A class action seeks tens of millions of dollars to compensate owner-drivers for lost work
Private contractor group Independent Contractors Australia (ICA) is facilitating a class action lawsuit to compensate owner-drivers who lost work during the failed period of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal’s Contractor Driver Minimum Payments Road Safety Remuneration Order 2016 (RSRO).
According to the body, the action hopes to rectify the overall losses “in the tens of millions of dollars” felt by owner operators.
“It’s great that the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal was abolished,” the ICA says.
“But we are aware that thousands of owner-drivers suffered substantial financial losses over the last few months because of the RSRT. For many, these losses continue.”
Being one of the leading voices in the dismissal of the RSRT and the RSRO, the ICA took the fight to the High Court in April citing the Whitlam Government’s Prices Justification Act 1973-1974, and the referendum rejecting federal control over pricing that led to it, against the tribunal.
While the ICA is no longer running a High Court challenge, with the coalition government removing the tribunal and the 2016 RSRO in mid-April, it has turned its attention to compensation – but only as a connecting entity.
The class action is lawyer-driven, the ICA says, with the lawyers running the case and the litigant funders paying the costs.
“If you joined the action, you would receive an undertaking from the lawyers that there would be no costs to you, even if the action was not successful,” the body says.
“You would be able to withdraw from the action at any time if you wanted, at no risk to you.”
The action requires an ICA membership, which it says is priced at $55, and the filling out of an application questionnaire.
The body says it “not be part of the action, is not running the action, and will not receive any money if the action is successful,” but is “connecting you to this opportunity to recover losses as part of our service to our members.”
“The questionnaire will go to the lawyers who will contact you and follow up with you from there,” the ICA says.
“They will explain everything.”
The federal government has already announced an inquiry into the RSRT in an effort to understand the full extent of the RSRO’s damage to the industry.
The Labor party, who instigated the tribunal with the help of a few independents, has confirmed its intension to resuscitate the concept should it be re-elected in July.
Further details on the arrangement and the application process are available here.