12 Organisations tell Just Eat, Uber, and Deliveroo: Time to Deliver Answers
Today Privacy International, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Amnesty International and 9 more unions and NGOs are calling on Deliveroo, Uber, and Just Eat Takeaway to protect their workers.
News & Analysis
Post date
13th January 2025
Together 12 organisations, including trade unions and NGOs across the EU and the UK, are asking Deliveroo, Uber, and Just Eat Takeaway to take serious steps to significantly improve the transparency and explainability around the algorithms they use to manage their workforce.
These platforms rely heavily on the use of algorithms to manage many aspect of their workers employment, from account creation, to account suspension to how much workers get paid. Yet, it’s almost impossible for workers to know how those decisions are made, and even harder to try and challenge those. Increasing the transparency and explainability of their algorithms can change that, giving workers the due autonomy and dignity they deserve.
To that end, we believe an responsible employer should:
1. Maintain a public register of the algorithms used to manage workers
This is key to allow workers to understand what algorithms they could be subjected to, and begin to address the concerning information asymmetry.
This should allow workers to challenge decisions that might be unfair or flawed, help workers better understand the decisions that are impacting them and meet the expectations of the companies they work for.
3. Allow workers, their representatives and public interest groups to test how the algorithms work
Algorithms can be complex, and that complexity means that they can lead to results that are difficult to understand and create systemic discrimination. Allowing workers and their representatives to test them will help to more deeply understand the impact on those affected by algorithms, including potential harms that they may cause, and thereby hold opaque and unfair decision-making to account.
Giving people a basic understanding of how they’re being managed, what to look out for, even how to do well doesn’t seem too much to ask to us. And yet, over recent years we’ve seen serious abuses of power from these platforms, with workers being left in the dark about the jobs they rely on to feed their families.
See our dedicated page monitoring examples of abuses and poor behaviours with regards to algorithmic management:
Key Resources
This isn’t a new area for PI, we’ve been concerned about this kind of ‘black box’ management for years, and the drivers we’ve spoken to in the past have all struggled with the opacity they faced at Uber. One driver even won a settlement from Uber after being deactivated because of dubious facial recognition and inadequate human review processes.
Pa's story: how a facial recognition system potentially failed to recognise a driver of colour and may have cost him his job
Update: Pa has since won a settlement from Uber
Please note the views expressed in the video are interviewee's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of PI.
Pa used to work for Uber. After some time, Uber started asking him to submit a picture of himself to the platform to confirm it was indeed
Pa won a settlement from Uber after his account was deactivated
These companies promise their investors and the public a lot, but they rarely live up to the rhetoric.
Respecting workers through transparency
Workers deserve better. They deserve the respect that these platforms make noise about promising them. They definitely deserve to be given the transparency and information to understand the decisions these platforms make that are affecting them, particularly when it comes to the working hours and pay that are vital to their livelihoods.
Share
You can help make this happen by sharing this campaign and tagging Delivery, Uber Eats and Just Eat so that they cannot ignore this call for change.
Click to share on the below platforms or copy and paste:
It's #TimetoDeliverAnswers on algorithmic transparency @JustEatTakeaway, @Deliveroo, and @UberEats https://pvcy.org/deliveranswers
Our campaign