Amazon Charged for Having More than 2,000 Couriers as False Self-Employed

It has recently been discovered that workers were forced to use their own vehicle to deliver the packages.

The ministry of justice charges Amazon for having more than 2,000 delivery drivers as false self-employed workers were forced to use their own vehicle to make the delivery of packages. The court based its ruling on the Rider law, which entered into force in Spain in August 2021. It is a regulation that aims to end the systematic abuse of false self-employed individuals working in home delivery services. In addition, it forced the shipping platforms to hire their couriers as employees.

The company hired 2,166 delivery people as fake freelancers to deliver packages using their own vehicles to do so.

Before the Rider law was passed, different companies such as Glovo, Deliveroo or Uber Eats had their employees hired as self-employed, which meant they were saving in labor costs for multinationals and a decrease in social security income in contributions.

In the case of Amazon Flex dealers in Spain, they used their own vehicle, so that the Spanish union UGT, which is part of the complaint procedure, considered this situation as a new case of the use of false self-employed by digital platforms.

The ruling on the case of Amazon Flex rules out that this sales giant through the internet operated only as an intermediary between the stores that sell through Amazon and the delivery people. According to union sources, “the sentence declares that there is a dependency of the employer that forces them to leave the commercial model towards the labor”.

Amazon point out that they will file an appeal because, although they “respect” the judicial decision, they do not agree with it, while claiming that the Amazon Flex program, which has been in operation between 2018 and 2021 and was based on “collaboration” with self-employed, supposed a small percentage”of all packages delivered by the multinational.