How to create a safe, digital workplace for platform workers?

20 July 2026

Far more Dutch companies than anticipated will soon be required to set up a secure, digital communication channel for their platform workers. But execution is far from straightforward. The national rollout of Article 20 of the European Platform Work Directive has significant implications for all stakeholders, and its implementation is set to be challenging.

This is revealed by the initial findings of a social science and legal study conducted by AIAS-HSI, an institute for multidisciplinary research at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), as part of the PlatWork-R research project. At a working conference hosted by law firm Stibbe in Amsterdam (June 19, 2026), researchers present their first findings to policymakers, trade unions, and industry experts. The goal is to stress-test practical bottlenecks and gather immediate feedback to respond to the ongoing Dutch legislative process.

What does Article 20 (in the Netherlands: Article 10) mean?

Article 20 is the European provision that obliges platform operators to set up a digital communication channel to enable secure contact between workers and trade unions. In the Dutch bill, this rule is set out as Article 10. This is because, whilst a European directive sets out the objectives, the Netherlands itself determines the structure and numbering of its own legislation. This is the draft text, translated from the Dutch Wet Platformwerk:

“The digital labour platform shall offer persons carrying out platform work the opportunity to contact and communicate with one another privately and securely, and shall also offer the opportunity to contact, or be contacted by, representatives of persons carrying out platform work via the digital labour platform’s digital infrastructure or equally effective means. The digital labour platform shall refrain from accessing or monitoring the contacts and communications referred to in the first paragraph.”

The researchers

• Jaap van Slooten – Host of the working conference, professor at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and lawyer at Stibbe. Van Slooten has been involved in legal debates surrounding the platform economy for many years.
• Simon Kuijpers – Researcher at the UvA with a background in anthropology and political science. He conducts the social science research within PlatWork-R. He presents the initial research findings.
• Niels Jansen – Assistant professor at the UvA and lawyer. He conducts the legal research about Article 20. His expertise is collective bargaining law, trade unions, and collective consultation.
• Agnes Akkerman – Professor of Labour Regulation at the UvA.
• Giedo Jansen – Senior Lecturer in Labour Regulation and researcher at the UvA.

PlatWork-R is sponsored by international law firm Stibbe and gets funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

The speakers

• Hubert Koetsveld – Senior policy officer at the Labour Relations Directorate of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (ministerie van SZW). Since 2023, he has been jointly responsible for the national legislative process relating to the Platform Work Directive.
• Klara Boonstra – Professor at VU University Amsterdam and legal adviser at trade union FNV. Her expertise is strategic litigation, collective bargaining law, and international labour standards.
• Maarten Zoomers – Former CEO of the Temper platform.
• Martijn Arets – Platform expert and part-time researcher at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). He wrote a paper on a possible solution to the dilemmas surrounding the implementation of Article 20 in the Netherlands.

‘A far too broad definition’

The list of questions, competing interests, and dilemmas is extensive, starting right at the core: the scope and definition. “The definition of a digital labour platform is very broad,” explains host of the day and researcher Jaap van Slooten. He is professor at the UvA and attorney at Stibbe.

Under the European directive, a digital labour platform (DLP) includes any organisation providing services via an app or website at a client’s request, utilising automated monitoring or decision-making, and where organizing the work is an essential part of the service. "It's not just tech giants like Uber. Traditional temporary employment agencies and companies like Picnic could easily fall under this umbrella."

“This is a very broad provision,” agrees Hubert Koetsveld, policy officer at the Labour Relations Directorate of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (SZW). He and his colleagues are responsible for transposing the directive into national law. “Now even a specific business unit could fall under the directive. Think of a supermarket’s delivery department.”

Despite the friction, this wide net is here to stay, as Brussels is leaving member states virtually no room to narrow the boundaries. Koetsveld views this rigid scope as a major hurdle. "Some companies simply won't realize they are covered by this legislation."

Ministry aims for swift implementation

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment is eager to transpose Article 20 into national law to avoid fines from Brussels. “The European deadline is December 2026, but I can tell you this much: we won’t meet it,” says Koetsveld (SZW). “The online consultation has only just begun, and after that the bill needs approval from both houses of the Dutch parliament.”

The ministry aims for a 'strict transposition', meaning no additional national rules and no exceptions. Every company covered by the directive must set up a digital communication channel for all platform workers: both employees and the self-employed. This virtual space must guarantee private, unmonitored peer-to-peer communication and provide a direct line to worker representatives, such as trade unions.

