The German parent company of the food-delivery service Foodora announced on 16 April that it had signed an agreement on worker representation, as it prepares to transition from an AG (public limited company) structure to an SE (societas Europaea). Reached after more than six months of negotiations, the agreement will allow for the creation of a works council at the SE as well as equal representation, of management and workers, on its supervisory board. The agreement comes at a time where the so-called gig economy is synonymous with social and wage dumping and therefore, despite only representing a watered-down deal, is a real step forward, because it will at the very least allow workers to gain access to important information. Semih Yalcin, president of the special negotiating body and team leader at Foodora Cologne, offered Planet Labor some comments on the main points of the agreement.
An SE structure to limit German-style co-determination? Semih Yalcin, who joined Foodora as a delivery rider in October 2016, says: “The reasons for which Delivery Hero decided to transform into an SE remain unclear.” Management at Delivery Hero explained to workers that this legal structure for the group would help it to set up shop across Europe, since it owns several other food delivery companies as well as Foodora. However, Mr Yalcin adds, the decision to change the corporate structure “may
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