The Court of Cassation has decided: a bicycle courier gets the requalification of his status of auto-entrepreneur to that of employee



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JURISPRUDENCE? – The Court of Cbadation made this Wednesday a decisive stop for the status of bicycle couriers. The highest French court established for the first time a relationship of subordination between a delivery company and one of its couriers. In short: the delivery person must be recognized as an employee and not as an autoentrepreneur.

– The drafting of LCI

This is a legal first, which could have serious consequences in the field of bicycle delivery. In a ruling on Wednesday, the Court of Cbadation said that a bicycle courier working for a web platform must be considered an employee, under certain conditions. This decision concerns the case of an employee of the company Take Eat Easy – who has filed for bankruptcy since the beginning of the case – but it could well establish jurisprudence. Companies in the sector (Deliveroo, Uber Eats …) have in fact mostly opted for "partnerships" with self-entrepreneurs rather than employment contracts.

"The bond of subordination is characterized"

Return on the case: the driver in question had seized the labor courts in April 2016 to request a requalification of its contractual relationship with Take Eat Easy in employment contract. A year later, the Paris Court of Appeal had found that "the courier was not linked to the digital platform by any exclusivity or non-competition link and that he remained free each week to determine himself the time slots during which he wished to work or to select none if he did not wish to work ". She had therefore rejected the courier.

This Wednesday, the Court of Cbadation saw the case differently. "The bond of subordination is characterized by the performance of work under the authority of an employer who has the power to issue orders and directives, to control the execution thereof and to punish the failings of his subordinate ", she explains in the judgment. However, the platform and the application had a system of geolocation allowing the company to follow in real time the position of the courier and exercise a bonus / penalty system.

Specifically, bonuses were paid to the deliverymen who exceeded the average kilometer of his colleagues. On the other hand, penalties sanctioned too long delivery times or refusals to race. The sanctions could even go as far as exclusion. These powers of sanction but also of direction and control of the execution of the service establish in fact a link of subordination between Take Eat Easy and his deliveryman, which implies a contract of work.

"A very important decision"

The Court of Cbadation thus broke the judgment rendered on 20 April 2017 by the Paris Court of Appeal and ordered a new trial on appeal. "This judgment has the merit to say things clearly: there is no antinomy between employment contract and platform workers," said Manuela Grévy, lawyer of the deliveryman and the CGT, with our colleagues of the AFP .

"This is a very important decision," responded Gilles Joureau, a lawyer who defended a court dozen couriers Take Eat Easy, all dismissed. For him, "this judgment crowns a long fight for the recognition of the bond of subordination". "It's good that the Court of Cbadation finally slice these issues," also greeted Kevin Mention, who advises the labor court a hundred former delivery men Take Eat Easy, "no favorable outcome" for now. He also accompanies the criminal complaint against Take Eat Easy by 119 couriers for illegal and secretive work.

This decision could indeed be favorable to many of their customers. In any case, it questions the economic model of courier delivery companies. If Take Eat Easy went out of business in August 2016 – putting 2,500 people in France – more companies have to worry, like Deliveroo or Uber Eats.

The LCI editorial

Update :

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