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PB July-August 2023 July-August 2023 15
Fast-food delivery
compnies Deliveroo nd
Jus E re dependen
in Irelnd on illegl
lbour h explois
inernionl sudens
who risk deporion by
working for hem
The inescpble logic of he
fs-food delivery plforms
insisence h heir riders
re self-employed is h
Smp 2 vis holders
cnno leglly be Uber Es,
Deliveroo or Jus E riders
T
he liveried bicyclists who zip past,
delivering fast food, are probably
working illegally.
The fast-food delivery platforms
operating in Ireland such as
Deliveroo and Just Eat are so dependent on
illegal labour to eect deliveries that flouting
Irish immigration and employment law is at
the very heart of their business model. These
companies are aware of the practices, but,
rather than enforce compliance with existing
law, and, for that matter, the terms of their
own service contracts, Deliveroo, in particular,
in a remarkable manifestation of arrogance,
has actually lobbied intensively to have Irish
employment law changed.
Many of the problems with the gig economy
are well rehearsed: exploitative rates of pay;
widespread tax non-compliance; dangerous
working conditions; and a lack of the social
protections that are due to most other workers.
The platform companies actively avoid their
responsibilities to their workers by
categorising riders as self-employed. This
categorisation has been challenged across
Europe with varying degrees of success as
dierences in national legislation make the
self-employment categorisation valid in some
countries (UK and Ireland), but unlawful in
others (Spain, Italy and the Netherlands).
However, Stamp 2 visas holders - students
from non-EU/EEA countries attending
approved full-time English-language or
NEWS
DeliverOhOh
By J Vivian Cooke
third-level courses – are only allowed to
engage in casual employment for less than 20
hours per week during college terms and for
no more than 40 hours per week outside of
college terms. Their visa conditions are
explicit: they are not permitted to engage in
business or trade. It is illegal for Stamp 2 visa
holders to be self-employed.
The inescapable logic of the fast-food
delivery platforms insisting that their riders
are self-employed is that Stamp 2 visa holders
cannot legally be Deliveroo, Just Eat or
UberEats riders.
Deliveroo, for one, acknowledges as much
in a series of documents released to Village
Magazine under a Freedom of Information
request. In May 2021, Deliveroo’s Country
Manager, Paddy Quinlan, wrote to the Minister
responsible, Leo Varadkar, looking to change
international students’ working permissions
because “It is increasingly clear that the law
prohibiting Stamp 2 visa holders from being
self-employed has presented a significant
challenge for international students”. When
Deliveroo CEO, Will Shu, met Varadkar later
that month, these illegal work practices were
one of the items that featured prominently on
their agenda; while the Department of
Enterprise’s records show that, at a further
meeting about the topic with Minister Damien
English on 18 October 2021, “They [Deliveroo]
also indicated that they had contacted the
Minister for Justice regarding limitations
imposed regarding working hours under
certain visa permission categories”.
Yet the use of illegal labour in the industry
is widespread and is facilitated by how
Deliveroo designs and operates its rider Apps.
Prospective platform riders must produce
documents confirming their identity and their
legal entitlement to work before they are
accepted as riders. However, lacking the
requisite permissions and paperwork, Stamp
2 visa holders cannot sign up to be riders
using their own identities. However, a feature
of Deliveroo and Just Eat’s rider Apps is that
approved riders are allowed to use their
profiles to appoint another person to complete
the account holder’s deliveries.
Nevertheless, neither Just Eat nor Deliveroo
asks to see or check the substitute riders’
documents when profile owners substitute
them.
Instead, Deliveroo warns its account
holders that “When working with a substitute
it’s your responsibility to check they have
valid right to work in Ireland. This includes a
valid Irish or EU passport, or the relevant
visas. There are often conditions to working
with visas, for example, people on Stamp 2
(student) visas are not eligible to work with
Deliveroo”.
16 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 17
Hypocritically it notes the gravity of
breaking immigration law: “Failing to carry out
Right to Work checks can be considered a
criminal oence with sanctions of up to 5
years of imprisonment and a fine up to
€250,000, it eschews all responsibility for
addressing the consequences”. This is one of
the most cynical policies Village has seen.
Within the tightly knit foreign-student
community sometimes it is a matter of using
a qualifying friend’s or relation’s profile.
However, for many others, a shadow market
has arisen in which valid profile owners
unlawfully rent out their Deliveroo or Just Eat
rider profiles to migrants who are not legally
permitted to undertake self-employed work
and charge them up to €100 per week for the
privilege of working in miserable conditions
for miserly fees.
