The Constitutional Court (TC) has rejected the PP's appeal, thus giving its definitive endorsement to decree-law 9/2021, which modifies the Workers' Statute to "guarantee the labor rights of people dedicated to delivery in the sector." of digital platforms", better known as 'rider law'.
The Plenary has endorsed by 6 votes to 4 - the progressive magistrate Juan Carlos Campo abstained in this matter - the presentation written by Ramón Sáez.
Both PP and Vox challenged the decree-law with which the Government forces it to hire delivery workers, considering that the Executive made "abusive use" of this regulatory instrument.
The ruling has supported that the decree was made urgently under the argument of being in the time of Covid-19. The approved text explains that the crisis generated the need to define public policies for immediate response to new problems.
"Among these new needs, the radically precarious conditions in which the delivery drivers of digital platform companies provided their services were revealed," the resolution indicates.
The ruling also reasons that the Government has justified the enabling budget of the royal decree, among other things, given the "high and growing number of workers affected by the situation of job insecurity that is intended to be addressed."
The sentence has the dissenting vote of judges Ricardo Enríquez, Enrique Arnaldo, César Tolosa and judge Concepción Espejel. In her opinion, the reasons given by the government for approving the Royal Decree-Law do not justify a situation of “extraordinary and urgent need” such as that required by article 86.1 of the Constitution.
For this minority, digital delivery platforms are not a “new” reality, as the decree-law says, but rather they were known by the administration and the government at least since 2015, when labor inspection checks began. as evidenced by the report provided by the Government.
Secondly, they maintain that the 2020 Supreme Court “Glovo” ruling that the Government places at the origin of the decree-law, in addition to being eight months prior to its approval (in May 2021), did not generate any “regulatory vacuum.” ”, as the Government maintains.
On the contrary, the dissenting vote believes that it consolidated the jurisprudence of the social order courts that since 2018 had been considering false self-employed workers who operate under the control of digital platforms as “workers.”
Already last September, the Constitutional Court rejected the presentation prepared by conservative magistrate Ricardo Enríquez, which defended that there was no extraordinary and urgent need required to regulate via decree-law, considering that the usual legal procedure could have been opted for. .
The conservative magistrate chose to withdraw his text and it was decided that before reanalyzing a new presentation on Vox's appeal, that of Sáez - from the progressive wing of the TC - would be studied on the 'popular' challenge, which proposed endorsing the decree-law questioned and was accepted this Wednesday by the Plenary.
