The largest food delivery company in Spain has employed 3,312 in Madrid riders as between 2015 and 2018, this is how the Social Court number 32 of the capital has interpreted it. The ruling against which EL PAÍS has had access, is dated October 9, 2024 and implies, among other things, the ex officio registration of the plaintiff delivery drivers and their hiring as employees by judicial decision. Glovo faces more court proceedings for the same issue, in force since 2022, which forces delivery companies to hire their employees as employees. Glovo has not specified whether it plans to appeal the sentence, while waiting for the fine issued by the Labor Inspection.
The 103-page ruling—54 of them dedicated to the list of the names of the complainants—cites a Labor Inspection Report that maintains that “the relationship that unites the so-called glovers —Glovo delivery drivers— who perform courier and delivery functions with the company must be classified as an employment relationship.”
The court has ratified the concept of Labor Inspection by ruling that, indeed, Glovo and its distributors maintain a relationship “of an employment nature, with all the legal effects inherent to such a declaration.” Thus, in one fell swoop, more than 3,000 riders They have been ex officio affiliated with Social Security with a cost that the delivery company must assume. Furthermore, the plaintiffs have become employees by court decision.
The ex officio registration in Social Security is retroactive, so it recognizes workers the period they have been affiliated with Glovo as contribution time. since the company began operating on September 9, 2014.
However, “they have excluded [de la afiliación a la Seguridad Social] “foreign workers who, providing services for the company, do not have the corresponding administrative authorization to work for others,” the ruling states.
At the national level, migrants without work permits make up a considerable part of Glovo’s fleet, say spokespersons for different unions. Fernando García Pallas, president of the company committee and employee of Glovo, has calculated that “60% or 70% of the application accounts are rented.” Along the same lines, David Martínez Fonseca, a delivery driver since 2019 and affiliated with , estimates that rented accounts are counted in the thousands. Of the more than 12,000 riders who work for the company, only 2,000 are employees, although the opacity of the company does not allow exact data to be offered.
Subordinates and dependents
The ruling lists multiple factors why the work of the delivery drivers is “contrary to the supposed autonomy of the provision of the service.” For example: “The fact that it is not the delivery drivers themselves, but the Glovo company itself that makes the invoices to the glovers for the services they have provided in the period set by Glovo, and based on the price unilaterally established by it” inhibits the ability to negotiate remuneration that characterizes the self-employed worker regime.
The ruling details that the testimonies of the Glovers who appeared before converge in that “they did not participate in the negotiation of any of the clauses of the contracts, but limited themselves to signing them; which demonstrates the existence of absolute subordination of the distributors to the company and the non-existence of the alleged business between two balanced parties.” To settle doubts, the judge has concluded that “the fact that the payment was made by issuing invoices and even that the amount of the invoices was not fixed, cannot serve by themselves to exclude the presumption of employment of a benefit. of services.”
Glovo has stressed before the court that it allows its delivery drivers to activate themselves in the mobile application when the riders they want, without requiring any schedule, which in the company’s opinion is a sign of autonomy. The court has not seen it this way when stating that “the invoked freedom of delivery workers to choose days and hours of work, or even to accept or refuse specific services, does not deprive the provision of services of their labor nature, nor does it endow it with the alleged autonomy
The lawsuit was filed by the General Treasury of Social Security (TGSS) on February 26, 2020. Glovo tried to knock it down under allegations of expiration of the file and, subsequently, formal defects in the presentation of the complaint. Both arguments were rejected by the judge.
An extensive record
What has already been sentenced in Madrid is still being tried in Barcelona, where Óscar Pierre, on December 3, for a crime against workers’ rights, also for false self-employment.
The State’s judicial crusade against the delivery company began with . It was the first ruling that recognized the presumption of employment of riders. However, since it is a presumption, it does not act as a general rule, but must be judged on a case-by-case basis, as has already been done in Madrid and Barcelona.
The decision of the Supreme Court led to the approval of the so-called , that some delivery companies, such as Glovo and Uber Eats, have ignored until today. Of those dusts are these sludges that today muddy the titan of deliverywhich (up to 550 million for the sanctions and another 400 for the investigation opened by the European Commission).
