In the last month, both Deliveroo and Uber Eats announced they have fired workers from their platforms for using substitutes who failed to provide valid right-to-work documents. Along with Just Eat, these platforms have also introduced stricter checks on riders and substitutes including a direct registration process, daily identity verification and additional device checks. These headline-grabbing announcements allow platforms to launder their image and feign taking action, while obscuring unfair dismissals, unreliable technology and abhorrent racist assumptions.
Delivery platforms, government and parts of the media have long been fueling fear and suspicion towards migrant delivery workers. In May 2024, we responded to the cynical pre-election announcement that delivery companies would work with the then-Conservative government to ‘clamp down’ on undocumented workers using the platforms. In the aftermath, communities saw an increase in police raids targeting areas with high numbers of delivery workers and the new Labour government have ramped up their rhetoric and operations on “illegal working”, boasting that raids and arrests have increased by 38%.
A press release between the major delivery platforms and the previous government invoked the idea that when the person delivering your food is not the same person named on the app, they must be an undocumented migrant; this is now a regular talking point in public discourse. The conclusion the public are being asked to make is that unnamed delivery workers are an inherent danger and are by default criminal and worthy of suspicion.
We previously pointed out that Deliveroo, along with Just Eat, Uber Eats and other major delivery platforms, have always known that their substitution feature – the ability to loan one’s account to another rider – has lower barriers to entry as a registered rider may by informal agreement ‘loan’ the use of their account to another non-registered rider.
The major delivery apps actively promote and encourage the use of substitution primarily as a means to circumvent workers’ demands for employment status, made evident when Deliveroo introduced the feature in response to riders seeking union recognition in 2018..
Substitution bolsters platforms’ claim that riders are self-employed workers who can subcontract their work, and obscures the reality that riders are far closer to employed workers subject to very strict performance and behavioural management. In addition, substitution also facilitates access to a low-paid, underprotected, immigrant labour force, upon which the platform economy depends.
Prior to recent announcements, the process for substitution across all apps was vague and placed the burden of checking right-to-work documents on the rider named on the account. UberEats still has live pages on their website with contradictory information, variously telling riders to register the use of a substitute within either 24 or 48 hours of their first delivery, while another page suggests they don’t need to report this at all. Regardless of the exact requirements, all the platforms had a hands-off approach to giving workers guidance on this issue. Processes were not adequately signposted to workers upon signing up or while they work, and they were given very little guidance on how to check the documents themselves.
In 2023, a worker we supported for unfair dismissal attempted to get clear and specific answers from Deliveroo on how to use a substitute and check their eligibility but, as can be seen in the image, Deliveroo sidestepped their responsibility.
Deliveroo have only recently made it a requirement to register any substitutes prior to them performing their first delivery, and for the substitutes to upload their documents directly for verification.
The announcements from Uber Eats and Deliveroo that they have removed “thousands” of workers since April 2024 is little more than theatre, as they have only fired verified riders for using substitutes during a time where, by their own admission in agreeing to government demands to “crack down on illegal working”, the process for verification was inadequate.
If platforms were serious about any alleged risk from substitution, they could remove the feature altogether as they have done in other regions. Substitution is no longer allowed on the Deliveroo app in Hong Kong in order to “improve the security of [the] delivery network and prevent unauthorised access to delivery accounts”. Perhaps Deliveroo fears that a similar change in the UK would leave them vulnerable to a challenge from workers for full employment protection.
Mass robo-firings awash with undue process and abuse of rights
We have exposed that both private hire and delivery apps use wide-reaching automated decision-making systems to fire workers. The cases won in court and those we continue to challenge in our daily casework demonstrate that these instantaneous decisions are rife with error and data rights violations, the process for appealing a decision is complex and discouraging, and the human reviews, intended to safeguard an individual’s data protection rights, are woefully inadequate to the point of non-existence.
Deliveroo claim new measures to “secure [their] platform” will include"direct right-to-work checks, a registration process, daily identity verification and now additional device checks for riders, including substitutes."
We have serious concerns about the utility of these measures and the increase in unfair automated dismissals workers will face. Many of the cases we handle concern errors in ID or other document verification. Workers are required to upload all documentation to the platform and periodically respond to real-time document and live selfie checks during the course of the day. These are processed by third-party software, such as Ubble, that checks for signs of alteration or attempts to match it with the record on file. However, in our experience these AI-powered systems frequently fail to generate a reliable conclusion. We have found them unable to contend with slanted or low resolution (but nevertheless legible) images, they do not have a margin for human error in uploading, and they regularly misidentify valid insurance providers’ logos, fonts and formats as alterations. If workers reach the maximum number of submission attempts, they find themselves automatically blocked from their account and receive a generic notification without any useful information about what exactly went wrong.
Companies argue their automated systems are used for fraud detection, necessary to secure their platform. Dismissals are justified to the worker on the 'evidence’ of the automated decision, giving it credibility and obscuring any error. However, far from objective technological truths, automated systems are in fact used for risk-calculation, a “probability score” is calculated and dismissals are based only on the likelihood that a document or image was invalid.
Workers are frequently frustrated in their attempts to challenge such decisions and the human reviewers often simply defer to it in a closed-loop of confirmation. It can take a worker months to get a proper review of their case despite being armed with mountains of evidence including certificates, receipts, statements from the insurance provider, and in one case, a letter from the Home Office attesting to a worker’s ID.
Deliveroo and Uber Eats have attempted to launder their image through these mass firings. They have not given any justification as to how they were able to identify the 105 workers in Deliveroo’s case or the alleged thousands on Uber Eats platform. Nor to how they identified them specifically to a rider without the right to work. We cannot know how many out of these thousands attempted to verify the substitute as best they could, how many attempted to upload documents, which documents were processed by third-party software, what the safety of any checks were, what personal data was processed to make an association with a substitute, what automated decision-making was used. Given the inability of companies to accurately process the documents uploaded to their verification systems, the previously informal process for using a substitute on Deliveroo’s platform, and the flagrant disregard for workers’ data protections or due process, these dismissals are on dangerously shaky grounds.
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