Due to Deliveroo’s booking system giving it lots of control over deliveries, the Fair Work Commission has found an employer-employee relationship exists between Deliveroo and at least one of its delivery workers.
In an Australian landmark judgment, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has concluded that the Amazon-backed Deliveroo had an employer-employee relationship with one of its former food delivery workers. Deliveroo was sued by the former delivery worker, Diego Franco, in May last year, who had raised the action as he believed he was unfairly dismissed. On Tuesday afternoon, the FWC agreed with Franco, saying that he was indeed a Deliveroo employee due to the extent of control possessed by Deliveroo. In particular, the FWC found Deliveroo’s self-serve booking (SSB) system, which gave preferential treatment to riders who booked desirable times for engagement, directed Franco to undertake work at particular times and regularly make himself available for work, and to not cancel booked engagements. Although Franco was not required to work for any particular length of time, or to even accept a delivery order once he had logged into a booked session, the economic reality of the situation would ordinarily compel a rider to undertake delivery work, the FWC said. « After all, the objective of the entire process is to get paid, » commissioner Ian Cambridge wrote in his judgment. « What might have, superficially, appeared to be an absence of control over when, where, or how long Mr Franco performed work for Deliveroo, actually camouflaged the significant capacity for control that Deliveroo, (like other digital platform companies) possesses. » In the judgment, Cambridge also addressed the relevance of gig workers « multi-apping » — to deliver for various platforms simultaneously — in relation to employer-employee relationships, saying that this practice was an example of the phenomenon of change that new technology has brought to the traditional arrangements for employment.
