The Spanish justice has ruled for the first time that the Amazon Flex delivery service operated fraudulently, that its delivery drivers were false self-employed workers and that they should be hired as employees.
This is reflected in a ruling from the Community of Madrid that affects a total of 2,166 distributors. The UGT union has had access to it, which recalls that these couriers used their own vehicle to make deliveries in 2 to 4 hour slots, loading between 20 and 50 packages a day.
In Barcelona, ??there is another macro trial pending in relation to the same cause. In both cases, the prosecuted model was deactivated by Amazon in 2021, following the approval of the Rider Law, which forced the platforms to hire couriers as employees. From then on, the company opted to operate with fleets of subcontracted delivery drivers.
The company has not yet announced whether it will appeal the ruling to a higher court. That has been the strategy followed by their colleagues in the sector, such as Glovo, Uber Eats or Deliveroo.