Koetsveld is a strong advocate for Article 20. “A communication channel like this helps mitigate occupational health and safety risks,” he explains. “It empowers scattered platform workers to organise themselves, stand up to powerful employers, and support each other during their shifts—like food delivery riders warning one another about unsafe neighbourhoods.”

Discussions with the trade union in the virtual workplace

Labour representatives are welcoming the new mandate with open arms. Klara Boonstra balances her role as a VU Amsterdam professor with her work as a legal adviser for the FNV. She stresses that the union’s remit extends to "all workers," explicitly including independent contractors on digital platforms. “For FNV, organising platform workers is part of our trade union work,” she says. “However, the lack of a shared physical floor makes these workers far more elusive than traditional employees.”

Article 20 is therefore extremely valuable for trade unions. “Through a channel like this, we can really support platform workers,” she explains. “These days we never approach workers telling them simply what we have on offer. We'd rather ask them what they really need. A virtual workplace (ed. the mandatory communication channel) makes it easier to have this dialogue. It also makes it possible for us to support existing grassroots efforts by platform workers with our knowledge, expertise and legislative network in The Hague."

Room for creative solutions

Many Dutch platforms also see the upside of these mandates. “We completely welcome peer-to-peer connection and social cohesion,” says Maarten Zoomers, former CEO of platform Temper. “Workers are already finding each other on apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Discord. The concept of a single digital 'breakroom' is excellent. But building it and making it work in practice is highly complex.”

The operational hurdles are substantial. While the platform is legally responsible for building and securing the channel, the company itself is strictly barred from accessing or monitoring any of the communication. “Outsourcing the management to an independent third party seems like the obvious choice,” says Koetsveld. “However, we aren’t making that a legal requirement because we want to leave room for smart, creative, and simpler alternatives.”

Creative workarounds are desperately needed. For startup cooperatives or small SME platforms, deploying an externally managed and moderated network represents a 'financially and operationally crushing burden'. Koetsveld explains the struggle for lawmakers: “The ministry wants to accommodate small businesses, but the European directive allows for no exemptions or size thresholds. If a platform fits the definition, it simply has to comply.”

Initial research findings

The operational realities facing the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment closely align with the early insights from the PlatWork-R project. Researcher Simon Kuijpers shares a preliminary look at the data. “We’ve only interviewed 13 people so far—a mix of platform representatives, worker advocacy groups, and platform workers themselves,” he says. “While these results are highly preliminary, it’s already clear that opinions on how to build this 'digital canteen' are strongly divided.”

Access, privacy and security

The first debate revolves around who gets access to the communication channel. On one point, there is unanimous agreement: the network must be restricted to active users, leaving no room for dormant profiles from years past. “The challenge here is defining what 'active' means,” Kuijpers says. “Does it require a minimum number of hours worked per week? We still need to work that out.”

Some people believe the channels should be segmented by target audience. Independent contractor associations, for instance, are calling for dedicated spaces, arguing that freelancers have fundamentally different priorities than traditional employees. Stakeholders also differ in their views on whether there should be a single national channel, or whether it should be split by job role or physical location. Kuijpers: “Some respondents are even asking if it wouldn't make more sense to organise these channels by entire industries rather than individual platforms.”

No WhatsApp group. ‘Not secure enough’

Koetsveld (SZW) highlights that joining the new communication channel is entirely voluntary for platform workers. “The platform is required to make access easy, but workers are entirely free to decide whether they want to participate,” he says. “As a ministry, we don’t dictate the exact design or interface of the communication channel, provided it is accessible and secure.”

But simply setting up a WhatsApp group will not cut it. “A standard WhatsApp group simply doesn’t comply,” Koetsveld warns. “This is because they would then be obliged to agree to WhatsApp’s terms of use, and these do not meet European standards for a secure and private environment. The same holds true for most mainstream messaging apps.”

Accountability versus anonymity

While platform workers often prefer to remain anonymous, the PlatWork-R research reveals that both platforms and trade unions view anonymity as a major risk. “Platforms need to verify that participants are actively working for them and that labour representatives are legitimate,” Kuijpers explains. “Platform entrepreneurs fear that completely anonymous accounts will open the door to trolls or journalists looking to disrupt operations.”

