that agreements could also be made with representatives of riders, notwithstanding their belonging to a trade union.

Furthermore, the law provides for the adoption of public insurance against accidents at work. As anticipated, already today the couriers collaborating with the main platforms are fully insured. Considering the peculiarities of this work, public insurance — normally intended for employees — is not able to maintain adequate levels of flexibility. For example, the new law provides for insurance to be guaranteed for each day of work, regardless of the number of hours worked. But why should a platform pay the same amount for a rider who works an hour, and for someone else who instead works six or eight hours in one day? And why should any platform pay to cover the same person, working as a courier for different platforms during the same day?

Finally, the new law provides that the discipline of employed work should apply to all collaborations in which the performances are mainly personal and continuous. Now, one could wonder what does “mainly personal and continuous” mean. The answer is easy: no one knows. There is no legal definition of criteria for a “mainly personal and continuous” collaboration. This certainly does not favor the certainty of the rules that any company needs in order to operate in a sustainable way, and to invest in the long term.

In conclusion, Italian law presents positive and negative aspects, largely due to the lack of understanding of the on-demand economy and the benefits it brings to all its stakeholders. That said, the recognition of couriers as self-employed workers upon which any social right or protection gets built certainly goes in the right direction for a sustainable and future-oriented regulation.