Earlier this week, Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that Deliveroo riders cannot be classed as employees or represented by trade unions for collective bargaining. This comes after a seven-year-long dispute fought by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), which has the largest membership of app-based couriers in the UK. While this ruling could have significant implications for gig economy works everywhere, the organisers behind the Deliveroo campaign are far from admitting defeat. 

Affirming a previous court decision from 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that Deliveroo riders do not have an “employment relationship” with the food delivery company, on the basis that they are “free to reject offers of work, to make themselves unavailable and to work for Deliveroo’s competitors”. But the crux of the case centred around whether riders have the right to engage in collective bargaining, which was denied.

Pay and working conditions at the company have got worse in recent years, according to Joe Durbrdige, a Deliveroo rider who has been involved with the IWGB since 2019. “Deliveroo has now got complete monopoly power in London, which means it can set the terms and conditions in a way that it couldn’t until even a few years ago, and workers are deprived of any ability to challenge that,” he tells Dazed.

According to Joe, the increasing sophistication of Deliveroo’s algorithm has had a significant impact on how much riders get paid. “As artificial intelligence, it’s trying to figure out the lowest fee that people will take,” he says. “Back in the day, there would be ups and downs in demand but for the vast majority of the time, you’d get paid the same for the same order.” Now, the fee on offer for a given delivery varies wildly depending on how busy it is, which leaves many riders struggling to make minimum wage and forced to walk brutally long hours. As Joe sees it, arguing that the solution must involve regulating the new technologies of algorithmic management, as well as a more traditional approach.

Deliveroo celebrated the decision as a victory for its riders, claiming that “thousands apply each week to work with Deliveroo because they want to be able to decide for themselves when, where and whether to work”. While some Deliveroo workers do value the flexibility the company affords, this is less true for those who rely on it as a primary source of income. “I think it’s similar to zero hours contracts in that it works very well for some people but it is terrible for others,” Robert Gurney, who worked for the company for four years, tells Dazed. “From speaking to other riders while on the job and just general observations, I would say the majority of the riders, or at least the people doing the majority of the orders, are trying to make a living from it and absolutely deserve to be treated as workers,” he says. In any case, there’s no reason why flexibility has to go hand-in-hand with low wages. 

For Alex Marshall, the president of IWGB and a former courier driver himself, the Supreme Court’s decision was disappointing but unsurprising. As he sees it, a legal victory would only have been half the battle. “We know that you can win in the courts, but unless that’s backed up by deep organising, these companies often just brazenly ignore it: they play the long game, deciding to take the fines or wait until people take them to a tribunal. We saw that with Uber, who haven't fully obeyed the Supreme Court ruling [which ruled that its drivers are classed as workers], but applied their own interpretation which has arguably left drivers worse off.” 

The ruling could set a precedent for other gig economy companies, having established that the “substitution clause” – which allows riders to use other people to complete their orders – is evidence that they cannot be considered employees. Labour – who are likely to win the next election – had previously pledged to create a single status of “worker” for everyone except the genuinely self-employed, but the party has recently watered down this commitment. The last two Labour conferences have featured panel discussions organised by Deliveroo, which failed to include any of its workers. Despite these unpromising signs, Alex believes that Labour would be more “malleable” than the current Tory government and could be subject to pressure if workers build sufficient power. 

One of the big challenges facing gig economy workers in their attempts to organise is that the legal definitions we use today were drawn up decades ago and have failed to catch up with the realities of working life. “I think the big innovation in the gig economy is the way they have completely corrupted the word ‘self-employed’”, says Alex. “That used to mean that people got a much higher day rate and enjoyed genuine flexibility, which meant they might be happy to give up being entitled to holiday pay and pensions. But the ‘self-employment’ we’re seeing today often involves people being forced to work all the time – they  have the ‘freedom’ to work beyond the hours they would in a normal employer relationship, because they have to. Employers can pay as little as they want and work people as hard as they want.”

“It doesn’t take the most observant person to see there is a systemic issue in the gig economy, which is exploiting migrant workers in the 10s of 1000s,” Alex says. “People are taking risks, working under really unsafe conditions and making very little money, and experiencing severe housing issues: there was a fire in Tower Hamlets as a result of all of these workers living together and charging their bikes, where one worker ended up dying. These are problems which need to be addressed.”

The good news is that, despite yesterday’s ruling, Deliveroo riders and other gig economy workers can still go on strike. The fact they are not granted the status of employees actually makes it easier to withdraw their labour – they don’t have to jump the various bureaucratic hurdles which are usually necessary, such as balloting or providing two weeks notice. “Riders can get together and decide not to log on on a Friday evening, when it’s busiest, and stand outside restaurants,” says Alex. There has been a wave of strikes organised by Deliveroo riders over the last few years, and these are likely to continue, regardless of what the Supreme Court says. “We know exactly what we need to do, and that’s to continue building power from the ground up. That is the only way we can genuinely challenge these huge, multinational corporations who are just hell-bent on stripping workers of everything they can.”

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