The Supreme Court recently rejected an appeal by the IWGB that Deliveroo riders should be regarded as workers, which would give them additional protections and benefits compared to their current, and probably now perpetual status as ‘self-employed’ riders.
If they had been reclassified as workers riders the main benefits they would have be entitled to would have been….
- The national minimum wage
- Holiday pay
- Statutory sick pay
As it stands, as self-employed people they don’t have ANY of the above rights… self-employed people (of which I am one, but not a Deliveroo Rider) have the ‘right’ to work for as little pay as they like, and have to shoulder all of the burden of NOT being paid when either they choose to take a holiday or can’t work because they are sick.
Self-employment is great when you’re earning a decent wage, but this simply ISN’T the case with Deliveroo riders. Some of them earn BELOW the minimum wage once you factor in travel time. Riders aren’t actually paid for that, they are paid for drops, kind of like piece work.
Fair enough if you manage to do 3 or more successful deliveries in an hour, you’re fine based on Deliveroo’s payment rates, BUT less than that which can happen because of delays then you could be earning a lot less.
I don’t get it. Given that the riders are ESSENTIAL to the business model, and that delays and differential delivery times are an inevitable part of the business, making sure riders get decent pay and conditions is surely reasonable.
Sure adding on holiday pay and sick pay would be an extra cost to the employer, but not that much, it seems only fair when profit is VERY healthy - standing at almost £650 million gross in 2022.
With 50K riders in the the UK you could take £50M out of that profit, leaving £1000 per rider per year to pay for that holiday pay and sick pay, that would be pro-rata of course, nowhere near all of those 50K are going to be full time.
I don’t think Deliveroo would have to pay tax on people classified as ‘workers’ as that’s sort of half way between being employed and self-employed.
But then again there is the extra care and responsibility and just hassle when your workers have more rights, that’s clearly what Deliveroo is trying to avoid, clearly they don’t give a toss about their workers. SORRY, their self-employed non-people.
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