Amazon, sentenced in Spain for employing more than 2,000 false independent workers

The Spanish court sentenced the large online trading company Amazon for having used 2,166 independent distributors who used their vehicles when they should have been hiredaccording to a decision consulted on Friday by the AFP.

In Thursday’s ruling, a Madrid court specializing in social affairs considered that These workers were “false self-employed”, who should have been linked by an employment contract to the US platform.

Therefore, he ordered the giant of the sale on-line that regularize the situation of these 2,166 people by paying their social security contributions.

The ruling does not specify the cost of this measure. But according to the UGT union, which started legal proceedings against Amazon, should be “several million” euros.

“It is the first sentence that Amazon suffers for its work model, called Amazon Flexwhere the delivery men were forced to work with their own vehicle to deliver packages using a company application that showed them how to work,” the union explained in a statement.

This decision is “one more step forward” in respect for the workers “who provide services on digital platforms”, congratulated the union, denouncing “situations of labor exploitation that, unfortunately, occur very frequently in these new business forms”.

Contacted by the AFPthe American company said: “We respect the judicial resolution, but we do not agree and we are going to file an appeal”.

“We have been collaborating with an extensive network of delivery companies for years, including large courier companies and small and medium-sized delivery companies,” he added, specifying that the self-employed employees of the Amazon program were responsible for only “a small percentage of the packages delivered in Spain”.

This program, supposedly reserved for occasional distributors, in most cases individuals who wanted additional income to make ends meet, was deployed in Spain between 2018 and 2021.

It no longer exists in this country “as of April 2021,” Amazon explained.

Coincidentally, the sentence of the Spanish court occurs on the same day that the MEPs approved a common position to reinforce the rights of workers of digital platforms such as Uber and Deliveroo.

The text, which must now be negotiated with member states, proposes setting the same rules across the EU to establish whether food delivery drivers working for large platforms should be reclassified as employees. (YO)