Deliveroo self-servingly facilitates this
illegal practice by allowing account-holders to
change the details of the receiving bank
account into which rider fees are remitted.
This allows fees to be paid directly into the
substitute riders’ bank accounts. However,
some profile owners insist that substitute
riders’ fees are paid to the profile owner’s
bank account and sometimes the fees earned
are withheld from the substitute. In such
situations, the rider has very little recourse as
reporting the theft exposes them to the risk of
being deported for breaching the conditions
of their visa.
Moreover, Deliveroo’s sign-up page for
riders on its Irish website is available in
English and in Portuguese. Pointedly, the
version of the Portuguese translation oered
is the Brazilian vernacular rather than the
European version. Only a very small proportion
of Brazilians resident in Ireland have the legal
entitlement to engage in self-employed work.
The choice of vernacular oered is consistent
with what Quinlan noted: “is a significant
desire among Stamp 2 visa holders for work
as Deliveroo riders”.
There can be no doubt that the practice is
endemic. It is not possible to quantify
precisely the extent of the practice because
participants are predictably reluctant to admit
that they work in breach of their visa
conditions. Indeed, exact figures of the total
number of people working as riders, either
lawfully or unlawfully, can only be estimated:
in a statement to Village Magazine, the
Revenue Commissioners noted that “It is not
possible to provide a definitive figure for the
number of food delivery drivers operating in
Ireland as trade descriptions on income tax
returns are recorded using ‘free text’ and do
not therefore provide for systematic grouping”.
However, “In February this year, the
Commissioners issued Level 1 Compliance
Intervention notices to over 400 individuals
engaged in the food delivery sector advising
them to complete an income tax return in order
to regularise their tax position” which
confirms Revenue’s previously publicly
expressed dissatisfaction with the level of
non-compliance in the sector.
The dierent international student groups
and networks to which Village spoke had 500
– 800 members each, but it is important to
realise that only a small proportion of Ireland’s
transient international student body that are
working in breach of their visa conditions will
have the opportunity or inclination to become
involved in representative associations.
Equally, the results of interviewing riders
on an anonymous basis at various pick-up
points in Dublin’s city centre and suburban
locations, while not definitive, is certainly
suggestive of the extent of the practice. Of
123 riders approached, 98 were Stamp 2 visa
holders who were using someone else’s rider
profile and each knew many other people
working under similar pretences. This survey
methodology underestimates the prevalence
of illegal working as riders working in breach
of their visa conditions will be reluctant to
admit this or participate in a survey.
Deliveroo has been quick to adapt its App
when it sees a commercial need. It moved
swiftly its programme to prevent third-party
rider support Apps such as Rodeo from
obtaining Deliveroo information and it is
prioritising rider face-recognition to prevent
the company from being defrauded. It would
be a straightforward matter to require
substitute riders to provide the same proofs
of identity and entitlement to work, as the
account holders. It is simply a matter that
Deliveroo is not interested in fixing.
Whereas Just Eat operates a flexible delivery
model that uses directly-employed riders,
third-party courier companies, as well as self-
employed riders, in dierent markets, in
Ireland it relies only on riders who are
categorised as self-employed. Just Eat notes
in its 2022 Annual Report that “Our employed
courier model, generally in use in mainland
Europe and Israel, provides couriers with
valuable benefits, such as training, holiday
pay, social security, insurance, pension, and
sick leave”. These benefits are not extended
to its riders in Ireland.
By contrast, Deliveroo’s business, across all
the markets in which it operates, is based
entirely on gig self-employment: “our rider
model [categorising riders as self-employed]
is critical to our long-term profitability and our
ability to compete eectively in each of our
markets”. Such is the significance of this
continued treatment of their workers that
Deliveroo’s most recent published Annual
Report, (2022), assesses that: “Our rider
Telling a tale of the
multinational’s relationships
with Ireland and its laws,
Deliveroo’s policy seems to
be to ask for forgiveness
rather than for permission
DoneDel notice of June 2023 dvertising Deliveroo nd Just Et rider ccounts for blck-
mrket rent
16 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 17
model continues to be a principal risk for the
Group” to such an extent that “our business
would be adversely aected if our rider model
or approach to rider status and our operating
practices were successfully challenged or if
changes in law required us to reclassify our
riders as employees including with
retrospective eect”.
