In its ruling no. 1018/2022, published on 20 April 2022, Court of Milan Judge Franco Caroleo, confirmed case law, by recognising the existence of an employment relationship between a rider and a well-known food delivery platform. The ruling recognised the worker a sixth level classification and related remuneration under the Commercial National Collective Labour Agreement (applied to the Company’s employees).
Facts of the case and rider’s work organisation
Since October 2018, the relationship between rider and Company was governed by a self-employment contract having as its object services of pick-up and delivery of food and beverages by bicycle, motorbike or motor vehicle. In this case, the provision of work services by the rider was made through a booking system via the app (installed on the employee’s mobile phone). Every Monday the rider made bookings for work sessions for the coming week, selecting the day and time made available by the platform.
Access to the booking was divided into time slots, which the rider could access based on “booking index values” obtained by the worker based on their availability (times when the rider, despite having booked the work session, did not log in to the app in the first 15 minutes from the session start) and participation during the sessions with greater demand for work established by the Company on the days from Friday to Sunday in the time slot 8-10 pm.
Access to the first booking slot (11 am) with higher availability of bookable shifts for the week was only allowed to riders with a maximum value of the above indices. Riders with lower indices could only access the subsequent booking slots (3 and 5 pm) with less availability of bookable shifts.
The full version of the in-depth study was published in issue 20 of Guida al Lavoro of Il Sole 24 Ore.