Zoomers agrees. “How am I supposed to prevent illicit activities like phishing or data breaches if I don't have access to the platform myself?” he wonders. “And how do I fulfil my responsibilities under the Digital Services Act (DSA)? If you host a communication channel, you are legally liable for what happens on it. Furthermore, companies have a strict duty to provide a safe working environment, including in the digital sphere. While outsourcing this infrastructure to an independent third party is a practical solution under current constraints, it leaves owners in a challenging position: they bear ultimate liability for security while being denied the tools to monitor it.”

The ‘GDPR trap’ and telecoms solution

Ultimately, platform companies must always comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the stringent European privacy law. Speaking from the audience, cybersecurity and privacy expert Simon Hania (former data protection officer at Uber) warns of a looming ‘GDPR trap.’ “Because digital contact with a trade union generates metadata, a platform is technically processing 'union-related data,'” Hania explains. “Under the GDPR, processing that kind of sensitive data is strictly prohibited.”

He notes that while EU privacy law allows national legislators to create specific exemptions under strict conditions, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment has bypassed this option. “That’s a missed opportunity, because there is a compelling case for it. That metadata is essential for cybersecurity. You absolutely need to be able to intervene in cases of phishing, identity theft, or worse.”

His solution? “Platforms should keep it simple. They should simply provide a 'digital phone book' of active users to the third party hosting the space. Then, outsource the actual chat environment to an external vendor governed by the Telecommunications Act. After all, the telecom sector solved the puzzle of building secure, private communication services two decades ago.”

‘You wouldn’t stand on the table in the break room’

Union representatives are enthusiastic. They want a public page featuring their logo and contact details, combined with options for one-to-one chats to answer questions or handle complaints. Kuijpers explains that by no means all stakeholders agree with this. He shares an analogy from his discussions: “After all, the corporate canteen is meant for small, private conversations. As an employer or a union, you wouldn’t stand on a table and shout there either.”

Furthermore, trade unions are firmly opposed to anonymous profiles, arguing they make it impossible to verify a worker's authenticity. Boonstra (FNV) dismisses privacy concerns raised by platform users: “As a union, we are entirely used to operating within the strict boundaries of privacy legislation and the Dutch Data Protection Authority.”

She emphasises that while workers have a right to speak freely, the current reality makes it incredibly risky. “The moment they voice criticism, they get kicked off the app and lose their livelihoods,” she explains. “That makes it exceptionally difficult for us to find people who dare to join us in legal proceedings. We need rules to protect the whistleblowers.”

Maarten Zoomers interrupts her at this point and declares ‘with his hand on his heart’ that this has absolutely never happened at Temper, not even in the case of those who brought legal proceedings against them.

Defining representatives

Another dilemma centres on the concept of a ‘representative’. The definition is very broad: it could be a trade union, a works council or another type of collective body. “The baseline is that an organisation must be a legal entity with a clear statutory objective to represent workers or the self-employed,” Koetsveld explains. “But consider a scenario where only one person out of a platform's 100,000 workers is a union member. In that case, can you truly call that union a representative of the platform’s entire workforce?”

This point sparks debate among attendees. They highlight that traditional trade unions like FNV often voice the concerns of a very narrow subset of workers. Zoomers cites the FNV’s recent lawsuits as a prime example: “Those cases only involved a handful of platform workers who actually wanted traditional employment contracts. The vast majority prefer working as independent contractors.”

At the same time, Zoomers acknowledges this is a classic chicken-and-egg scenario: “Right now, it’s incredibly difficult for unions to reach these workers in the first place.”

Klara Boonstra counters by emphasizing that the FNV always consults its member base before making major strategic decisions, though she admits that platform workers currently represent a fringe demographic within the union. “Our goal isn't to force employment contracts onto people,” she says. “We are simply trying to guard against a race to the bottom on pay rates and working conditions. We also want to prevent the whole labour market from becoming entirely 'platformised'. That would leave workers powerless against massive platform corporations.”

Early feedback from the PlatWork-R study confirms that all parties agree there needs to be oversight of representation of platform workers. Kuijpers: “Workers need to feel a genuine connection to these representative bodies, so some form of vetting is necessary. However, there is zero consensus yet on what those representation requirements should look like, or who should hold the keys to access.”

Preventing abuse

Koetsveld (SZW) notes that platform operators fear the leakage of confidential data, as well as competitors misusing the channel to lure away workers. Zoomers explains: “How do you prevent a competitor from posing as a representative to poach workers?”

