Hidden Job Fees: Stuart Delivery Platform Released

Nine months after Deliveroo was sentenced to the maximum penalty of a €375,000 fine and two of its former executives for similar actions, a Parisian court this time ruled in the opposite direction. Delivery platform Stuart, a subsidiary of the La Poste group sued for covert work, was vacated on Thursday by a Paris court, as was Resto In, a now-defunct food delivery company.

Stuart and Resto In were accused of using delivery men who were paid as independents when they should have been employees, but the Paris court found that the elements it had were “not sufficient to reach a conviction that employee relationships unite deliverers for the platform.”

However, the prosecution demanded the same sentence for Stewart and Resto Ying and suspended prison sentences for the two founders of those companies. “Of course, we are a general employment cover-up (…) that concerns several hundred jobs with activities created in such a way that the workers are declared independent,” prosecutor Celine Ducourneau assessed.

Only eight couriers heard

Thus Clément Benoit, founder of Resto In, and Benjamin Chemla, founder of Stuart, were acquitted of covert work charges, but the latter and Stuart, on the other hand, were convicted of loaning illegal labor.

They are accused of using a company called Branis Courses, to which Stewart entrusted certain supplies, but whose “existence was purely theoretical” since the platform represented all the activities of Branis Courses employees. Stewart was fined €50,000 and Benjamin Chemla €10,000 with a suspension.

The small number of deliverers heard during the procedure—eight, “sometimes conflicting” hearings and “deliverers who basically indicated that they were not sanctioned from the podium or did not consider themselves subordinates” thus led the court to acquit the defendants on the underlying facts. .

“This decision brought an end to years of litigation and reminded us that Stewart has always strived to use the model in accordance with the law,” Stewart’s lawyer, Me Remy Lorrain, insisted after the decision.