Nine months after Deliveroo was sentenced to the maximum penalty – a fine of 375,000 euros – and two of its former leaders for similar acts, the Paris court this time took a decision on the exact opposite. The delivery platform Stuart, a subsidiary of the La Poste group prosecuted for concealed work, was released on Thursday by the Paris court, as was Resto In, a now defunct company which specialized in the delivery of meals.
The companies Stuart and Resto In were both accused of having used delivery people paid as independents when they should have been employees, but the Paris court considered that the elements in its possession “were insufficient to acquire the conviction that an employee relationship united the deliverers to the platforms”.
The prosecution had however requested the same sentence for Stuart and Resto In and a suspended prison sentence for the two founders of these companies. “We are of course a generalized concealment of employment (…) which concerns several hundred jobs with an activity created so that the workers are declared independent”, had estimated the prosecutor Céline Ducournau.
Only eight delivery men heard
Clément Benoit, founder of Resto In, and Benjamin Chemla, founder of Stuart, were therefore acquitted of the heads of concealed work, but the latter and Stuart were on the other hand condemned for the loan of illicit labour.
They are accused of having used a company called Branis Courses, to which Stuart subcontracted certain deliveries but whose “existence was purely theoretical” because the platform represented the entire activity of Branis Courses employees. . Stuart was fined 50,000 euros and Benjamin Chemla 10,000 euros, all suspended.
The low number of deliverers heard – eight – during the procedure, “sometimes contradictory” hearings and “deliverers who mostly indicated that they had not been the subject of sanctions from the platform or did not consider themselves subordinates”, have therefore led the court to acquit the defendants for the main facts.
“This decision puts an end to many years of proceedings and reminds us that Stuart has always been keen to deploy a model in accordance with the legislation”, insisted Stuart’s lawyer, Me Rémi Lorrain, after the judgment.