U.K. food delivery gig platform Deliveroo has lost a court challenge in France over the “freelancer” status of riders. Reuters reports that the company has been fined the maximum penalty of €375,000 by a Paris court.
Two former execs have also been fined €30,000 and given one-year suspended jail sentences for abusing the country’s labor laws, it reported.
The French litigation dates back to 2018, according to RFI, which reported last year that three former Deliveroo directors had been summoned to a Paris court in March 2022 to answer charges of “not declaring a large number of jobs”.
Claiming self employment/contractor status for the (typically) thousands of workers that gig platforms rely on, per market, to power a core delivery service allows them to shrink their operational costs by avoiding social security payments that are required when workers are designated as employees. However many gig platforms have been accused of abusing this system for years by fa …
