The employees of the Wildberries are rushing through the court

A class-action lawsuit is being prepared for Wildberries to reclassify civil law contracts (GPC) into labor contracts, Artur Vartanyan, the organizer of the newly formed trade union of marketplace employees, representative of the Union of Trade Unions of Russia (UTR), told Vedomosti on April 14. According to him, the lawsuit will be filed by employees of distribution centers and warehouses, employees of Wildberries’ own network of pick-up points (PVZ), who are in trade unions.

Vartanyan represented the interests of marketplace employees (Wildberries, Ozon, Yandex.Market, etc.) at a meeting with deputies of all factions in the State Duma, which took place on April 13. According to him, now lawyers are writing statements of claim from various regions of the country, and the class action lawsuit itself can be filed as early as next week.

How Wildberries got into a conflict over fines

The dispute between the owners of Wildberries and the PVZ began in mid-March due to the introduction of fines for the latter for returning goods due to marriage or substitution. Some outlet owners went on strike, including at the central office of the marketplace. As a result, the site announced the closure of those outlets whose owners “choose uncivilized forms of dialogue.” But soon the deputies of the State Duma and the Ministry of Labor intervened in the conflict, after which Wildberries agreed to freeze about 10,000 fines. At the same time, the site closed the official chat with sellers, where they could receive prompt responses from the support service, explaining this by an increase in the number of scammers posing as marketplace employees.

Some people in the same positions work under employment contracts, while others have GPC agreements, such as contracts or services, the lawyer explains. Meanwhile, they have a strict schedule, a fixed salary, a place of work, uniforms, fines, that is, they have all the signs of an employment relationship, he continues. “We see this as a large shadow labor market, since sites do not pay taxes for such employees (as if they were registered under the Labor Code), force them to undress for the camera during inspections, work above the norm, etc.,” stressed Vartanyan.

The information about the class action lawsuit is a PR stunt to put pressure on the entire sector, a spokesman for Wildberries said. According to him, Wildberries, like many other players, is an online platform that cooperates with the self-employed and uses GPC agreements to provide services: in fact, this is platform employment. The company also has a staff of 47,000 people.

Full-time employees work according to a certain schedule, in a specific place and with certain job responsibilities, they receive wages 2 times a month, the source says. And according to the GPC agreements, “people don’t have a schedule, a fixed place of work, payments are accrued every day upon the fact of the services rendered,” the representative of the marketplace explained. According to him, Wildberries complies with all requirements of the legislation on platform employment, and the rejection of such principles “is unreasonable and will lead to a reduction in jobs in the e-commerce industry and a drop in incomes of the population.”

The chances of satisfying a class action lawsuit on reclassification of relations into labor relations are quite high, believes Dmitry Kletochkin, partner at the law firm Rustam Kurmaev and Partners. “If a person has a GPC agreement with Wildberries, then, taking into account the working conditions listed by (Vartanyan), it is very difficult to distinguish such work from an employment contract,” he said.

A similar story with the requirement of employees to re-qualify GPC contracts into labor contracts was observed a year ago at Tinkoff Bank, Kletochkin recalls. According to him, the bank’s representatives carried out remote customer service, their salary is formed from the total number of meetings with customers. At the same time, the lawyer continues, in March 2022, according to representatives, the bank began to greatly underestimate the number of meetings, which significantly affected their income. It was for this reason that the employees were also going to file a class action lawsuit in order to put things in order in the labor relations with the bank, Kletochkin says, but the latter admitted that a number of partners had problems and carried out the work on an individual basis, returning the money.

The rarity of class actions is more likely due to the fact that if applicants want to receive adequate compensation, they file individual claims, says Boris Bashilov, senior partner at the law firm Bashilov, Noskov and Partners. If we recall one of the latest class-action lawsuits against Yandex.Food for leaking users’ personal data, it ended with considering it as dozens of individual ones and awarding 13 users compensation of 5,000 rubles each, the rest were denied, the lawyer gives an example. This does not inspire victims to use this relatively recent tool, he said.

Of course, GPC agreements are more profitable for business, since there is no need to make a number of contributions to social funds and there is less responsibility to the employee, Kletochkin noted. “Therefore, I believe, in Tinkoff Bank they decided (to agree) amicably, in fact, to settle the issue, but in the case of Wildberries, the situation is completely different, and she is unlikely to get off with a slight fright,” the lawyer sums up.

A representative of Wildberries assures that “exactly the same taxes and insurance premiums are paid under GPC agreements as for full-time employees.” This requirement of the law “is strictly observed by the company,” the source said. Kletochkin retorts that “the fact that taxes are paid for a person does not mean that all the norms of labor legislation are observed.” It is almost impossible to fine an employee under an employment contract, it is necessary to comply with working hours, etc., the lawyer gives an example. “It is around this set of rights that the dispute will go on,” he suggests.