Deliveroo couriers are not employees, judge rules

The status of meal delivery workers remains controversial: a Brussels court declared Deliveroo couriers to be self-employed, much against the wishes of the social security services and trade unions. However, Europe is getting involved in the debate and is putting guidelines on the table.

“No subordination”

The Labour Court of Brussels has issued a remarkable ruling in a court case concerning the legal status of Deliveroo couriers. A number of couriers had filed the lawsuit together with the labour auditors, social security services and trade unions: they claimed that the couriers are not actually self-employed and demanded that their work be considered a contract as Deliveroo employees.

The Labour Court did not follow this reasoning: there is no legal case of subordination, the court ruled, so there is no employment contract. The judge therefore disagrees with colleagues in the Netherlands and Spain, where Deliveroo was ordered in similar cases to give its couriers the status of employees. Deliveroo is relieved because the company had threatened to pull out of Belgium in that case. It remains to be seen whether the opposing parties will appeal.

28 million gig workers

Due to all the court cases in different member states, the European Commission has also taken a stance on the issue with a proposal for guidelines to improve the working conditions of sharing platforms, such as meal delivery companies. Across the European Union, 28 million people work for a digital labour platform in the so-called gig economy, Belgian newspaper De Standaard reports, and the EU feels they should get more legal security this way.

According to the guidelines, couriers are automatically considered employees unless the platforms can prove that they are, in fact, self-employed. The EU hopes that in this way, about one in seven of the platform workers (4.1 million) will become employees, which entitles them to social security and a minimum wage.

Human supervision as well

There would also be more control on how couriers and other flex workers (think of Uber) are monitored and managed. This is usually done automatically through algorithms, but these are so complex and obscure that the system is often unclear. For example, not everyone gets paid the same amount, and bad reviews can be enough to put someone out of work. The EU expects the platforms to provide more insight into their data and for people to be involved in the supervision of the workers.

However, the European Commission’s proposal still has to pass the member states and the European Parliament. They could still vote against or amend the guidelines. Various sharing platforms are already warning that there will be redundancies and that many workers will quit if they no longer benefit from the flexibility.