Lawyers are seeking class-action status in the suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court against Amazon and Scoobeez, its contracted courier service.
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Amazon contracts the Prime Now workers through Scoobeez, a subsidiary of privately held ABT Holdings in Pasadena, Calif. Like the FedEx drivers, Amazon’s Prime Now workforce must wear a uniform, adhere to a schedule set by Amazon and its subcontractors, and accept whatever deliveries they are assigned.
In June, workers from Postmates, a delivery service, and Shyp, a shipping company, also filed lawsuits saying they had been treated like employees but classified as independent contractors.
The debate regarding whether on-demand personnel should be considered regular employees or independent contractors is not a new one. This could throw a wrench into the company’s plans to expand contractor-based same-day delivery, now offered in over a dozen metropolitan areas, while also challenging the general concept of the on-demand economy.
Many of them are said to be paid much below the $9 per hour minimum wage applicable in California, when expenses like gas, tolls and maintenance were stripped off.
Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman wrote in an email Tuesday that the company has “a longstanding practice of not commenting on pending litigation”.
“Not infrequently they are scheduled to work six or seven consecutive days in a week, and have been occasionally sent home without pay after reporting to the warehouse if there is not enough work”, according to the complaint.
“When companies have control over their workers, when they get to dictate how they should act, when they get to decide whether they can work or not work…those are employees”, Shannon Liss-Riordan, who filed several of these lawsuits, including the one against Uber, told TIME in March. A California labor commissioner has ruled an Uber driver is an employee, which the company is appealing. The lawsuit claims that this makes the drivers Amazon employees entitled to overtime, meal breaks and certain expenses.
Prior to filing the Prime Now class action, Ross and her firm won a landmark ruling in a very similar case against FedEx, which must pay hundreds of millions of dollars in back wages to drivers after failing to persuade judges that its workers were truly contractors.
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“Amazon’s mission to deliver “Now” at no additional cost to its customers is being funded by the delivery drivers”, said Beth A. Ross, an attorney at Leonard Carder, who is representing the plaintiffs in the case.
