Recently an Uber driver had a first-time win in the Fair Work Commission. This might not seem relevant if you’re a truck driver or a transport operator, but in fact it’s highly relevant, not just because it’s a huge win against big companies turning more frequently to AI and automation, but because of the similar protections extended to owner drivers.
The driver’s name is Mohammad Shareef Hotak. He supports his mother and brother, works as both an Uber driver and doing security work up to 70 hours a week.
What we know is that 55 per cent of gig workers in Australia have experienced threatening or abusive behaviour. It’s a difficult job, with longer hours than ever because of successive rate cuts by Uber. That means driver often have to work late at night and increasingly are targets of alcohol-fuelled violence.
Mohammad was one of these victims one night – he told his passengers to stop using drugs in his car and they assaulted him. He did all the right things. He made a police report, he reported the incident to Uber.
But instead of getting assistance or any support, he was deactivated from Uber – kicked off the app, because the passengers made false complaints that he’d threatened them with a baseball bat. He was out of work for two months before Uber reactivated him – as it has done with many others to avoid any closer scrutiny.
The TWU took his case and argued that Uber should have to pay him for the time he was unable to access the app. And in a landmark victory the Fair Work Commission agreed, saying “the experience of being deactivated left Mr Hotak feeling extremely stressed, anxious and unsupported. Mr Hotak suffered a significant loss of income and financial hardship” and that his deactivation “was plainly unfair”.
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It criticised Uber’s practices as well, saying “Uber’s construction would produce unjust consequences” because it could just reactivate workers whenever it liked while there was a case on foot, and “deny meaningful redress for unfair deactivation”.
You can see how Uber’s version of things would lead to injustice. It would be able to continue doing what it’s always done: deactivate and reactivate workers whenever it wanted, without having to provide a valid reason, and without that worker being able to do absolutely anything about it. Without even the ability to speak to a human about their deactivation.
It was a landmark victory, the first of its kind, because of the strong TWU legal representation Mohammad had on his side. Behind the scenes the TWU legal team has been working to reactivate dozens of workers before reaching court. But where other workers without representation didn’t succeed in the Fair Work Commission, Mohammad had the backing of his union.
The laws won by this industry have turned back the tide against AI-fuelled systems, and this is a significant win in that fight. Owner drivers have similar protections now.
This didn’t happen by accident – when we fought for road transport reform, we knew this was going to be a crucial part of it, to ensure that when owner driver small businesses were calling for better standards, they couldn’t just have their contracts terminated in retribution.
Road transport businesses must now follow a Road Transport Industry Termination Code before they can terminate an owner driver’s contract. They can’t just arbitrarily end your contract to pay someone else cheaper.
These are important pieces of the puzzle. Mohammad Shareef Hotak’s win is an important win in the broader scheme of things, because it shows gig behemoths like Uber that now there are consequences – the laws have caught up and it cannot keep changing its practices to skirt our laws.
What we also know is that gig work is increasingly moving into areas like last mile delivery – Aldi has partnered with DoorDash, Uber workers are delivering groceries. That’s why another crucial piece of the puzzle is our ability, through the new laws, to create sets of standards to capture gig workers, and stop the race to the bottom. We’re doing that through two avenues: food delivery and last mile.
The laws passed by the Albanese government and fought for by the road transport industry have come just in the nick of time. The consultation phase of our first round of applications is over – before long we may have a new set of standards that even the biggest behemoths like Amazon must comply with.
And in the meantime, we’re getting to work with employers, industry associations and employer groups to work on the next round of applications. Because what’s clear is that there’s a lot to fix.
But Mohammad Shareef Hotak’s win shows us that we’ve got the tools now to chip away at the significant issues facing our industry, and if there are enough of us standing up for fairer road transport we can get there. Mohammad won because he was a TWU member, with the backing of 60,000 others, including 20,000 owner driver small businesses.
Owner drivers now have strong rights to contest unfair contract terminations now too. Join the TWU here to be part of it: www.twu.com.au/join.
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