After years of legal battle, the Supreme Court of Great Britain issued a ruling: Deliveroo employees have no rights to a collective agreement with the employer because they are not its employees.
The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) already sought to create a collective agreement for its members at Deliveroo in 2016. When the British platform refused, the IWGB launched a legal battle. The case went through several instances, with the Supreme Court at the end.
The ruling puts the UK at odds with most courts across Europe, which have tended to recognize that suppliers are employees. For example, the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed this right in the case of Deliveroo last year.
The ruling creates a division in British jurisprudence between suppliers and platform drivers – the Supreme Court found in 2021 that Uber drivers are employees.
A representative of IWGB commented on the judgment: – The Supreme Court’s ruling is a disappointment after years spent in legal battles to secure minimum labor rights of suppliers. As a union, we cannot accept that thousands of workers are expected to work without key protections such as the right to collective bargaining, and we will continue to fight for this case using all the means at our disposal, including considering our options under international law.
Deliveroo, “the most protested platform in the world”, is known for the most extreme labor exploitation among Internet Platforms.