“We filed a class action against Caviar earlier in the year and since the court said drivers would need to pursue claims individually in arbitration, we are doing that”, Liss-Riordan said by email.
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On Wednesday, class-action complaints were filed against on-demand food delivery companies DoorDash and GrubHub in California state court, alleging that the drivers should not be considered independent contractors, as their companies have deemed them, but official employees. DoorDash did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The suits were filed in San Francisco by labor attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan.
“The facts of all of these cases are so similar”, said Liss-Riordan, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
DoorDash is a Palo Alto-based food delivery company working with restaurants in select metro areas.
The drivers argue in a class-action suit against GrubHub, for example, that the company didn’t pay them overtime or minimum wage, or cover their fuel expenses as it should have if they were classified correctly. Those are the workers that Liss-Riordan’s suit alleges are misclassified.
That’s because Caviar requires workers to sign an arbitration agreement that says any suits must be filed as individuals – not as part of a group.
The situations for all three companies illustrates how sturdy the case is for continuing to call those in their front row workforces “independent contractors”.
Uber is at the forefront of defending the model of using independent contractors rather than employees arguing it benefits drivers who can be their own boss rather than be tied down to a fixed set of hours and shifts.
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The class-action suits against on-demand ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft are the furthest along in the process. A GrubHub spokesperson said that they can not discuss pending litigation. According to analysis conducted by Fortune, the cost to Uber of reclassifying its drivers as employees would amount to $4.1 billion, which could prove a major headache for the firm and stifle growth.
