Delivery workers who take jobs through apps will be covered by an enforceable minimum hourly rate from Monday, under the first minimum standards order the Fair Work Commission has issued.
The rate depends on what the worker rides or drives. Bicycles and e-bikes attract $31.30 an hour, motorcycles $31.80, and cars $32.00. The national minimum wage for employees is $26.44 an hour.
The order covers what the legislation calls employee-like workers: people engaged through a digital labour platform to collect food, drinks, alcohol or groceries from a business and deliver them to a customer. Vehicles with a carrying capacity above one tonne fall outside it. Reuters reported the order will cover about 250,000 workers.
The Transport Workers' Union applied for the order. Under the 2024 Closing Loopholes reforms, only a registered union can start the process, and the Commission negotiated the terms with platforms including Uber Eats and DoorDash before finalising them.
Alongside the pay floor, platforms must arrange and pay for a reasonable minimum level of personal accident insurance covering workers injured on the job. The order also sets requirements on information statements given to new workers, vehicle repair and registration expenses, record keeping, consultation before significant changes, workplace delegate rights and dispute resolution.
The category the workers now sit in is narrower than employment, and deliberately so. The legislation bars the Commission from writing rosters or overtime into these orders. There are no penalty rates and no minimum shift length. Time spent logged on waiting for an offer is not paid; the order covers waiting only after a job has been accepted, while the rider is at the restaurant. Compulsory third party vehicle insurance remains the worker's own cost.
The result is a floor on the hour worked rather than the set of conditions an employee doing comparable work would receive. A delivery driver on a payroll gets leave, superannuation and a roster. A delivery worker under this order gets a rate, insurance and a dispute process, and keeps the contractor status the platforms built their operating model around.
Whether the floor binds in practice depends on how the hour is counted. Platform pay has historically been calculated per delivery, and the gap between engaged time and logged-on time is where the argument over gig earnings has sat for a decade.
Further applications are before the Commission for orders covering other last mile delivery workers and road transport contractors. This one takes effect on Monday 17 August.
