Delivery Drivers Sue Amazon for Violations Including Unpaid Overtime

On Tuesday, a class action lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court saying that the delivery drivers for Amazon's new have been paid wrongfully as independent contractors although they are treated as the company's employees. Drivers in the Los Angeles market make $11 an hour, but buy their own gas, insurance, and auto maintenance service.

"When companies have control over their workers, when they get to dictate how they should act, when they get to decide whether they can work or not work...those are employees", Shannon Liss-Riordan, who filed several of these lawsuits, including the one against Uber, told TIME in March.

Prime Now drivers are suing Amazon over pay that amounts to less than the California minimum wage.

The independent contractor scheme is a cost-saving arrangement that already facilitates many Amazon Prime deliveries, as HuffPost detailed past year in a story about the Amazon contractor Lasership.

An Amazon representative declined to comment.

"Not infrequently they are scheduled to work six or seven consecutive days in a week, and have been occasionally sent home without pay after reporting to the warehouse if there is not enough work", the complaint.

A few companies regard their workers contractors, in an attempt to avoid a few expenses, claiming that many such workers prefer as such, allowing for a more flexible schedule, which would have been impossible had they been employees. The lawyers representing the four drivers are hoping to expand the case to a class action representing everyone who's driven for the company's Prime Now service in California. The California Labor Commission also ruled in June that a driver of Uber was an employee and not a contractor, when driving for the company, and was hence entitled to reimbursement on certain expenses.

The use of independent service providers by companies apparently in their core operations has led to worker lawsuits, demanding that workers should be classified as employees with attendant benefits and not as independent contractors. Uber said it had appealed the decision.

Ross and her firm, Leonard Carder, earlier this year won a $228-million settlement with FedEx in a case involving California delivery drivers who were classified as independent contractors.

"Despite these and other clear indicia that plaintiffs are and were defendants" employees, defendants have classified them as "independent contractors' and in so doing have denied them the benefits and protections of California law", reads the suit, obtained by Re/code. Beth Ross, the attorney who filed the case, says the drivers typically logged at least 50 miles per day on their cars, often reaching or exceeding 100 miles.