MADRID (AP) — A Spanish court docket has dominated that Amazon broke labor legal guidelines by forcing greater than 2,000 supply drivers to make use of an app that the corporate managed for scheduling work and funds and requiring them to make use of their very own automobiles and cellphones on the job.
Amazon couldn’t deal with staff utilizing its Flex app as self-employed as a result of the e-commerce big’s Spanish subsidiary “assumes the authority to make all choices relating to the service, setting the circumstances of execution and remuneration, and the circumstances of the day, time and length” of labor, in line with the Madrid labor court docket’s resolution launched Friday.
Amazon stopped utilizing the Flex app in Spain in 2021.
Friday’s ruling is the results of a lawsuit introduced by Spain’s social safety physique following a 2019 labor inspection at an Amazon facility. The federal government company is in search of to recoup funds that it says Amazon ought to have made on behalf of the drivers.
Amazon has lengthy argued that Flex was an middleman platform between freelance supply staff and purchasers in Spain, quite than a supply service in its personal proper.
“We respect the court docket ruling, however we disagree and might be submitting an attraction,” the corporate stated in an announcement, including that it labored with a variety of supply firms.
“Between 2018 and 2021, we additionally collaborated with some freelancers by way of the Amazon Flex program, which accounted for a small share of packages delivered in Spain,” it added.
The court docket resolution is the newest in a sequence of authorized measures in Spain which might be designed to cease e-commerce and supply app firms from designating staff as self-employed after they have little management over their hours and earnings.
Spain’s socialist coalition authorities in 2021 handed the “Riders Regulation,” which categorised meals supply riders as workers of the digital platforms they work for.
“That is one other step ahead for jurisprudence as a corrective mechanism for brand spanking new methods of working” utilizing apps, stated Spain’s UGT union, which backed the lawsuit.
The ruling referenced a Spanish Supreme Court docket resolution from 2020, which discovered that Barcelona-based meals supply app Glovo was illegally treating “riders” as self-employed.
Spain’s labor ministry fined Glovo 57 million euros ($62 million) final month for violating the identical labor legal guidelines. The corporate has since signed a take care of the Madrid regional authorities to ship meals to susceptible folks within the metropolis.
