Spain hits Glovo with €79m fine for labour law breaches:
Spain's labour ministry claims Glovo 'violated labour rights' and failed to give contracts to more than 10,600 of its riders.
Delivery start-up Glovo has been fined nearly €79m by Spanish authorities for allegedly violating labour laws.
The country's labour ministry claims Glovo did not hire its delivery riders under formal contracts and failed to contribute to social security and other payments, Reuters reports. Labour minister Yolanda Diaz told reporters that the company "violated fundamental labour rights" and obstructed an investigation into the company.
"For this reason, action has been taken against this company," Diaz said. "We will make them comply with the law."
Glovo claims it fully cooperated with the investigation and plans to appeal the ministry's decision. Last year, major regulatory changes in Spain upended the gig economy model used by companies including Glovo and Uber. The Spanish law requires these companies to employ their couriers and drivers as staff. The labour ministry claims Glovo failed to give labour contracts to more than 10,600 riders since this law came into effect, Reuters reported.
[...] Last year, Uber lost a UK court battle on how it classifies its drivers. The UK supreme court ruled that its drivers should be classified as workers and not independent contractors.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Saturday September 24 2022, @09:14AM (3 children)
Um...they have more than 10,000 drivers in Spain, are present in around 25 countries, and they are a "start-up"?
Yet another crappy company skirting labor laws and abusing their "employees".
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Saturday September 24 2022, @02:10PM (2 children)
And the usual lip service to exploited employees who aren't really employees. They wouldn't get 10k of them if those people didn't want to be exploited.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday September 24 2022, @05:03PM (1 child)
They started in 2015? In my view, that also means they aren't a start-up. A start-up is a new company still trying to find its feet and establish its market. Not a multinational corporation with tens of thousands of employees.
I realize I'm quibbling over terminology, but calling them a start-up is trolling for sympathy. They don't deserve sympathy.
These food delivery companies are bottom-feedi g scum, relying on their drivers being unable to do basic math: They earn a pittance, get no benefits and drive their vehicles into the ground. Add in the scams against the rest sura ts and the customers.
Good on Spain, for nailing them with labor laws.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 24 2022, @05:23PM
Makes one of us.
Sounds more like an accurate label of the company to me.
Sounds like legally actionable things to follow up on. Not the games of redefining employee so one can deliberately break the business model.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday September 24 2022, @03:05PM (1 child)
The ultra passive way of phrasing it sounds weird. I know their corporate sponsors told them what to say and how to say it, but is so weird sounding.
They ARE employees doing work for a single employer who treats them in every way as an employee, and the entire schtick of the scam company, is avoiding a century of labor law relating to their line of work by brazenly saying they're not employees only and solely in the sense of avoiding laws specifically written to cover "employees doing work for a single employer who treats them in every way as an employee".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 24 2022, @05:25PM
Except, of course, when they're not doing that. Here, it's common for a driver to be working both Uber and Lynx at the same time.