To counter this, platforms are legally permitted to enforce "reasonable restrictions" to prevent abuse, Koetsveld explains. “This could include banning discriminatory remarks or prohibiting active recruitment drives for competing platforms. However, verifying the true identity of people in the chat will be an absolute nightmare in practice, especially since the platform is strictly barred from accessing the network.”

Furthermore, there is no public enforcement mechanism for issues of this kind. A platform will have to take the matter to the civil courts if it believes that a party is wrongfully posing as a representative of platform workers.

Through legislation or a collective agreement?

Lecturer and legal expert Niels Jansen UvA discusses the legal aspects of implementing the Act. As part of the PlatWork-R project, his research tackled a fundamental question: “Should we regulate this through legislation or through collective bargaining agreements (CBAs)?”

Jansen considers it entirely logical that the government is opting for "hard law" rather than letting the market self-regulate. “The data shows that only 20 percent of employees are covered by a CBA that includes robust provisions for union access to the workplace,” he explains. “That is incredibly low. While self-regulation through collective agreements offers perks like flexibility and broad stakeholder support, this specific sector sees virtually no collective bargaining at all.”

Call for broader reform

Currently, trade unions in the Netherlands have no general statutory right to access physical workplaces. The new EU directive forces the government's hand, legally mandating a digital access channel. But it's only meant for a specific subset of platform companies.

“My advice to the government: take a much broader approach,” Jansen says. “After all, the entire labour market is changing: even regular employees, as well as, for example, agency workers and home workers who do not use an app, are increasingly less likely to bump into one another in person at the coffee machine. They are just as difficult for trade unions to reach.”

He advocates for a comprehensive, sector-wide law that establishes a universal right to workplace access (both physical and digital) for everyone in the Netherlands in one fell swoop. While Koetsveld likes the idea, he explains that it won't happen any time soon. “The cabinet's standing policy is to avoid 'gold-plating'. That means we don't make national laws any stricter than what the EU strictly requires. Plus, it would simply take too much time.”

Possible solution: a centralised public communication platform

Meanwhile, experts are trying to come up with ideas to tackle the challenge of building a safe "digital canteen". Martijn Arets, a platform economy expert and researcher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA), shares his proposal at the close of the conference.

Arets believes that many stakeholders are vastly underestimating the law's market impact. “According to statistics (CBS, 2026), there are over 500 gig economy platforms active in the Netherlands. But if the law also applies to the wider temporary employment sector, we’re talking about more than 15,000 companies,” he says. “That is not just difficult for those businesses, but also for labour representatives. The FNV simply cannot monitor and engage across thousands of separate chat channels simultaneously.”

In his recent paper, Arets advocates for a single, overarching public platform funded by public money. Instead of building independent silos, companies would connect to this central gateway via mandatory API integrations. Arets: "Essentially, the government builds the core digital infrastructure, while platforms are only responsible for the technical hookup. Through this API, workers are seamlessly redirected from their platform profile into a secure, external ecosystem."

He argues that a centralized approach unlocks massive economies of scale and airtight privacy. “It stops thousands of individual businesses from having to invent the wheel themselves,” he says. “It drastically cuts compliance costs, which is a massive win for small platforms and cooperatives.”

From Compliance Headache to 'Work Passport'

Ultimately, a unified solution offers endless possibilities for future innovation. Arets points to a few real-world examples of how this could play out. “Over time, this infrastructure could morph into a universal 'digital work passport'. Beyond secure chat groups, workers could use it to digitally store their verified hours, skills, and qualifications, carrying them seamlessly across the wider job market.”

He shows some examples worldwide that we could build on. “By thinking bigger, we can turn a complex European compliance headache into a strategic asset that supercharges worker mobility.”

Call for input: shape the legislative framework

While the perfect blueprint for a digital communication channel doesn't exist yet, the working conference highlights an overwhelming sense of goodwill across the board. Although the priorities of trade unions, ministries, and platform operators often differ, there is unanimous agreement on the core mission: platform workers deserve a safe digital breakroom. The true challenge now lies in making the rules simple, affordable, and practical.

Meanwhile, the PlatWork-R research project continues. The researchers are calling on all stakeholders and experts to share their insights. At the same time, the public internet consultation for the Dutch Wet Platformwerk is now open. Until August 24, anyone can submit their feedback on the draft legislation online. Koetsveld (Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment): “I invite everyone to step up and respond to this draft bill.”