Deliveroo persists. The online meal delivery platform, sentenced in April for “concealed work” to the maximum fine of 375,000 euros, appealed, its lawyer, Antonin Lévy, said on Thursday. The company was found guilty by the Paris Criminal Court of having employed delivery people as freelancers, rather than paying them, between 2015 and 2017.
In April, Deliveroo was tried alongside three ex-executives: two successive leaders sentenced for “concealed work” to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a 30,000 euro fine, and a third executive, sentenced to four months in prison with suspended sentence and a fine of 10,000 euros for “complicity in concealed work”. All have appealed their convictions, confirmed their respective lawyers.
“All the advantages of the employer (…) without the disadvantages”
In its judgment, the court considered that Deliveroo had put in place “a fictitious legal dressing that does not correspond to the reality of the professional exercise of delivery people”, explained the president of the 31st correctional chamber in rendering her decision on April 19. . “In this case, the disturbance caused to the economic, social and fiscal public order is major,” she underlined.
In March, at the end of a week of hearing – the first criminal trial of “uberization” in France -, the prosecutor had regretted the absence, on the bench of the defendants, of the American William Shu. Boss of the British company, he is according to is “unquestionably” at the origin of the “system” which allowed Deliveroo to benefit from “all the advantages of the employer (…) without the disadvantages”.
For its part, Deliveroo refutes these statements. The company has so far maintained that it was only “connecting” customers, restaurateurs and deliverers, and denied “any relationship of subordination”.
The independent status of Uber drivers or Deliveroo couriers is particularly disputed. It is called into question in many countries by the courts or, more rarely, by specific laws which have prompted certain giants in the sector to propose compromises.