It is often said that judges only speak in their sentences. Judge Álvaro Lobato has greatly shown him in his rejection of the lawsuit that Just Eat filed against Glovo for unfair competition. The resolution goes beyond resolving the specific case and includes praises to the company of Óscar Pierre and political criticisms typical of neoliberal ideology to labor regulation and labor inspection. The magistrate even transferred to his sentence the title of a Opinion article which he wrote at the beginning of the year: “The unionized Spain.”
Lobato arrived at the Mercantile Court 2 of Barcelona three years ago. The judicial career was reincorporated, from which he had taken a leave in 1996 to go through great private offices such as Gómez-Acebo and Pombo and Dla Piper. He also founded his own firm. At present, the secretary is also the FIDE FOUNDATION.
In Barcelona legal circles, the liberal mood of this magistrate is known, but the lawyers consulted do not remember in their ideological digressions resolutions such as those that Lobato has included in its judgment on Thursday. The same sources add that a commercial judge does not usually deal with large media cases.
One of the most striking fragments of the Lobato judgment of the Glovo case is the criticism made to the Labor Inspectors who watched if the Oscar Pierre company complied with the Supreme Judgment of the 2020 that annulled its model of false freelancers. The magistrate question the professionalism of the officials, which he attributes “an indisputable group bias” and indicates them because, in his opinion, they do not know that the law rider Yes it allows platforms to have distributors as self -employed.
In his considerations against the Labor Inspection, the judge adds: “In all the statements seemed to resonate, with a thunderous unanimity, the nostalgic echo of unionized Spain, 'the world of yesterday' administered and bureaucratic.”
In my criteria there is no one more indicated than those affected to decide what is best for them …… .. except some illuminated and omniscient bureaucrat that seems to enjoy a privileged access to the truth
Álvaro Lobato
— Judge of the Glovo Case
What does the Lobato judge mean with “the nostalgic echo of unionized Spain”? The magistrate himself had explained him in an article in January in The confidential: “A gradual but significant increase in the presence and intervention of the State in multiple areas of social, economic and cultural activity.” A negative phenomenon, in Lobato's opinion, which also took advantage of its tribune to attack “the paleolitic left anchored in a totally periclitated cultural and ideological universe that continues to idolize the 'public' as a sacred icon.”
In a video of eleven months ago From the foundation of which he is secretary, the judge had gone further and had openly questioned the role of the unions. “There is a displacement of the collective to the individual. Within a company, the rigid and authoritarian hierarchies lose relevance. What is the point of the collective defense of the interests that are no longer homogeneous of the workers of a company?
The judge continued his argument with a burial of Marxism. “The company is not today a land struggle, I do not say that there is no scenario of that, but capitalism has changed and that vision so belligerent does not correspond to reality,” he said.
“We continue to have structures that defend collective positions in a scenario that is disappearing. I do not want He said? ”, Apostilla Judge Lobato in the recording.
“I don't know anything about labor law,” admitted the judge In another of the videos of its foundation in which he serves as an interviewer to a partner of the Sagardoy firm, usual in the defense of companies in labor conflicts with the unions and who designed the labor reform of the 2012 PP.
“We live an industrial revolution that has turned the work into something individual case. I have the impression that the great intermediate institutions representative of these groups have lost relevance. What are the meaning today the unions?”, The judge launches to his interlocutor, in an intervention in which he considers the working class “in a trance of disappearance.”
In his judgment this Thursday, Judge Lobato also asked questions. “What is the reason why workers are not allowed to provide their service on the platform?”
The “harassment” to Glovo
The reverse of the “unionized Spain”, as can be seen from Judge Lobato's own judgment, is Glovo. The magistrate undone to the company, in contrast to the “foggy normative maze” that, at the discretion of the judge, imposed the Rider Law in 2021 by introducing “rigidity” and “raising work”.
Unlike the sentences of the social judges who have unmasked the model of false autonomous Glovo and have equated their business model to traditional distribution companies, Lobato presents Glovo as a company with a “clearly innovative” activity and “in permanent technological innovation.”
“How should a group of entrepreneurs have acted who had adopted the initiative to venture into a novel business, technologically advanced and without a clear definition of a consolidated work framework? Really, in my criteria they did what they should do: start their business,” says the magistrate.
The judge not only rules out that the model of false freelancers with which Glovo operated since its foundation in 2015 to, as announced by the company itself, on July 1, supposes unfair competition to Just Eat. The magistrate supports the model changes that Glovo has been making since the sentence of the Supreme Court that knocked off his labor model to keep his distributors as self -employed despite what was ruled by the High Court and the Rider Law.
“It is evident that the company has been adapting to the legal requirements and imperatives that have experienced intense variations,” says the magistrate, who understands that Glovo “opt for the work framework that minimizes costs and favored the viability of the business” before “an environment of accentuated legal uncertainty.”
The judge also takes advantage of his resolution to define as “tuitive and protectionist” the “nature” of labor law. Many more praise deserves the freedom of company, which considers “the best instrument for allocation of resources ever invented by the human mind.”
In sum, the judge converts his sentence of a commercial lawsuit on unfair competition into an endorsement to Glovo's action that is being questioned by criminal proceedings. The Prosecutor's Office accuses the founder of the company, Óscar Pierre, of a crime against workers' rights precisely for maintaining their model of false freelancers. The thesis of Judge Lobato of a case that is outside its jurisdiction are located in the Pierre Defense Thesis line.
“You have to make a containment effort not to qualify as denoded and tireless persecution, the continuous harassment of the Labor Inspection by lifting minutes and the imposition of systematically revoked sanctions, or the legal modifications in the criminal field straightened specifically to sanction the conduct of the company's managers,” concludes the magistrate Lobato, a judge who speaks, and much in his sentence.
