It is Tuesday April 19 that Deliveroo will be fixed on its account. The meal delivery company is being prosecuted for having, according to the prosecution, employed delivery people as self-employed workers, when they should be employees.
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This is the first trial of “uberization”. And the decision of the Paris Criminal Court, which is due at 1:30 p.m., is eagerly awaited. Deliveroo is blamed of having made delivery people work as self-employed workers between 2015 and 2017 when in reality they should have had the status of employees. The delivery platform for cooked meals at home risks the maximum penalty of 375,000 euros in fines, and two ex-leaders are threatened with a one-year suspended prison sentence. For a third executive, there is a four-month suspended sentence and a 10,000 euro fine. Without counting the Urssaf which claims nearly ten million euros of contributions and social contributions to the company.
More than a hundred of these deliverers have filed civil suits. The public prosecutor lists all the elements that demonstrate a relationship of subordination – characteristic of wage labor – between employees and management: statistics on delivery times, very detailed training videos, precise rules on how to deliver , the regular sending by email of the reminder of the rules, the choice of routes and even the verification, assures the prosecutor, that the delivery men got up well in the morning and that their telephone was well charged. For her, no doubt, it is a “systemic concealment”, pointing the finger at the big American boss of the British company, absent from the dock.
The company’s lawyer insists that delivery people on bicycles or scooters were free not to work on the day of their choice, to put themselves at the service of the competition or to refuse an order. For them, it’s a side job that emphasizes flexibility. Whatever the judges’ decision, it will be published on the site’s home page and on the mobile application.
Some other platforms have opted for salaried employment. This is the case of Just Eat, which pays all its couriers in France, with sick leave, paid holidays, fixed remuneration at the key. Problem, the platform has announced that it wants to lay off a third of its deliverers on permanent contracts, for lack of having found a profitable model. With fewer couriers, delivery times have exploded and both customers and couriers are now turning to other platforms.