The French supreme court, the Cour de Cassation, has ruled on the nature of the employment relationship existing between delivery drivers and collaborative platforms that operate through a web-based app.
The court judged an independent bike driver to have a subordinate relationship with the food delivery platform 'Take it Easy' and that, therefore, an employment contract existed and had to be recognised between the parties.
The decision was followed by a judgment in the Paris court of appeal that an Uber driver operated under an employment contract.
Since 2016, a provision of the French employment code has been that technology platforms have a social responsibility towards the independent workers who perform their professional activity. Minimum guarantees must be offered to such workers, including work insurance coverage, vocational training or the right to strike.
A new bill is under discussion that would see the adoption of social responsibility charters by collaborative platforms in order to define better the workers’ rights and guarantees.
In recent years, the Paris employment tribunal has given contradictory decisions on this issue. In December 2016, it ruled that an Uber driver had to be considered an employee on the basis that the driver had received instructions from Uber, particularly on how to behave towards customers. It also emphasised the driver's economic dependency on Uber.
However, in January 2018, the same employment tribunal refused to reclassify an Uber driver’s contract into an employment contract, ruling that a number of factors were inconsistent with the driver having employment status, including the fact that Uber had no control over the hours the driver worked, there was no obligation on the driver to log on to the app, nor a minimum time he had to be logged on for.
The lower court judges in the Take it Easy case used similar arguments. The court of appeal rejected the request to requalify the contract on the grounds that the driver was not bound by an exclusivity or non-competition obligation and that he remained completely free to decide whether to work or not and to determine the time slots during which he wanted to work.
However, the Cour de Cassation overturned the court of appeal’s decision, ruling that a subordinate relationship did exist between the parties.
The reasoning was that the company had put in place a geolocation system allowing the tracking of the driver’s position and the counting of the number of kilometres travelled. Also, the company had disciplinary power over the drivers as 'bonuses' could be awarded or the driver could be sanctioned with penalties in the case of contractual breaches.
