Supreme Court reopens legal case against Uber Eats over alleged secret ERE against around 3,000 suppliers stemming from lawsuit filed by CCOO and UGT. The National High Court dismissed the unions’ appeal, concluding that they lacked “legitimacy” to challenge the collective action against the supplier company, where the workers had no legal representation since then. riders They had freelance contracts. The Supreme Court corrected the court in a landmark ruling this Thursday, overturning his sentence and forcing the authority to reopen the case.
punishment Promoted by El Periódico de Catalunya And to which elDiario.es had access, the correction in the National High Court for various reasons. First of all, it considers that the CCOO and the UGT have active legitimacy to protest collective dismissals in the company.
The Supreme Magistrates argue that in the context of collective dismissals, which may affect people whose employee status may be questioned (false self-employed), and where there is no evidence of representation. Regarding the workers, “it is logical to conclude that the most representative unions in the sector to which the company belongs have the legitimacy to sue and defend the illegality of the decision”.
The threat of worker insecurity
In addition, the High Court warns that excluding most unions from this legitimacy through a company complaint could leave unions vulnerable. riders By dismissing victims who could sue individually but not collectively.
“Recognition of the legitimacy of the above-mentioned unions involves avoiding a certain risk of insecurity for the affected people, because the refusal to recognize such legitimacy would make it impossible to appeal a collective business decision that could be classified as a collective dismissal,” the judges noted. .
The exclusion signed by the National High Court not only “nullifies” the content of the right to effective judicial protection that workers may have from a collective perspective, the judgment points out, but also “completely distorts the legal requirements” arising from Article 51 ET (collective dismissal), “since the company’s decision will become irreversible , only the possible individual actions of the affected workers are pending, which have a different purpose and serve to protect interests that are not comparable to the interests that the collective process aims to satisfy”.
Termination of 3000 contracts unilaterally
With the enactment of the Rider Act to put an end to false self-employment at these home delivery companies, Uber Eats unilaterally canceled contracts with its self-employed delivery drivers to switch to a subcontractor model in which other companies hire. hard work riders that they deliver to Uber Eats.
Unions that protect the previous working relationship of the suppliers and Uber Eats like this settled the labor inspection, sued the company for what they understood to be a hidden ERE. In other words, the company dismissed the entire workforce – about 3,000 people – without opening the legal procedure for collective dismissal provided for this situation.
Now the Supreme Court is forcing the National High Court to reopen the case, finding that there is active legitimacy for the two unions to challenge the dismissal of the suppliers.
The Supreme Court also corrects the judiciary in two other elements. It supports the unions’ “practice of requested documentary evidence” as well as “a lawsuit against Uber Systems Spain SL” (another company after Uber Eats, apart from the already challenged Portier Eats Spain). that CCOO and UGT claimed. The national court rejected this extension of the request, criticizing the “bad faith” of the unions, which the Supreme Court also rejects.
Yu-G-T celebrated the court decision. “The sentence implies the obligation to repeat the trial again at the National High Court, which must already decide whether to approve the collective redundancies carried out by Uber in August 2021 and the corresponding consequences in its case, the reinstatement of the dismissed suppliers.” “They were not accepted by paying their wages or, if necessary, paid them legal compensation for unfair dismissal,” the trade union said.
Source: El Diario
