Twenty-first Legal Basis of the Labor Court Judgment of September 25, 2020, rec. 4746/2019: “In short, Glovo is not merely an intermediary in the contracting of services between businesses and delivery persons. It does not merely provide an electronic intermediation service consisting of putting consumers (customers) and genuine self-employed workers in contact with each other; rather, it performs a work of coordination and organization of the productive service. It is a company that provides delivery and courier services, fixing the price and payment conditions of the service, as well as the essential conditions for the provision of such service. And it owns the essential assets to carry out the activity. To do so, it uses couriers or delivery drivers who do not have their own autonomous business organization, who provide their service inserted in the employer’s work organization, subject to the management and organization of the platform, as evidenced by the fact that Glovo establishes all aspects relating to the form and price of the pickup and delivery service of such products. In other words, both the manner of provision of the service, as well as its price and method of payment are established by Glovo. The company has established instructions that allow it to control the production process. Glovo has established means of control that operate on the activity and not just on the result through algorithmic service management, distributor evaluations, and constant geolocation. The delivery person neither organizes the production activity on his own, nor does he negotiate prices or conditions with the owners of the establishments he serves, nor does he receive his remuneration from the end customers. The actor had no real capacity to organize his work, lacking the autonomy to do so. He was subject to the organizational guidelines set by the company. This reveals an exercise of corporate power in relation to the way the service is provided and a control of its execution in real time that evidences the concurrence of the dependency, requirement inherent to the employment relationship. In order to provide these services, Glovo uses a computer program that assigns services based on each courier’s evaluation, which decisively conditions the theoretical freedom to choose schedules and refuse orders. In addition, Glovo enjoys a power to sanction its delivery drivers for a plurality of different behaviors, which is a manifestation of the employer’s managerial power. Glovo performs real-time monitoring of the service delivery, with no way for the deliveryman to perform his task without being connected to this platform. Because of this, the delivery driver has a very limited autonomy that reaches only secondary issues: what means of transport he uses and what route he follows when making the delivery, so this Court must conclude that the characteristics that define the employment contract between the plaintiff and the defendant company provided by the art. 1.1 of the ET (Estatuto de los Trabajadores) concur in the relationship, accepting the first ground of the unifying appeal”.
