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Gett Delivery Driver Files Lawsuit to be Recognized as Employee

The lawsuit claims that the company asked to be considered a “platform company” in order to employ thousands of workers without classifying them as employees | A similar suit against delivery service Wolt was recently authorized

National Labor Court of Israel (Photo: Yair Tzuker)
National Labor Court of Israel (Photo: Yair Tzuker)
By Nizzan Zvi Cohen

A driver for Gett Delivery, an app-based food delivery service, has filed a petition to bring a class action lawsuit against the service’s parent company to have drivers recognized as direct employees of the company rather than independent contractors. The lawsuit comes a week after the Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court  authorized a similar suit against Wolt, another company operating an app-based delivery service. In that ruling, the court stated that “there is a reasonable chance” that it will rule that Wolt and its delivery drivers maintained employer-employee relations.

A driver for Gett Delivery, an app-based food delivery service, has filed a petition to bring a class action lawsuit against the service’s parent company to have drivers recognized as direct employees of the company rather than independent contractors. The lawsuit comes a week after the Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court  authorized a similar suit against Wolt, another company operating an app-based delivery service. In that ruling, the court stated that “there is a reasonable chance” that it will rule that Wolt and its delivery drivers maintained employer-employee relations.

The latest suit against Gett, the company which operates Gett Delivery as well as the Gett Taxi ride-hailing app, was filed by Alexander Lieberman, who worked as a Gett Delivery driver from 2018 to 2019. Lieberman claims that while he was officially considered an independent contractor, in reality he served the function of a regular company employee. The lawsuit argues that Gett hid behind the label of “platform company” in order to employ thousands of workers without classifying them as employees, “while at the same time coercing the deliverers, who are mostly young workers without job experience, to work as ‘service providers’ without the same rights as employees.”

The petition to allow the lawsuit alleges that “under the guise of technological innovation, the company, together with other companies, attempted to illegally carry out a massive change to the employment structure in the delivery industry, which has for many decades been characterized by salaried employees working for delivery companies or businesses in need of delivery services.” The petition goes on to claim that “this is nothing but an updated version of the practice that this court knows well through which employers seeking to skirt the protections of the law insist on categorizing workers as independent contractors.”

A taxi participating in the Gett Taxi service (photographed individuals are not connected to this story) (Photo: Nati Shohat/Flash 90)
A taxi participating in the Gett Taxi service (photographed individuals are not connected to this story) (Photo: Nati Shohat/Flash 90)

Lieberman and the lawyers representing him are asking the court to recognize all Gett Delivery drivers, past and present, as salaried employees, and to instruct the company to pay them their full benefits, including pension payments, contributions to severance packages, compensation for unused sick and vacation days, and reimbursements for travel expenses, among others. The total value of these benefits is currently estimated to amount to 30.37% of the drivers’ income. The plaintiffs are also seeking recognition of their right to bonus pay for weekends and overtime, compensation for time spent returning from distant locations, and compensation for time spent on-call.

The suit further demands financial restitution for former drivers who cannot collect unemployment benefits due to their classification as independent contractors, as well as full severance pay and damages for the company’s failure to hold a hearing before firing workers, as required by law.

Furthermore, the suit is the first of its kind to include a demand for compensation for “non-monetary harms,” following a ruling last year by the National Labor Court that workers who are retroactively deemed to have been in an employer-employee relationship are entitled to such compensation in return for violation of rights that cannot be easily assigned a monetary value, such as the right to job security or to unionize. The parallel lawsuit against Wolt was filed before the ruling on non-monetary harms and therefore did not include such a demand. Wolt has already expressed its intention to appeal last week’s Regional Labor Court decision allowing the suit against it to go forward.

Wolt delivery drivers in downtown Jerusalem, October 13, 2021 (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Wolt delivery drivers in downtown Jerusalem, October 13, 2021 (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Earlier this year the Israeli Supreme Court overturned a decision by the National Labor Court and ruled that a lawsuit against the major fashion retailer Castro by a group of employees could go forward as a class action suit. This decision significantly expanded the parameters for the use of class action lawsuits in the field of labor relations. Previously, Labor Courts had rarely authorized class action lawsuits based on the argument that such suits would require “complicated calculations” of workers’ rights.

In that case, the court found that “the fact that class action proceedings in the field of labor relations are complicated does not make them a separate legal category,” and that “the court’s view is that the individual worker is a disadvantaged party, and therefore the availability of the legal tool of class action must be expanded.”

When asked for comment on the suit against Gett, representatives of the company stated that “the petition has not yet been presented to Gett. When it is received, Gett will review the petition and respond in court.”

This article was translated from Hebrew by Sam Edelman.

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