STATUS OF PLATFORM WORKERS IN THE SWISS LEGAL SYSTEM

In Switzerland as in several other countries, the platform economy has raised the issues of the qualification of the contract between the platform and the service provider, the so-called platform worker, and the status of these platform workers. Although the platforms are organized very differently, they always act as an intermediate, with more or less intensity and guidance. This intermediary position stretches the connection between the worker and his or her customers and therefore weakens the elected status of independent contractor thus enhancing the risk of requalification. The main difficulty encountered in Switzerland comes from the fact that Swiss law does not give a proper definition of an independent contractor.2 If we consider social insurance laws, the independent is the one whose revenue doesn't come from an activity as an employee; such revenue being otherwise defined as any revenue from a work other than one being achieved through a dependent situation.3 It is therefore necessary to refer to the dependent activity in order to define the independent. In the same manner, the labor law only applies to employees and therefore only sets the criteria to define them. Some political circles have called for the creation of a specific status, and the question has been addressed by the government in a report.4 However, at this stage, the definition of an independent contractor still does not exist and the matter can only be brought before the courts to be settled. Moreover, the legal doctrine on the platform economy is still not very developed from a social legislation perspective. However, progress is being made, with research contributions mainly related to the contractual relations associated with platform work and we would like to mention a large-scale compendium of works, recently published, which offers a complete overview of the current reflection, by the main authors of the Swiss doctrine, who have taken an interest in the question of the legal regime for platform workers (with a focus on law, sociology and work psychology).5In this contribution we aim to give to our readers a global overview on the status of platform workers in Switzerland, so we will first synthesize the legal environment in Switzerland (II.) and the state of the jurisprudence regarding platform workers (III.). Then we will present the collective issues (IV.) and the results of the collective bargaining (V.) before concluding on the foreseen trend on this topic (VI.).