Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week Uber Eats made an announcement that they'll be making significant changes to their business model. Those of us concerned with the impacts of the growing gig and on-demand economies on the Australian workforce were curious to hear what those changes would be. We've seen the deaths of five delivery workers in the past few months. I was thinking: maybe the company has decided to step up and take responsibility for providing occupational health and safety training, ensuring the safety of its workforce. Maybe after the election of an American President, who is actively promoting the empowering of workers as a pathway to economic justice, this US-based company was going to begin working with workers' representatives and give them a seat at the table. I thought maybe after the years of complaints from restaurants and delivery workers the company was going to turn over a new leaf and begin a process of ending the exploitation of both. Did any of this happen? Of course, fat chance. Instead Uber Eats has made it abundantly clear that it has no intention of improving the lot of riders and drivers. They were up-ending their business model, no longer carrying on with the false pretence that they are some sort of matchmaker between restaurants and delivery workers.

From the first of next month Uber Eats will now be directly engaging delivery workers as contractors—issuing new contracts. The intention of these contracts is to absolve Uber Eats of any responsibility for riders or drivers for death or injury while working for the company and to continue to pay them any sum that that company sees and deems fit at any given moment of the day by simply a change to the algorithm. In black and white, it sets out that Uber Eats can unilaterally terminate or deactivate—lovely language isn't it? 'Deactivate'. We're talking about human beings that're trying to make sure they can put food on their tables. They're low paid. They're paid below the minimum wage. When the algorithm says they've stepped out of line, they were five minutes late, or there was a complaint that was never double-checked—certainly not checked by a human being—they get deactivated. Your income is taken off you. You're thrown on the scrap heap. You have nowhere to go.

These contracts included clauses spelling out a treaty against any worker who engages in conduct that has the potential to cause regulatory scrutiny. After strong opposition from groups like the Transport Workers Union, and many riders, Uber has dropped this shameful clause. However, Uber has made it clear that if you work for them you must remain silent. This is a company that wants to gag its workforce. It's terrified of having to treat its workers with the rights to collectively bargain, or to have minimum rates of pay, or to have adequate standards of safety, or to have a voice at work.

Yet I do not hear a single defence for freedom of speech from the other side. Where are the Liberals and Nats who fight for the rights of right-wing columnists to spread misinformation but refuse to stand up for the rights of workers at Uber Eats to use their freedom of speech? Where are senators like Senator Bragg, who championed the supposed Liberal value of freedom only to remain silent while Uber Eats is attempting to bully its workforce into silence? I think Senator Bragg's catch-call is more like 'freedom to be ripped off'.

That these contracts come after the tragic string of deaths last year is a kick in the teeth to delivery workers and to their friends, their colleagues, their families and our community. It is in the midst of their grief that they took the courageous action to step up and make their voices heard. And how did Uber Eats respond? They made it abundantly clear, 'We are not responsible for you, and if you speak out your account will be deactivated.' This is the desperate action of a company which is afraid that its paper-thin argument that its workers are not employee-like will soon be subject either to judicial decision or regulatory response.

Last year, a case that it was 'merely connecting people' was torn apart by the justices presiding over the legal case. One of the justices presiding made a number of telling comments in cross-examining and commenting on Uber Eats' evidence:

Everybody knows what function Uber plays. The restaurant's function is to prepare the food. Uber's function is to deliver the food; isn't that right?

In response to the legal arguments prepared by Uber to that kind of question, another justice said further:

Well, we actually operate in the real world here. Judgements are practical things, especially in this context. This is not a debating club.

Of course, afraid of the implications of losing, Uber was left with no choice but to settle the case. They chose to settle the case and now are redoing their business model in an attempt to avoid any future judicial decision that might see workers treated with employee-like rights. Heaven forbid—paid the minimum wage, the right to collective bargaining for their labour and freedom to speak out on issues that matter to them and to the workforce.

But who could be surprised by Uber's actions? This is a company that has been caught in the past spying on its clients—often on politicians or activist journalists—and which has been subject to lawsuits for lying to its drivers about rates of pay or for underpaying them entirely. It is one in which its corporate offices have been revealed as hotbeds of sexual harassment and discrimination.

Uber's decision comes at a time of great change for this industry. Australia's largest states are moving towards regulation. This week we heard that while the federal government defers it, the federal Labor Party is committed to regulating this Wild West industry. I want the workers in the gig economy to know that they have a friend in federal Labor. These workers are making ends meet while at the mercy of uncountable algorithms driven by reckless greed, and they deserve better from the federal government. Why don't they deserve better safety at work? Why don't they deserve the dignity in retirement afforded them through superannuation? Why don't they deserve the ability to bargain collectively and organise for their rights and their conditions? What is so special about being employed by an app that you are denied the basic rights of any worker? What is so special about the gig economy—so innovative—that this government thinks that these workers deserve nothing?

The future of work is here right now. What is happening in food delivery and transport is already happening in aged care and in the NDIS—at times aided, abetted and funded by the government departments overseeing these industries. There is not a corner of the Australian or global workforce that cannot be disrupted by models like those pushed by Uber Eats. If we do not begin to regulate now and establish fair and safe rates of pay, conditions that afford dignity and rights to organise collectively then the present and future of work will remain bleak.