Justice confirms that 2,166 Amazon Flex delivery people in Madrid were working as fake freelancers

MADRIDPioneering judgment against Amazon. The Spanish judiciary has condemned the delivery service Amazon Flex of Madrid for having 2,166 delivery people as false freelancers, as reported by UGT this Thursday night through a statement. This is the first sentence in Spain against the American multinational for its Amazon Flex model in Madrid. This is a service in which the delivery people are forced to work with their own vehicle to deliver packages, but they use the company’s application, according to details from the union. The UGT, in fact, is part of the legal proceedings.

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Specifically, the union has announced that the social court number 4 of Madrid has ruled in favor of its legal services and has applied the doctrine of the Supreme Court of September 25, 2020 in which it was determined that the Glovo deliverymen, known popularly as riders, they had an employment relationship with the company. In other words, they should have been hired as employees. So, this would be a new case of the use of fake freelancers by a digital platform.

Precisely, last week the Labor and Social Security Inspectorate of Madrid fined the home delivery company Glovo 56.7 million euros for hiring fake self-employed people as delivery workers. The company has already accumulated a total of 205.3 million euros in fines in Spain.

In the case of Amazon, the company will also have to compensate Social Security. “It’s a massive fraud”, they regret from the UGT through the statement made public this Thursday. The ruling, to which the union has had access, rules out that Amazon operates only as an intermediary between shops and delivery people. It also declares that the necessary elements are present to “qualify the legal relationships analyzed (…) as common employment relationships” and estimates that the deliverymen maintained an employment relationship with Amazon “in the specific periods in which each of them provided his services”.

Precisely, this Thursday the Eurochamber has asked that the rider law, which is currently being processed in Europe, reinforce the fight against fake freelancers on digital platforms.