In a submission filed before the Fair Work Commission,Deliveroo is relying on a High Court decision that ruled last month two truck drivers who worked for the same business for 40 years were not employees,as they were dictated by the terms of the contract they signed.
“Ultimately,Deliveroo has always strongly submitted that the Full Bench[of the commission]
ought to conclude that Mr Franco was not an employee of Deliveroo,” the submission reads,adding the High Court judgment made theirs “unmistakably the correct characterisation of the relationship between Mr Franco and Deliveroo.”
The High Court allowed the appeal of ZG Operations after the Federal Court last year found the “substance and reality” of the decades-long relationship between the company and drivers Martin Jamsek and Robert Whitby was one of employment.
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“The respondents were not employed by the company. They were members of partnerships which carried on the business of providing delivery services to the company,” High Court Chief Justice Susan Kiefel,Justice Patrick Keane and Justice James Edelman found jointly.
Deliveroo argues its former rider Mr Franco wasn’t employed because he was running his own business,wasn’t personally required to perform the delivery services,could simultaneously work for their competitors,and supplied the critical equipment required,among other tenets of its argument.
Deliveroo’s Australian chief executive Ed McManus toldThe Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age,the freedom of riders to work across multiple platforms was important for participants in the industry,with the market able to compete for riders with incentives such as income protection for illness.