The Spanish delivery platform Glovo will have to pay a fine of nearly 80 million euros and regularize more than 10,000 couriers, announced on Wednesday the Spanish Minister of Labor, who is at the origin of a law granting the status of employees to platform deliverers.
“The weight of the law will fall on this company,” Yolanda Diaz told reporters when announcing the sanctions. “What Glovo did” – accused of employing its delivery people as self-employed workers, when they should be considered as employees, but also of having “obstructed the Labor Inspectorate” – is “very serious” , added the communist minister.
“As a result, we acted against this company by regularizing more than 10,600 male and female employees” and imposing a “very high fine reaching almost 79 million euros”, she said.
A “presumption of employment”
The left-wing government’s “riders” law, which came into force in August 2021, introduced into the labor code a “presumption of employment” for all couriers using delivery applications such as Uber Eats, Glovo or Deliveroo. A real revolution for these platforms, now forced to pay contributions.
Shortly before the entry into force of this law, the British group Deliveroo announced that it was leaving Spain. For its part, Glovo had announced that it would hire delivery people working for its own online supermarkets or for companies with which the group has agreements, but that meal delivery people would remain independent, on the basis of a new status supposed to reinforce their autonomy. The two main Spanish unions, UGT and CCOO, then seized the labor inspectorate.
In December, Brussels unveiled an arsenal of measures to strengthen the rights of workers on digital platforms such as Uber or Deliveroo, setting EU-wide criteria to determine whether or not they should be considered employees. This project still needs to be approved by EU member states and MEPs.