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CLAIMANT, A COURIER, WAS AN EMPLOYEE ENTITLED TO UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS (CT APP).

The Court of Appeals, in a full-fledged opinion by Judge DiFiore, reversing the Appellate Division, over a concurrence and a two-judge dissent, determined the claimant courier was an employee of Postmates and was therefore entitled to unemployment benefits:

Postmates is a delivery business that uses a website and smartphone application to dispatch couriers to pick-up and deliver goods from local restaurants and stores to customers in cities across the United States—deliveries that are, for the most part, completed within an hour. Postmates solicits and hires its couriers, who undergo background checks before being approved to work by Postmates. Once they are approved, the couriers decide when to log into the application and which delivery jobs to accept. Once a courier accepts a delivery job made available through the application, the courier receives additional information about the job from Postmates, including the destination for the delivery. After completing a job, Postmates pays the couriers 80% of the delivery fees charged to customers, and payments are made by the customer directly to Postmates, which pays its couriers even when the fees are not collected from customers. Couriers’ pay and the delivery fee are both nonnegotiable. * * *

Postmates exercises more than “incidental control” over its couriers—low-paid workers performing unskilled labor who possess limited discretion over how to do their jobs. That the couriers retain some independence to choose their work schedule and delivery route does not mean that they have actual control over their work or the service Postmates provides its customers; indeed, there is substantial evidence for the Board’s conclusion that Postmates dominates the significant aspects of its couriers’ work by dictating to which customers they can deliver, where to deliver the requested items, effectively limiting the time frame for delivery and controlling all aspects of pricing and payment. Matter of Vega (Postmates Inc.–Commissioner of Labor), 2020 NY Slip Op 02094, CtApp 3-26-20

 

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