Riders, for Italy and Spain are employees (Guida al Lavoro de Il Sole 24 Ore, 28 February 2020 – Vittorio De Luca, Antonella Iacobellis)

The Italian Supreme Court has stated that the rules on employment apply to so-called riders. The issue of riders is affecting the courts at all latitudes of the world. In this regard, a decision has just been issued by the Superior Court of Madrid, which ruled that Spanish riders must be considered employees and therefore false self-employees.

With judgment no. 1663 of 24 January 2020, the Court of Cassation stated that the rules on employed work, in their complexity, apply to those workers who carry out activities of delivery of goods on behalf of others, in urban areas and using bicycles or motor vehicles, through platforms including digital platforms. We are talking about so-called riders.

The Judges of the Supreme Court have highlighted how incorrect it is to speak of “tertium genus” between coordinated collaborations under art. 409, paragraph 3, c.p.c. and subordinate employment relationships.

In attempting to define the nature of the relationship between the riders and the delivery companies, the Supreme Court considered it necessary to verify whether the service offered by the riders presents the elements provided by art. 2 of Legislative Decree no. 81/2015: a mainly personal and continuous work performance, the execution of which is organised by the client.

The Court has thus found in this research:

• on the one hand, the penalty to which the rider is subject, giving importance to the commitment of the worker once he or she has applied for the ride: he or she is required “to make the delivery strictly within 30 minutes of the time indicated for the collection of the food, subject to a penalty“,
• on the other hand, the obligations to which the rider would be subject, giving emphasis to the way in which the service is performed: “the obligation for each rider to go at the starting time of the shift to one of the predefined starting zones and to activate the Hurrier application, entering the credentials and starting the geolocation; the obligation, once received on the application the notification of the order with the address of the restaurant, to go there with his/her bicycle, take delivery of the products, check the correspondence with the order and communicate the success of the operation by means of a special command of the application; the obligation to deliver the food to the customer, whose address has received by the rider through the application, and confirmation of the regular delivery“.

Read here the full version of the article in Italian language.

Source: Guida al lavoro de Il Sole 24 ore.