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Hundreds of bicycle and motorbike delivery workers have suffered injuries in Victoria since the rise of on-demand food delivery services, with insecure “gig economy” contracts pushing them to take risks and leaving them unprotected if hurt on the job.
Victoria Police data for 2022 shows it attended crashes involving 143 injured motorbike or bicycle riders who were working at the time. The number jumped from 92 in 2016, following the boom in food delivery apps such as UberEats, DoorDash and Foodora. There were a total of 917 injuries over those seven years.
Police say 143 delivery riders were injured in Victoria in 2022.Credit: Jason South
Two food delivery workers have been killed in Melbourne since 2016, the police statistics show, including a previously unreported fatality involving a 29-year-old man whose bicycle collided with a van in Preston on November 18, 2022.
WorkSafe Victoria said it was not aware of that fatal crash, and it brings the number of known food delivery worker deaths in Australia since 2020 to 14.
Gig workers’ injuries are not always reported to authorities because they are engaged as independent contractors, rather than employees. It means the police statistics give a rare insight into how often such workers are being hurt on the job.
The 917 injuries also include postal delivery workers, with three Australia Post motorbike drivers killed in Victoria since 2016. The police data does not detail how severe the injuries were or if the riders were hospitalised.
Mugdha Deogade says injuries she suffered while working for Foodora in 2016 have had a life-altering impact.Credit: Jason South
Mugdha Deogade has never recovered from injuries she suffered during her first shift working for Foodora in April 2016, when a motorist hit her motorbike from behind in South Yarra, leaving her unconscious on the ground.
The RMIT engineering student said she had no choice but to return to work 2½ months later, despite not having recovered from a knee injury, because she was not compensated for her loss of income or medical treatment and was running out of money.
Unable to afford physiotherapy, Deogade’s injuries deteriorated until she developed debilitating knee and lower back pain in late 2020, which has forced her to stop work and study.
“My life has never been the same,” she said. “The way these companies treated us was inhumane – they didn’t care about our safety, we didn’t have the proper care, we had the poorest working conditions. The company just used us.”
Foodora shut its Australian operations in August 2018 amid landmark legal action from the Fair Work Ombudsman alleging it had underpaid riders by treating them as independent contractors rather than employees.
WorkSafe accepted a claim from Deogade for ongoing loss of income and some medical treatment in late 2021, after almost a year of her relying on minimal Centrelink payments that barely covered her rehabilitation, food and rent.
The 33-year-old said her life would be different if she could have accessed compensation and medical support when she was first injured.
“It would have been much quicker for me to heal and just get back with my life – I would have finished my degree, and I’d be in a much better position financially, physically and mentally,” she said.
Bike and motorbike workplace injuries soared as food delivery apps grew in popularity. Credit: Jason South
Gig workers generally cannot access government-run workers’ compensation schemes, superannuation, sick leave or other entitlements.
Transport Workers’ Union national secretary Michael Kaine said delivery platforms could terminate workers at any time if an algorithm determined they were too slow completing jobs, which put them under pressure to take risks on the road.
“This is a deadly cocktail,” he said. “There’s not the industrial system, there’s not the workers’ compensation system that applies to employees. And at the end of the day, if that deadly pressure materialises, workers or their families are literally left destitute.”
Kaine said insurance policies some platforms had taken out for riders were “completely inadequate” compared with government-run workers’ compensation schemes.
Andrew Copolov from Melbourne’s Gig Workers’ Hub said delivery riders were overwhelmingly overseas students working long hours just to survive.
“It gives them an opportunity to earn an income, but it’s dangerous work – the type of work people do when they have no other option,” he said.
UberEats’ insurance policy gives injured contractors a maximum claim for loss of income of $150 a day for up to 30 days, whereas under WorkCover an injured employee can receive 80 per cent of their pre-injury income until they reach the retirement age.
A Transport Workers’ Union-commissioned report by the McKell Institute think tank earlier this year found 57 per cent of gig workers said they earned less than the minimum wage, and just over half said they felt pressured to rush or take risks to make enough money or protect their jobs.
NSW Premier Chris Minns has promised to give gig workers access to the same compensation and entitlements as employees – something Kaine said all states should do.
The Albanese government’s “closing loopholes” bill would give the Fair Work Commission power to set minimum pay rates and other conditions for “employee-like” gig workers, if the Senate passes it early next year.
The Victorian government introduced voluntary standards for gig workers following a 2020 parliamentary inquiry into the industry and said it would make them compulsory this year, but is yet to do so.
A spokesman for the Allan government said it had “led the way in supporting gig economy workers and will formalise our next step regarding legislation once the Commonwealth’s intentions become clear”.
Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Glenn Weir, of the force’s Road Policing Command, said more people were riding or driving for work due to the rise of the gig and delivery economy.
“Delivery riders – just like anyone on a bicycle or motorbike – are considered vulnerable road users. Should a collision occur, there is very little to protect them from serious injury or worse,” he said. “Victoria Police is focused on doing all it can through education and enforcement efforts.”
Uber, DoorDash and Menulog all said safety was a top priority and they had policies to improve rider safety, such as training and high-vis equipment, and took out accident insurance for their riders. Foodora’s owner, German company Delivery Hero, did not respond to a request for comment.
An Australia Post spokesperson said it had almost halved its motorbike fleet since 2019 and replaced them with safer three-wheeled electric vehicles. It was seeking permission from state governments to equip those vehicles with flashing lights to improve safety.
“Australia Post strongly believes any team member being injured or losing their life while conducting essential delivery work is not an acceptable outcome,” they said.
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