A Spanish YouTuber is suing Google Spain, a unit of Alphabet Inc, for wrongful dismissal in a case that could set a precedent for content creators' labour rights, Spanish union UGT said on Thursday. The lawsuit seeks to demonstrate an employment relationship between Jota, a creator of political satire content whose real name has not been disclosed, and Alphabet's YouTube because he regularly provided his services and received remuneration derived from advertising revenue, UGT said.
Google Spain blocked Jota's YouTube channel "Ultimo Bastion" (Last Stronghold) from earning advertising revenue in August. He says that the company withdrew money that was already in his YouTube payments account.
"We consider this to be a severance of the employment relationship," his lawyer Bernardo Garcia told Reuters. He said they had called on the court to classify Jota and YouTube's a labour relationship and his effective dismissal as "wrongful".
Jota's channel has included left-wing political satire videos usually using feeds from official channels such as parliament and town halls. He has added subtitles and special effects in support of his views.
Garcia and the union would not comment on the reasons for advertising revenue to his channel being cut.
Google says that content creators are not employees and that in this particular case Jota's channel did not comply with YouTube monetisation policies.
"We are deeply committed to the success of creators, which is why we share the majority of revenues with them. We gather a lot of feedback when we meet with hundreds of creators each year. However, contrary to what is claimed, they are not employees of YouTube according to the nature of the relationship," Google Spain said in a emailed statement.
A hearing is scheduled for June 26 next year in a Madrid court.
Spain became a pioneer in Europe in gig-economy workers' rights when it forced food delivery companies to hire as staff their riders in 2021.
The UGT said it was committed to fighting false self-employment and precarious labour conditions it says tech giants seek to impose.
UGT spokesperson Eduardo Magaldi said that the gig economy may be new but the concepts behind it were the same.
"Some control the platform or the means of production and the others are those who offer their labour, in one way or another, from a workplace or from their homes. By posting something (on the internet) or producing by hand," he said.
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