99 is ordered to pay R$ 600 thousand to the family of a driver who died of Covid

99 was ordered by the TRT (Regional Labor Court) of Minas Gerais to pay compensation of R$ 600 thousand to the family of an app driver from Belo Horizonte, who last year contracted Covid-19 and, a month later, died. .

In addition to the compensation, Judge Silene Cunha de Oliveira ordered the app to pay a monthly pension of R$1,000 to each of Andrei César da Silva Euler’s two daughters, who are now 9 and 2 years old, and to his wife, Patrícia ( fictitious name), of 38. Patrícia’s pension must be granted until she turns 76 and that of her daughters, until the age of 24.

The decision can be appealed. Sought by the report, 99 said that it “does not comment on cases still in progress in Justice”.

“My husband worked 10 to 12 hours a day as a driver, he earned about R$1,500 a month, it was the main income in our house,” she told Sheet the teacher Patricia, who does not want to have her name published. “He stopped staying with us in many celebrations, such as Christmas and New Year, to work. In the pandemic, he took a lot of people to hospital and health care.”

According to her, her husband had a barbershop, but the business did not work out and closed shortly before the pandemic. Then she started working as an app driver, in the lowest priced 99 POP category. On Sunday, the 19th, she completes one year of her death. Andrei was 43 years old.

“He found out he had Covid on the 18th of May and was hospitalized on the 21st. He worked directly, the period he wasn’t running, he was at home. But he didn’t have any support in relation to Covid. The 99 didn’t offer me any support after his death”, says Patrícia.

“When he died, my youngest daughter was 11 months old. The eldest and I are still undergoing psychological treatment to help cope with the pain of homesickness and the consequences of grief. The eldest began to have difficulties at school, she does not sleep alone, not being able to deal with the loss”, says she, who was married for 11 years with Andrei.

Lawyer Fabíola Marques, a partner at Abud Marques Sociedade de Advogadas and professor of labor law at PUC-SP (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo), says that the value is high for a labor case. “But the cause should hardly be recognized by higher bodies like the TST [Tribunal Superior do Trabalho] and the STF [Superior Tribunal Federal]”, she says, due to the difficulty of recognizing an employment relationship.

The specialist explains that, for a labor relationship to be recognized, it needs to have four attributes: personality (only that person does the work, which applies to app drivers, who need to be registered on the platform); habituality (provision of the service on an ongoing basis); onerosity (being paid for providing the service); and subordination (responding to a superior or depending on the company for work).

“The issue of subordination is the most complex, because it is difficult to know to what extent the worker is subordinated to the application: he has the power not to accept a rush and stop working when he wants”, he says. “On the other hand, he needs the platform to reach the customers. From this point of view, there is subordination.”

For the professor at PUC-SP, the most reasonable thing is for application workers to be governed by specific legislation, more flexible than the CLT (Consolidation of Labor Laws), but which also guarantees minimum rights, such as Social Security. “There are several legislative proposals under discussion, but until one of them becomes law, what will be discussed is the employment relationship, according to article 3 of the CLT.”

In relation to compensation for exposure to the risk of contracting Covid, the specialist says that Brazilian law has created jurisprudence in this regard, considering that Covid is an occupational disease and that the company must be responsible for ensuring the safety of its employee.

“With a large volume of people getting in and out of cars, the apps would have to offer some kind of sterilization of the vehicle or, at least, protective equipment for drivers, which doesn’t happen”, he says. “The application company gets the best part of the business: it doesn’t invest in vehicles, doesn’t pay maintenance costs, doesn’t take the risks of the operation, but receives most of the gains.”

reports from Sheet have already revealed that apps like 99 and Uber are on average with 40% of the value of the ride, but there are cases where this rate can reach 80%.

The president of Amasp (Association of Application Drivers of São Paulo), Eduardo Lima, finds it difficult that 99 cannot reverse the sentence. “But I hope the family receives compensation, even because a father left his wife and daughters without support”, he says, who has already observed “dozens” of cases of app drivers killed by Covid-19. “But this is the first case where I’ve seen the family seek compensation.”