THE Supreme Court has ordered the reinstatement of five dismissed riders of popular shopping app Lazada after finding their employment status as regular.

This as the high court Second Division granted the petition of riders Chrisden Cabrera Ditiangkin, Hendrix Masamayor Molines, Harvey Mosquito Juanio, Joselito Castro Verde, and Brian Anthony Cubacub Nabong.

They questioned before SC the separate rulings of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) and the Court of Appeals (CA) which both ruled that there was no employer-employee relationship between them and Lazada.

In a decision penned by Senior SC Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, the tribunal ordered Lazada to reinstate the riders to their former positions, with full back wages computed from the time of dismissal up to the time of actual reinstatement.

The case was also ordered remanded to the labor arbiter for the computation of the total monetary benefits due the petitioners.

Records showed that Lazada hired the petitioners in 2016 as riders primarily tasked to pick up items from sellers and deliver them to itswarehouse with P1,200 each per day as service fee, for one year, as embodied in a contract titled “Independent Contractor Agreement”

A year later, the riders found they were removed from their usual routes and would no longer be given any schedules, prompting them to file a complaint against Lazada before the NLRC for illegal dismissal.

The labor arbiter dismissed their complaint on the ground that the petitioners were not regular employees of Lazada, and this was upheld by the upheld by the NLRC and CA.

In ruling in favor of the riders, the SC found that Lazada failed to discharge its burden of proving that the former were independent contractors rather than regular employees.

The SC applied a two-tiered test to determine whether an employer employee relationship existed between Lazada and the petitioners: the four fold test and the economic-dependence test.

Under the four-fold test, four factors must be proven: (a) the employer’s selection and engagement of the employee; (b) the payment of wages; (c) the power to dismiss; and (d) the power to control the employee’s conduct, the most important factor.

“When the control test is insufficient, the economic realities of the employment are considered to get a comprehensive assessment of the classification of the worker and determine if the employee is dependent on the employer for his continued employment in that line of business, ” the SC said.

In the case of the petitioners, the SC found that all four factors in the four-fold test were present.