On 09 June, IG Metall vice-president, Christiane Benner presented a summary of its organization’s ‘exploratory work’ into the area of ‘crowdworking’, where workers are paid per job via internet-based platforms. Subject matter experts Bernd Waas (Germany) and Wilma B. Liebman (USA) presented a comparative study on crowdworking practices and viewpoints in Germany, the US, and in Japan. Several questions that have arisen due to the growth of this new form or work were considered including crowdworkers’ legal status, the availability of social protection, the employment relationship with ‘crowdsourcers’ and the adequacy of current legislation to protect crowdworkers.
IG Metall’s Crowdworking project. On 09 June, IG Metall vice-president, Christiane Benner invited experts and journalists to the Betahouse, one of Berlin’s most well–known co-working venues, to report on what actions had been taken to date by the world’s biggest sectoral union to cater to this new working phenomenon. Bernd Waas (Germany), Chair of Labor Law at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and Wilma B. Liebman (USA), former president of the NLRB (National labor Relations Board), US lawyer and labor law specialist, jointly presented the ‘Crowdwork- A Comparative law Perspective’ study that was commissioned by IG Metall and carried out by the Hugo Sinzheimer Institute for labor law.
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