The judgment of the Labor Court reclassified the service contract of four couriers as an employment contract.
The Deliveroo meal delivery platform was once again convicted at first instance for concealed work, according to a judgment from the Labor Court sent to AFP on Friday, which reclassified the service contract of four couriers as a contract. of work.
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Recognition of “the existence of an employment contract»
One of the cases concerns for the first time acts committed after 2017, beyond the period that the Paris Criminal Court had for its part examined to condemn Deliveroo on April 19. The deliberation of June 3 of the Paris Labor Court forced Deliveroo to pay a total of nearly 240,000 euros to the four deliverers, including the record sum of 128,548 euros to one of them, employee from February 2016 until April 2019. For the first time, Deliveroo’s conviction was handed down in a judgment hearing by employee and employer advisers, and without having recourse to a tie-breaking procedure entrusted to a professional magistrate.
“Deliveroo has implemented a power to control the performance of the service and to sanction any breaches noted“, explains in its judgment the court recognizing “the existence of an employment contract“. “Deliveroo France was perfectly aware of the legal provisions in terms of employment and the risk of reclassification of deliverers from +false self-employed+ to employees“, he continues, specifying that the “geolocation“of the delivery men was”permed“and that they were subjected to hiring”a real recruitment procedure“. The other emblematic file concerns a courier hired at the end of January 2018, who is also chosen by the platform to represent it in uniform on its website.
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The conviction last April by the Paris court of the bad practices of Deliveroo, which appealed against this decision and the fine of 375,000 euros imposed on it, concerned the period 2015-2017. The criminal court found the company guilty of employing delivery people as freelancers, rather than paying them a salary, and condemned it for “hidden work“. Deliveroo had previously been sentenced to a takeover, in February 2020, by the industrial tribunal. The appeal has not yet been considered. On the other hand, many deliverers have had their requests for requalification of contract rejected and the Paris Court of Appeal also rendered a judgment in April 2021 in favor of Deliveroo.