Deliveroo lost a court challenge in France over the status of riders. The company has been fined the maximum amount by a Paris court.
Two former executives were fined and given one-year suspended jail sentences for abusing the country's labor laws.
RFI reported last year that three former Deliveroo directors had been summoned to a Paris court in March 2022, to answer charges of not declaring a large number of jobs.
Thousands of workers that gig platforms rely on to power a core delivery service can claim self employment/contractor status, which allows them to avoid social security payments that are required when workers are designated as employees. Many gig platforms have been accused of abusing the system by pretending that gig workers are not independent when in fact they are.
The Paris court found that Deliveroo had imposed almost permanent control over riders while they were connected to its app.
The report states that the company applied measures to control riders, such as allocating long time slots to ensure weekend coverage and telling those who refused that they would not be allowed to work in the following weeks.
Deliveroo categorically rejects the judgement, according to a statement from the company.
The spokesman said that it is considering an appeal.
We will read the entire ruling to understand the basis of this decision and will consider appealing, they said, referencing six earlier decisions by civil courts in France which they said had sided with the company.
Deliveroo tried to downplay the impact of the ruling.
The judgement has no direct implications for how Deliveroo works with riders in France or any other market.
In the statement, the company claimed that it has always operated in a transparent manner and that it remains committed to the French market.
In recent years, Deliveroo has fended off a number of challenges to the employment status of riders in France and elsewhere. It lost a challenge in France in early 2020 but the ruling was reversed on appeal.
In Spain, where Deliveroo had been operating alongside a number of competitors, the company decided to exit the market entirely in November last year, following a reform of local labor laws targeting delivery platforms.
European Union lawmakers are in the process of agreeing legislation that will set a minimum standard for platform workers in areas like pay, conditions and social protections, which is set to apply across the bloc in the coming years.
The full detail of the reform will depend on the EU's co-legislative process, as well as national interpretation, but the Commission proposal sets out a rebuttable presumption of employment for workers
The impact assessment suggests that the change could result in between 1.72 million and 4.1 million people being reclassified as workers.
The EU's approach is not intended to change any national laws that want to go further. Legislators say they want to set a floor, which means that local laws will not be rowed back. It will be up to gig platforms operating in the EU to challenge the presumption of employment introduced by the Directive, which will flip the legal burden that currently falls on gig workers to challenge a platform-imposed self employment status.
Deliveroo still operates in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Italy, where the Directive will apply, even though the U.K. is no longer a member of the EU.
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