Deliveroo is a multinational food delivery platform. It has entered 10 countries around the world, including the UK, where it is headquartered. It has cooperative relationships with over 15,000 restaurants in 300 regions of France (as of 2020). On April 19th, ‘Deliveroo France’ was convicted of signing a disguised contract to hire freelancers as deliverymen who should have been hired as employees. The Paris Criminal Court imposed a fine of 375,000 euros (about 500 million won) on Deliveroo France. It is accused of not registering deliverymen as workers between 2015 and 2017 and intentionally paying social security expenses and payroll taxes. It ruled that 50,000 euros (about 67 million won) in compensation should be paid to the five labor unions, including the General Trade Union (CGT), which sued Deliveroo for psychological harm.
On April 19, Deliveroo said, “We will review the judgment and leave the possibility of appealing.” Guirvan Cristanajaya, a reporter for Liberation, who has been covering the issue of ‘Uberization’, said in an interview with the radio ‘French Info’ that day, “It is a very symbolic judgment that the platform in the Uber era received criminal punishment for the first time.” In February 2020, the Paris Labor Dispute Mediation Committee (1st instance) had a civil judgment to recognize Deliveroo deliverymen as workers and pay 30,000 euros (approximately 40 million won) in compensation, but this is the second-level criminal court ruling. That’s the first. Kevin Manciong, who also defended the delivery men in the 2020 trial, said of the ruling, “It is the result we have been waiting for for many years and it is our first battle victory.”
On March 17, Deliveroo CEO William Shue was absent from the hearing. On the other hand, about 100 delivery men attended as claimants for damages. In court, Prosecutor Celine Ducourno said Deliveroo was “cheating to hire delivery men cheaply.”
The company frequently sent e-mails containing in-house rules and training videos to delivery workers, such as ‘compulsory wearing of delivery clothes’. The delivery route and delays were checked and penalty points were imposed, and the delivery workers were also waking up in the morning. Delivery workers who refused to deliver on weekends when orders were rushed were restricted from working. The prosecutor in charge said that a ‘subordinate relationship’ was established between Deliveroo France and the delivery man. In effect, Deliveroo French deliverymen have the status of ‘worker’.
This ruling is expected to affect other lawsuits in the future. This time, the Paris Criminal Court stated in its ruling that “the delivery men are subordinate to Deliveroo,” which can also serve as a basis for judgment in lawsuits filed by delivery workers in other regions. Shortly after this ruling, in Besançon, eastern France, deliverymen litigating against Deliveroo gathered to recruit additional claimants for damages.
On April 24, Laurent Gammet, a lawyer and professor of law at the University of Paris, said in an interview with Radio France Info. “French law is all-or-nothing. If you are a worker, you can get everything; if you aren’t a worker, you can’t get anything. If you are a worker, you are protected by the labor law and are entitled to various social security benefits, but freelancers are not.”
According to French law, if the delivery man is a worker rather than a freelancer, Deliveroo must pay social security. They must provide paid leave and pay at least the hourly minimum wage (SMIC). But so far, delivery men have been paid ‘per case’. If I had an accident at work, I had to sue the company to prove that I wasn’t a freelancer. “There was no subordination between the company and the delivery man,” said Antonin Levy, a lawyer for Deliveroo. “Is the employee who can choose whether to work today or not, who can work for a competitor, and who can reject incoming orders?”
The company says “I have no intention of hiring a worker”
The workmanship of platform deliverymen was also a topic of debate in France. Deliveroo France has always defended itself with the logic of ‘delivery choice’. He also responded to criticism from politicians with the same logic. Munir Majubi, a member of the ruling party ‘Advanced Republic (LREM)’, pointed out that Deliveroo received the lowest score for ‘transparency in hiring methods’ in the ‘Platform Service Employee Satisfaction Report’. In response, Deliveroo France said, ‘Delivery workers are doing this job with the concept of two jobs. Liquidity is a very important factor in which deliverymen choose the platform. It has expressed its position that it has no intention of hiring delivery men as workers.
The status of digital platform workers was also discussed in the European Commission (EU). On December 9, last year, the European Commission issued a directive banning disguised subcontracting, where platform companies such as Uber, Deliveroo and Bolt employ workers as freelancers or self-employed people. This directive is scheduled to be amended by the European Parliament in the second quarter of this year, and there are two main goals of the revised directive.
First, some criteria for determining worker characteristics are presented. △ Subject to platform sanctions or monitoring △ Salary cannot be set directly △ Certain tasks cannot be accepted or rejected. If two or more of these conditions apply, the worker status is recognized and the employment contract must be renewed. Next, when there was a labor-management dispute over whether this standard was met, the burden of proof was passed on to the company. According to these guidelines, employers must explain why they did not hire “presumed workers” as workers.
“Without the protection of the law, workers will be used like ‘modern slaves’,” said European Parliament Member Sylvie Brune, who is responsible for industrial relations at the European Commission.
As European governments set out to reorganize systems to protect workers, platform capital is pulling out a withdrawal card. Last year, the Spanish government enacted labor law reforms requiring all Deliveroo delivery workers to be hired as workers. Deliveroo then withdrew from the Spanish market. The company said, “The profits made in Spain accounted for only 2% of the total. We will focus our investments in markets that are more profitable.” © EPN