The judge investigating the founder and CEO of Glovo, Oscar Pierre, for a crime against workers’ rights has summoned him to testify as a defendant on December 3, legal sources have informed elDiario.es. The statement has been set in time to prevent a new suspension, as occurred with the appearance initially scheduled for September.
Before the magistrate of the 31st investigating court of Barcelona, several have already testified riders as witnesses. Along with the Labor Inspection reports, the workers’ testimonies make up the bulk of the investigations that investigate the declared illegal labor model of the company founded by Pierre.
The Prosecutor’s Office accuses Pierre of keeping Glovo delivery drivers as false self-employed workers despite the Supreme Court ruling that prohibited it. The complaint is a jump to criminal proceedings after lThe various sanctions that, through administrative means, Labor Inspection has already filed against the company for ignoring the historic ruling of the High Court that declared that the riders of the company were false self-employed in 2020.
Glovo’s practice In the opinion of the Prosecutor’s Office, it is contrary to labor legislation “and undermines and suppresses the rights of employed workers”, for example in relation to salary, working hours, breaks, permits, vacations or Social Security protection. He has recently requested to appear in the RidersxDerechos case, a pioneer group in the fight of delivery workers against false self-employed workers in the sector.
The Government approved the Rider Law in 2021 with the aim of ending the systematic abuse of the figure of false self-employed workers among the main home delivery companies. Since then, Glovo, based in Barcelona, challenged the Ministry of Labor with a model that they called “renewed”, but which continued to operate with autonomous delivery workers. Unions, groups of delivery workers such as RidersxDerechos, as well as the Labor Inspection, confirmed that the new model continued to violate labor legislation.
The Prosecutor’s Office accuses Pierre of wanting to maintain the relationship between false self-employed workers and their delivery drivers to “reduce business costs” for Glovo by not guaranteeing riders a professional salary in accordance with the work day performed and stop paying the corresponding labor contributions to Social Security. That is, to continue with its employment model despite the court rulings that forced it to hire false self-employed workers as employees.
In its desire to prosecute these practices, the Government also modified the Penal Code to prevent abuse by false self-employed workers. The crime that Pierre faces is punishable by prison sentences of six months to six years and sanctions employers who restrict the rights of their workers by abusing their situation, including those who abuse false self-employed workers.
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