A former Uber Eats delivery driver is suing the food delivery giant over unfair dismissal following her alleged sacking for arriving to a job 10 minutes late.
The driver, Amita Gupta, claims that she has also been underpaid by Uber Eats. She says that she worked 96 hours but spent most of the time waiting for order to be placed on the app.
She lost he case on August 23 when the Fair Work Commission classified her as a contractor and not an employee. She has appealed this decision and if successful Uber would need to pay its workers more.
Her case has gained the interest of the Transport Workers Union who has chosen to represent her, stating that they believe “Uber Eats is deliberately misclassifying its workers” in order to pay them less and deny workers rights.
However, in the original decision the Fair Work Commission took into account that Ms Gupta had, in the time she worked, rejected over 550 delivery jobs she didn’t want to do and cancelled another 240 job after she had already accepted them.
At a press conference, Ms Gupta’s husband, who is also a deliver driver, said that Uber Eats’ behaviour was tantamount to “slavery in modern world Australia”.
