New cases brought against Deliveroo and Uber highlight the growing demand to better protect gig workers
by Fred Heritage
The exploitation of Europe’s gig economy workers is back in the spotlight after a Paris court issued a series of fines to British takeaway delivery group Deliveroo and its executives.
According to an article in RTL Today, on 19 April 2022 the court ruled that the firm used the “undeclared labour” of freelance riders who should have been classified as employees, thereby depriving France of millions of euros in payroll taxes.
The article reports that the court issued the maximum fine sought by prosecutors of €375,000 to Deliveroo while also handing €30,000 individual fines and suspended one-year prison sentences to two of the firm’s former executives. A third executive received a suspended four-month sentence and a €10,000 fine for complicity in the system, while Deliveroo was also ordered to pay €50,000 each in damages to five labour unions that were plaintiffs in the case.
The case, according to the article, opened in 2015 and involved over 100 Deliveroo riders as plaintiffs. It gained traction significantly in 2020, when the Unions de Recouvrement des Cotisations de Sécurité Sociale et d'Allocations Familiales (URSSAF) – France's quasi-government agency responsible for employer social security collections – demanded the firm pay millions of euros in back payments. RTL Today claims the URSSAF aims to recover €9.7m from Deliveroo in total, with the court having already ordered the seizure of €3m in 2020.
The article quotes state prosecutor Celine Ducournau as saying: "The question is not to determine if the status of independent contractor is appropriate, but to acknowledge that in this instance, Deliveroo used a fake legal arrangement that did not correspond to the reality of how the delivery riders work."
Uber under fire
Meanwhile, Uber faced legal action in the UK from the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) for failing to make Shariah compliant pension arrangements for its workforce, according to an FT Adviser article by Sonia Rach.
According to Rach, up to 75% of Uber drivers in the UK are thought to be of Muslim faith, and Uber’s failure to provide a Shariah compliant pension option forces most of its drivers out of participation in the pension scheme. Those that choose to participate would be compromising tenets of their faith, says Rach.
The ADCU claims that by excluding a Shariah option from the company pension scheme, Uber is in breach of the Pension Act 1988, which affords workers the statutory right to fair pension arrangements, and the Equality Act of 2010. The union is taking action to ensure inclusion and access to suitable pension arrangements after “Uber failed to respond to its correspondence”, writes Rach.
Yaseen Aslam, president of ADCU and lead claimant in the Aslam v Uber case, is quoted as saying: “We’ve tried to resolve the matter quietly with Uber, but we have simply been stonewalled. This is another example of how minority groups by default are forced to struggle for the most basic of rights in the gig economy.”
Levelling the playing field
The cases represent the latest examples of legal action taken in European courts targeting the working practices of gig economy platforms. They come as the EU is ramping up efforts to level the playing field and reclassify gig economy workers as full employees.
In December 2021, the European Commission officially proposed measures to “improve the working conditions in platform work and to support the sustainable growth of digital labour platforms in the EU”.
Margrethe Vestager, the Commission’s executive vice-president, has said, according to
an article in TechCrunch by Natasha Lomas, “Our proposal … will help false self-employed working for platforms to correctly determine their employment status and enjoy all the social rights that come with that. Genuine self-employed on platforms will be protected through enhanced legal certainty on their status and there will be new safeguards against the pitfalls of algorithmic management. This is an important step towards a more social digital economy.”