It is a first in France. The Deliveroo meal delivery platform was sentenced for concealed work following the reclassification of the service contract of one of its couriers into an employment contract.
A procedure initiated in 2016
A bicycle delivery man who worked for the company from 2015 requested the reclassification of his service contract into an employment contract. "It was a very long fight, started in 2016," said his lawyer Kevin Mention on Thursday. A separating judge of the Paris industrial tribunal thus sentenced Deliveroo for concealed work.
The courts “recognized that the fact of obliging the courier to have a service contract was a will to defraud the Labor Code on the part of Deliveroo and condemned the company to pay 30,000 euros to the delivery person”, according to l lawyer for the complainant. "This is the first case of requalification in France for Deliveroo," confirmed a spokesperson for the British platform. "We will review this decision and possibly appeal," he added, noting that "the delivery people tell us they want to choose when, where and if they want to work and that's what we allow them to do." to do ".
Contracts have evolved
"This case from 2015 relates to our old model," also said the spokesperson. The contractual conditions at Deliveroo have since evolved, couriers being paid on delivery with variable costs depending on the time and distance of each delivery, and no longer on time.
The independent status of the couriers of Deliveroo and its competitors is disputed in many countries, and several court decisions have already ruled in favor of the deliverers. In Belgium, the delivery platform is accused of not paying social security contributions for the thousands of couriers it employs in the country. In Spain, the courts have estimated that Deliveroo passed hundreds of delivery men as self-employed workers who should have been declared as employees, thus avoiding paying 1.2 million euros in social security contributions.
New procedures planned
Finally in France, the court decision already gives ideas to Kevin Mention. The latter intends to "launch around fifty industrial tribunal proceedings against Deliveroo as well as proceedings against Frichti and against Stuart". It already lists "around sixty requests for requalifications validated" by the industrial tribunal in France against Take Eat Easy, a platform liquidated in 2016, "and another hundred procedures in progress". Foodora, which is no longer active in France, is subject to “around 90 procedures” on its part.
The Mobility Orientation Law (LOM), adopted at the end of 2019, has set up a base of obligations (right to disconnect and transparency in the price of shopping) for electronic platforms for connecting with VTC drivers ( Uber, Kapten, etc.) and couriers. On the other hand, the Constitutional Council partially censored an article which prevented a judge from reclassifying the employment of self-employed workers in the service of these platforms as an employment contract.
Justice
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