Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office’s case against delivery riders dismissed

The company Foodinho-Glovo will not be required to take on all of its approximately 40,000 delivery riders under permanent employment contracts. The decision was taken by Roberto Crepaldi, the judge for preliminary investigations at the Court of Milan, who rejected the application put forward by the public prosecutor Paolo Storari as part of the proceedings that, in February, placed the Spanish food delivery company under judicial supervision for illegal recruitment practices. In the order rejecting the public prosecutor’s application, the judge highlights a key point: many riders are employed by multiple companies, meaning they work for various delivery firms on the market, and not all of them do so as their main job. The issue of the riders’ contractual status – whether they are self-employed or employed – must therefore be resolved by the employment tribunal, which will assess each individual’s employment situation on a case-by-case basis during any proceedings.

This is also because, paradoxically, such a blanket classification could be detrimental to the delivery riders themselves: a ‘blanket classification’ of all riders as employees, “regardless of the frequency” of their work and whether they have one or more clients, the investigating judge emphasises, would have an “economic and organisational impact” not only on the food delivery company, but also on the “workers themselves, who would be obliged to work under far stricter conditions (in terms of working hours and working exclusively for a single client) than at present”. In short, as Judge Crepaldi points out, the “central issue” to be addressed by the judicial supervision measure “relates solely to the matter of ensuring that riders receive pay that meets the minimum guaranteed by the Constitution” and is “entirely distinct from the question of whether the employment contract is of a subordinate nature or not, which affects other variables of the employment relationship (duration of work, overtime, annual leave, time off, etc.)”. Otherwise, the risk is that judicial oversight of the company will lead directly to judicial oversight of the labour market.