Four councilors from the CPI of Applications of the City Council of São Paulo carried out this Tuesday (12) a diligence — a procedure to resolve doubts or gather information — at the headquarters of iFood, in Osasco, in Greater São Paulo.
The Commission of Inquiry was created to investigate the employment status of application employees, in addition to contracts and tax payments by companies. In this Tuesday’s procedure, the objective was to investigate the alleged involvement of iFood in online campaigns to demobilize its delivery men.
The company denies having hired such campaigns and, on Tuesday, declined to talk about the diligence.
The case was opened after a report published last week by Agência Pública, according to which a campaign created by companies Benjamin Comunicação and Social QI for the delivery application included the creation of fake profiles.
Through these profiles, without visible identification with the agencies or with the app, movements such as the Breque dos Apps, launched in July 2020 to demand better working conditions, were criticized.
This week, the iFood delivery app ended the contract it had with Benjamim, which would have hired Social QI, this one focused on digital marketing and social media monitoring. With the latter, iFood says it has never had commercial relations.
On Sunday (10), the app also announced that it had hired a specialized consultancy that, according to iFood, should investigate whether its employees and suppliers have violated its code of conduct and ethics. The delivery company had already announced the opening of an internal investigation to address the matter
Those mentioned in the report were summoned to provide information at the CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) of Applications, in progress at the São Paulo City Council.
In the note released on Sunday, iFood says it never acted or authorized employees or suppliers to act to demobilize demonstrations by couriers.
“It didn’t create fake profiles, didn’t use robots, didn’t buy followers and didn’t produce or distribute fake news on social media,” the company says.
iFood also defends, in the note, having expanded actions to dialogue with delivery people since the first demonstrations were held in July 2020.
“It was these actions that allowed the company to know the real demands of the delivery people, which led to the expansion of the average income on the platform, to the offer of life and accident insurance to all the delivery people of the platform and to promote adjustments in the remuneration rates of the delivery service, he says.
In addition to the summons to the CPI, the case also ended up in the Public Ministry of Labor in São Paulo. which started the preparatory investigation procedures, which include the collection of information about the companies, their CNPJs and registrations with the Federal Revenue Service. The first notifications were sent on April 8; the deadline for responding is 20 days.
The procedure responds to a representation made by federal deputy Ivan Valente (PSOL-SP), for whom the report in Pública points to the violation of the right to strike, freedom of demonstration and organization.
The agencies that would have been hired by iFood were contacted again this Monday (11), but did not respond. For the Pública agency, Benjamim said that it subcontracted Social QI for a short time, in 2021, and that it never approved, like iFood, the action proposals presented by it.
Also to Pública, Social QI said it was hired to monitor social networks about the food market.
Still this Tuesday, the CPI should close a report on the visit. For almost two hours, councilors Luana Alves (PSOL), Sidney Cruz (Solidariedade), Marlon Luz (Patriota) and the chairman of the commission, Adilson Amadeu (DEM ), visited the company’s premises and questioned directors of the application about the operation of the business. .
On Monday (10), Conar (National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation) opened an investigation into the campaign attributed to iFood.
“The procedure aims to investigate possible violations of the Brazilian Advertising Self-Regulation Code and identify the authorship of the campaign,” the council said in a note.
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