By Christine Chen
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australian food delivery workers are on course to gain minimum pay levels after Uber Eats and DoorDash struck a deal with the country’s transport union that is being hailed as a world first.
Under a draft agreement released on Tuesday, their workers would earn at least A$31.30 ($20.19) per hour. That represents an increase of about 25% for some couriers who are paid per delivery and not how long they have worked.
The deal would put them on par with the minimum wage earned by Australian casual workers.
If approved by the Fair Work Commission, the agreement will go into effect next July.
“For too long gig workers fell through the cracks,” Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth said in a statement.
“We didn’t think it was fair that these workers missed out on minimum standards, and had to rely on tips to survive. That’s not the Australian way.”
The agreement comes after Australia’s centre-left government passed a law last year that defined gig workers as “employee-like” workers and gave them the right to negotiate minimum pay and conditions.
Uber Eats and DoorDash are the main players in the Australian food delivery market, with Sydney-founded app Menulog set to close local operations at the end of November.
The U.S. companies must also take out accident insurance for their workers, give them access to their records and provide them with more details about each delivery job, according to the agreement.
“It is a world first set of conditions for gig workers performing this work, and it will result in life-transforming wage increases,” Michael Kaine, national secretary of the Transport Workers’ Union, told a news conference.
“Until this point in time and even as we speak today, there are swathes of workers in the gig economy that are being paid below the minimum national wage.”
Utsav Bhattarai, a Canberra food delivery worker, told the same news conference he had worked through illness and dangerous weather to pay the bills.
“Just one more order, one more hour, just need to keep going – that’s the condition that these drivers were living under,” he said.
“The change that we’re seeing now, it’s massive.”
Ed Kitchen, Uber Eats managing director for Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement the agreement was a “meaningful step towards building modern laws for modern forms of work” and gave delivery workers protection, security and flexibility.
($1 = 1.5506 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Christine Chen in Sydney; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