The company’s attitude is that it is better to
ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
Deliveroo has adopted a strategy of
persevering with its self-employment model
even when this model is opposed by its
workers or is in breach of employment law.
Deliveroo’s strategy is to deal with the
consequences of being found to have broken
employment law instead of complying with it.
In its annual accounts it anticipates regulatory
and judicial costs of breaching employment
categorisation to be in the range of £50 million
to £200 million.
Such financial provision is prudent given
that an Italian court imposed a dramatic initial
fine of €730 million on the fast-food delivery
industry in February 2021. Subsequently,
Italian authorities reduced the penalty
Deliveroo had to pay to €15,700 - which was
separate from the millions in compensation
paid to individual riders. Similarly, on 19 April
2022, a French court imposed the maximum
fine allowable of €375,000 on the company
and, in the same judgment, two Deliveroo
managers were fined and were each given one
year’s suspended jail sentences.
Deliveroo cannot survive if it is unable to
treat its riders as self-employed. As a result,
the company withheld its own oer of better
protections and conditions to its Irish riders,
because, as a civil service commentary on its
August 2019 written submission noted: “their
concern is that the more benefits they confer
on riders, the more likely it is that the
Department will find them to be employees
rather than self-employed”.
Deliveroo’s international corporate strategy
is to pre-empt adverse regulatory or judicial
interventions by extensive lobbying for
changes to employment law. As its Annual
Report euphemistically notes: “Deliveroo
constructively engages with regulators and
policy makers on a range of issues in all of our
markets”. Deliveroo has made numerous
Although the Department of Social
Protection officially rejected Deliveroo’s
‘Charter for Flexible and Secure Work’ on the
grounds that: “There is no clear benefit in
creating a third category of worker in Ireland
which could arguably constitute an
undermining of the existing safety net of
employment rights”; a number of government
parliamentarians have endorsed this
discredited idea. The Deliveroo proposal
complement’s Fine Gael’s policy of “making
work pay and encouraging self-employment
and entrepreneurship so as not to interfere in
commercial relationships beyond what is
necessar y”.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael’s embarrassing
pliancy to the demands of tech multinationals
is fully evident in Shu’s expression of
appreciation for: “your [Varadkar’s] comments
in the meeting that your intent is not to
undermine the ability of businesses like
Deliveroo to operate, which I know is
welcomed by our company as well as by our
riders and restaurant partners”.
Until this government summons the political
will to enforce Irish law, vulnerable and
struggling migrants will be trapped in an
exploitative shadow economy. Platform
companies continue to cut rider fees and, from
this reducing income, international students
must pay a weekly ‘rent’ to profile owners.
Because of their precarious immigration
status, these riders are excluded from the
legitimate economy and feel that they have no
recourse to legal protections.
When he was Minister for Enterprise, Leo
Varadkar repeatedly publicly encouraged the
growth of the gig economy in Ireland while at
the same time he was remarkably complacent
in tackling the illegal practices which thrive
on these platforms. But the protection of
vulnerable riders should not be a matter of
dogmatic ideology.
Deliveroo.ie rider sign-up (June 2023) offering rnslion ino he Brzilin version of
Poruguese, showing who i’s rgeing
There is: “lile ppeie for wh ppers
o be Deliveroo’s proposed l cre nd
muddied pproch o employmen righs. . .
The Deprmen considers h complince
wih he curren legislion, rher hn
he creion of new legislion nd new
cegories of worker, is preferble”
direct representations to the government and,
since 2019, has paid lobbying firm, Hume
Brophy, to pepper parliamentarians across the
political spectrum with policy and position
papers, but the results have been mixed.
The civil service appears largely
unpersuaded by the company’s entreaties. An
ocial briefing note observed that there is
“little appetite for what appears to be
Deliveroo’s proposed à la carte and muddied
approach to employment rights...The
Department considers that compliance with
the current legislation, rather than the
creation of new legislation and new categories
of worker, is preferable”.
In its submission to the Commission on
Taxation and Welfare and in testimony to
Oireachtas committees, Revenue has
expressed its dissatisfaction with how taxes
on rider fees are declared, proposing instead
that Deliveroo should combat widespread
non-compliance by withholding income tax
from its rider payments.
An internal Departmental briefing paper to
Leo Varadkar made it clear that: “To consider
allowing Student Stamp 2 holders to become
self-employed would move them out of Stamp
2 conditions altogether” [and that] “Providing
a right to become self-employed for any one
cohort will also result in similar requests from
other groups”.
