Uber calls for industry-wide earnings safety net for gig workers

Ride-share giant Uber is calling for standard, minimum rates of pay across Australia’s gig economy in a stance that will shift the debate over worker protections and shake up the industry.

Uber’s general manager of rides for Australia and New Zealand, Dom Taylor, said the rate should apply regardless of the platform for which a contractor worked, and injury insurance and review channels for those removed from an app should be universal.

Uber’s Dom Taylor is calling for a minimum rate of pay across the industry.Credit: Louise Kennerley

“We support an earnings safety net for gig workers that reflects the nature of independent work and preserves the flexibility that gig workers value,” Taylor said in an interview, emphasising it was “critical that this is an industry-wide reform”.

“With the way the gig economy works, someone can be working across a few apps at a time. You can’t have two signing up to the standards while the other two don’t.”

The government has pledged to introduce a range of reforms to regulate the gig economy, including empowering the Fair Work Commission to make orders for “employee-like” forms of work, so minimum rights and obligations can be created.

“For the absolute avoidance of doubt, we agree, we’re supportive,” Taylor said of Labor’s commitments, but he did not agree Uber’s workers were employee-like. “We’ve got a legacy industrial-relations system which has this dichotomy between contractor and employee.”

He referred to an Ipsos survey commissioned by Uber that found 93 per cent of drivers and riders wanted to retain the flexibility their status allowed, and two-thirds of the 1234 participants preferred to remain as independent contractors. Eighty-two per cent wanted to keep flexibility but with some benefits and protections associated with being an employee.

Uber offers riders and drivers insurance and income support that covers them for injuries that occur during the duration of a trip. Taylor said the minimum payment rate should reflect a standard unit of time, such as between acceptance and completion of a trip.

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke, who is charged with rolling out the government’s gig economy reforms, said it was not in the interests of any platform that there be a “complete race to the bottom”.

“They run the risk of another competitor just undercutting and their market share disappearing and, effectively, who have they helped?” Burke said. “It’s bad for the platforms, it’s bad for the workers and it’s not the sort of country that Australia is meant to be.”

A Deliveroo spokesperson said the food delivery service provided insurance, parental leave and sick pay to its riders but current industrial relations laws had “not enabled us to go as far as we would have liked” in providing benefits.

“We look forward to engaging with the new government on this important topic. If riders are accepted as self-employed, meaning they can maintain ultimate flexibility, we can start to discuss how we may provide the benefits they deserve,” the spokesperson said.

Morten Belling, the managing director of Menulog, which has been trialling a rider employee model paying a minimum wage, annual leave, superannuation and other entitlements, said the company would continue its application to Fair Work to create an appropriate industry award.

“Menulog supports a national approach to the introduction of any new measures for the on-demand food delivery platform industry and cannot state strongly enough the importance of genuine and deep consultation with the sector to ensure Australia can avoid the unintended economic consequences that regulation has had in other parts of the world,” he said.

Transport Workers’ Union national secretary Michael Kaine, who recently struck a deal with food delivery platform DoorDash for greater worker protections, said levelling the playing field was critical to ending the “deadly pressures” facing gig workers, following a spate of rider deaths in recent years.

“For too long, gig giants have raked in profits from a Wild West regulatory environment where practically anything goes,” Kaine said, adding the result was an industry “marred with horrific exploitation, rampant underpayment, life-altering injuries and shocking deaths”.

University of Sydney senior lecturer Alex Veen, an expert on the gig economy, said the tight labour market meant platforms such as Uber would be looking to lift standards to retain workers.

“It’s critical they have an adequate supply of workers on their platform at any particular time, given they can’t direct someone to work at 8 o’clock on a Friday, they need to provide incentives,” Veen said.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.