Takeaway delivery firm, Deliveroo has made a request for the Government to change the law on workers’ rights to enable the company to give riders employee benefits.
The company submitted a response to the government’s review of the gig economy, in which Deliveroo states that the current law prevents it from offering the rightful benefits such as sick pay.
Workers at Deliveroo are classed as ‘Self-employed’ which disrupts them from working rights like paid annual leave, maternity or paternity leave, national minimum wage and more.
Deliveroo says it is more than happy to provide its employees with these benefits if laws are changed. The delivery firm requests that companies such as itself and Uber should also receive the benefits along with their flexible working hours.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Will Shu, Deliveroo founder said: “We want to combine full flexibility with real security and we are calling for the law to be updated so we are able to offer both. We strongly believe this is not a zero-sum game.”
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The company is also calling for a new category of worker to be created by law, as offering these benefits with their current employment status is likely to remove the provided flexibility.
In the submission, Deliveroo wrote: “We believe everyone-regardless of their type of contract-is entitled to certain benefits, but we are constrained in offering these at the moment.
“Our riders are ‘self-employed.’ This gives them full flexibility- but the quid pro quo is that they are not entitled to certain benefits. In short, there is currently a trade-off between flexibility and security and we want to play our part in overcoming this divide.”
The only benefits that Deliveroo workers currently receive is the flexibility to work for other employers and log in for work whenever they want, but other employee entitlements are limited. Deliveroo does not want to rob workers of this flexibility, but instead give them more benefits by law.
