FIM

The Hague Court of Appeal gave its rul­ing on 1 September 2015, after analysing the reply of the CJEU to its two prej­u­di­cial ques­tions con­cern­ing the enforce­abil­i­ty of arti­cle 101 of the TFEU to a col­lec­tive agree­ment reg­u­lat­ing the con­di­tions of employ­ment for replace­ment orches­tra musi­cians engaged under a ser­vice pro­vi­sion contract.

In its rul­ing of 4 December 2014, the CJEU judged that
• Musicians work­ing as ser­vice providers and car­ry­ing out for an employ­er the same tasks as their (per­ma­nent) salaried col­leagues could be con­sid­ered as “bogus self-​employed” if there was a sub­or­di­na­tion link in their work­ing rela­tion­ship;
• Consequently, since arti­cle 101 (1) of the TFEU pro­hib­it­ed any agree­ment on prices between ser­vice providers, this arti­cle did not apply to them and enter­ing into a col­lec­tive agree­ment between social part­ners cov­er­ing such work­ers was legal. […]
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In Dublin on 8 and 9 September 2015, FIM, FIA, UNI-​MEI and EFJ organ­ised the sec­ond work­shop of their European project on atyp­i­cal work­ers. The meet­ing focused on col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, with par­tic­u­lar regard to “free­lancers” who, in their immense major­i­ty, exer­cise their pro­fes­sion as self-​employed workers.

General Secretary of The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), Patricia King addressed the issue of the obsta­cles which Irish unions were encoun­ter­ing in nego­ti­at­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments to pro­tect pre­cise­ly the most exposed work­ers. The nation­al com­pe­ti­tion author­i­ty, an admin­is­tra­tion that is inde­pen­dent of polit­i­cal pow­ers, does not hes­i­tate to threat­en unions and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion if they take it into their heads to nego­ti­ate agree­ments that went against com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­la­tions. […]
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