Public Prosecutor's Office seeks trial against Óscar Pierre, Glovo co-founder, over labour rights
The Barcelona Provincial Public Prosecutor's Office is asking the judge to send Glovo's co-founder to trial for a crime against the labour rights of its delivery workers.
Public Prosecutor's Office seeks to try Glovo co-founder for violating delivery workers' rights
The Barcelona Provincial Public Prosecutor's Office has asked the investigating judge to issue an expedited procedure order and send Óscar Pierre, co-founder and chief executive of Glovo, to trial for a crime against the labour rights of his delivery workers. According to La Vanguardia, the public prosecutor considers that "there are sufficient indications of a crime" against workers to prosecute the Catalan businessman.
The decision now rests with the investigating judge, who must decide whether to open an oral trial or archive the case. Pierre's defence, headed by lawyer Cristóbal Martell, stated that it had not yet received formal notification of the public prosecutor's request. In July, the businessman's lawyers had requested that the investigation be dismissed, arguing that Glovo's contractual model with its riders was entirely legal in Spain. In that same document, Pierre accused the Labour Inspectorate of acting with "bias and tax-collecting zeal".
The investigation began in 2024, when the Barcelona Court of First Instance number 31 opened preliminary proceedings following a complaint by the Public Prosecutor's Office. In December of that year, Pierre gave a statement to the judge during the investigation phase, along with other senior executives and delivery workers from the platform. A day before that appearance, Glovo announced that it would begin hiring its delivery workers as salaried employees, abandoning the independent contractor model.
The case also includes a popular prosecution brought by the CGT trade union, which already opposed the archiving of the investigation and maintains that the company imposed "illegal conditions" on its employees on a continuous basis.
Source: La Vanguardia