Uber has reached an agreement after years of legal battles to reshape Australia’s “gig economy” following the publication of troubling survey results.
Uber has reached an agreement with a powerful Australian union after years of legal battles, campaigns and negotiations that will offer more protections to 100,000 drivers and food distributors.
The Transportation Workers Union, one of Uber’s most vocal critics, reached an agreement with the travel giant shared on Tuesday afternoon, with both sides supporting minimum standards for all workers in the economy gig and the right to unionize.
In a joint statement, Uber and the union said they also support the creation of an independent body by the Australian government to create industry-wide standards.
The “concert economy,” which uses temporary independent contractors for short-term tasks, has grown rapidly since Uber’s launch in 2009 and is being promoted as a flexible way for people to make money without the limitations of a job in full time.
But there has been a growing backlash in Australia over the conditions and dangers facing concert workers, especially after a gang of dead delivery drivers during the Covid-19 pandemic when demand rose.
A 2020 survey by the Transport Workers Union found that 73% of food delivery drivers were concerned about “being seriously injured or dying at work”, although safety concerns are not limited to Australia or Uber .
In the United States, according to advocacy group Gig Workers Rising, more than 50 drivers working for companies like Uber and Lyft have been killed at work since 2017.
An Australian court ruled last week that murdered worker Xiaojun Chen, who died at work in 2020 while working for the Hungry Panda food delivery service, was an employee, not a contractor.
His family received compensation of A $ 830,000 (US $ 573,000), which is believed to have been the first of its kind for a concert worker in Australia.
Uber CEO Dom Taylor admitted that the company and the union “may not look like obvious allies”, but the agreement reached between the two “will improve worker protections”.
“We want to see a level playing field for the industry and preserve the flexibility that concert workers value most,” he said.
The agreement comes in the wake of the Australian Labor Party elections in May, which has previously supported reforms to protect workers from gigs.