Aparência e essência nas relações de trabalho entre entregadores, a plataforma IFOOD e seus Operadores Logísticos na Justiça do Trabalho do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The IFOOD platform has over 200,000 registered delivery personnel and operates in two business models. In the marketplace model, the platform intermediates transactions between consumers and establishments, with the latter responsible for hiring their own delivery personnel. In the full-service model, IFOOD is responsible for the entire delivery logistics. In this modality, the platform relies on “cloud” delivery personnel, who register directly on the app, and on delivery personnel associated with Logistics Operators—companies specializing in deliveries that hold contracts with the platform. These relationships are informal, as neither the platform nor its intermediaries recognize the workers as employees, instead asserting the autonomous nature of these activities. The controversy over this characterization is the subject of judicial proceedings. This dissertation, guided by historical and dialectical materialism, aims to understand the essence of these labor relations through an analysis of elements obtained from ongoing labor lawsuits in the Labor Court of Rio de Janeiro. Its specific objectives are to assess how this Court is ruling on the nature of these relationships and the respective responsibilities of the platform and its intermediaries, identify the working conditions and management dynamics of delivery personnel linked to the Logistics Operators, and analyze how mechanisms of self-management and the rhetoric of business autonomy promote the concealment of subordination in the relationships with the IFOOD digital platform in this same Court. To this end, the research was based on a literature review and utilized publicly available non-confidential databases online, such as the Case Consultation System of the Regional Labor Court of the 1st Region (TRT-1) and the Electronic Judicial Process System (PJe) of TRT-1. After selecting and analyzing the cases, we identified that the rise in judicialization of these relationships is due to the increase in the number of delivery personnel and poverty following the 2015 economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, the growth of informality within this category, and the outsourcing to Logistics Operators. We observed that the Labor Court of Rio de Janeiro tends to recognize the subordinate nature of the relationships between the delivery personnel and the Logistics Operators, along with the platform’s subsidiary liability, but conversely, it tends not to recognize such nature in direct relationships with IFOOD. Analyzing the working conditions and management dynamics of delivery personnel associated with the Logistics Operators, we identified these workers as subject to super-exploitation through mechanisms of intensified labor, prolonged working hours, and reduction of labor value below the minimum necessary for a dignified subsistence according to the prevailing historical-moral standards in Brazil. After the selection and analysis of judgments, we concluded that elements of the classic, objective, and structural dimensions of subordination appear on the surface of the relationships between the delivery personnel and the Logistics Operators, making them readily visible to judges. In the direct relationships between delivery personnel and the IFOOD platform, however, subordination is obscured by self-management and the rhetoric of autonomy, associating aspects of informality, intermittency, and task-based remuneration with a non-existent autonomy.