The meal delivery platform was condemned for concealed work following the requalification of the service contract of one of its couriers into an employment contract.
It is a first in France. The the industrial tribunal in Paris agreed with a Deliveroo delivery man who demanded the reclassification of his service contract into an employment contract. A separating judge went in his direction by condemning the home meal delivery business for concealed work.
“It was a very long fight, started in 2016”, the courier’s lawyer welcomed AFP on Thursday 6 February. Justice has “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 ordered the company to pay 30,000 euros to the deliveryman “continued Master Kevin Menton. The deliveryman who has won his case has been working for the home meal delivery company since 2015.
“This is the first case of requalification in France for Deliveroo”, confirmed to AFP a spokesperson for the British platform. “We will review this decision and possibly appeal, he added. 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. “
“This case from 2015 relates to our old model”, continued 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.
In France, Kevin Mention hears “launch around fifty industrial tribunal proceedings against Deliveroo as well as proceedings against Frichti and against Stuart”. The lawyer already counts “around sixty requests for validated requalifications” by industrial tribunals in France against Take Eat Easy, platform liquidated in 2016, “and another hundred procedures in progress”. Foodora, which is no longer active in France, is the subject “about 90 procedures” on his part.
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