Doordash warns IR laws will hit consumers

Food delivery platform warns Labor’s workplace relations changes will force up delivery charges by more than 200 per cent.

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has said it would be up to the Fair Work Commission to decide whether penalty rates would be included. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Food delivery platform Doordash has warned Labor’s industrial relations changes will force up delivery charges for consumers by more than 200 per cent as leading barrister Stuart Wood finds the overhaul will cause cuts to take-home pay and fewer casual jobs.

A day after Uber claimed ridesharing prices for passengers would jump by 60 per cent and delivery fees by 85 per cent under the government’s proposed employee-like conditions for gig workers, Doordash calculated the average delivery cost could rise by over 210 per cent, assuming the full-time and part-time award rates were applied.

Doordash said delivery charges could increase by more than 260 per cent if the award casual rate was applied. The modelling is based on having to pay workers minimum pay, superannuation, leave entitlements, penalty rates and allowances such as fuel.

Labor’s Closing Loopholes Bill does not specifically refer to penalty rates as a proposed minimum standard for employee-like workers on digital platforms.

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has said it would be up to the Fair Work Commission to decide whether penalty rates would be included.

In a submission to the Senate inquiry into the bill, Doordash calls for penalty rates and online time – the period when a platform worker is on the app and available to view offers to complete delivery requests but otherwise not actively performing work – explicitly excluded from any minimum standards.

Doordash, which refers to its workers as “dashers”, said the bill “does exactly what dashers have asked the government not to do – turns them into employees in everything but name … by giving unprecedented power to the Fair Work Commission to set minimum standards beyond even what occurs in employment”.

Doordash general manager Australia, New Zealand and Canada Rebecca Burrows said the bill “in its current form falls short of the promises made to platforms and most importantly to workers themselves”.

Commissioned by the Business Council of Australia to review the bill’s key elements, Mr Wood said the proposed new definition of casual employment would be unworkable

“I expect that many employers will decide to structure their workforce so casual employment is no longer a choice for employees. They’ll only be left with inflexible full- and part-time employment,” he wrote.

“Alternatively, casual employment might be reduced to an unattractive offering for employees that is characterised, from the get-go, by irregular shifts, no representations about any certainty of shifts, and short-term employment to mitigate as much as possible any risk of the employment drifting into something more permanent.”

Mr Wood said Mr Burke stated in his second reading speech that the intent of the casual employment amendments was to give casuals a “pathway to secure work” by closing loopholes”.

“That pathway already exists in the current casual conversion provisions,” Mr Wood said.

“Far from closing a loophole, it’s far more likely it will close down casual employment per se for many.”