A recent decision issued in France indicates that whether a gig worker is an independent contractor or employee is a fact-specific inquiry.
In this case decided last month, delivery platform Stuart, a subsidiary of the group La Poste, was prosecuted under French employment law for having employed deliverers as independent contractors, when, according to the prosecution, they were in fact employees (who should have worked under an employment contract).
The main argument from the prosecution to support its claim for “concealed work” was that Stuart should have hired the workers under employment contracts because there was a subordinate relationship between the platform and the worker. For instance, Stuart required that the workers comply with a specific dress code, were forbidden to take the subway to proceed with deliveries, were required to have a charged phone with full battery power to carry out the deliveries, etc. The prosecution claimed that these strict rules and guidelines on how to perform the work demonstrated a subordinate relationship and lack of independence for workers, which indicated they were not independent workers.
In response, Stuart claimed that, unlike platforms that connect a private individual customer and a deliverer, Stuart is used by professional customers, such as franchise restaurants, to have their own products delivered to customers.
It also claimed that the platform guarantees the independence of the deliverers thanks to the "free" mode of...
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