Fired by AI? Just Eat UK couriers ‘deactivated for minor overpayments’
Takeaway couriers across the UK have been thrown off the Just Eat app for alleged overpayments as small as £1.35, which many contest, according to a new report by campaign group Worker Info Exchange.
Just Eat drivers, who in many cases are low-income migrant workers, described being instantly removed from the company’s platform – a significant hit to their livelihoods – with little explanation.
Eleven drivers based across the UK, from Edinburgh to Fareham in Hampshire, made formal requests to Just Eat for the data about their cases.
According to the report by the Worker Info Exchange, the responses show that in each case the company highlighted just two or three orders. Just Eat claimed drivers had wrongly recorded themselves as waiting for an order, while GPS coordinates showed them straying away from the restaurant.
These waits triggered payments from the company, worth on average of just £1.44 for each driver. The average wait in question was 18 minutes. In several of the cases, GPS data supplied by Just Eat showed them moving just one or two minutes’ walk away from the restaurant.
The cases underline growing concerns that hiring and firing decisions are in effecty being made by algorithm, with little human oversight and few opportunities for workers to challenge them.
Cansu Safak, of Worker Info Exchange, who has been involved in pursuing the couriers’ cases, said: “Just Eat’s approach to providing evidence is: ‘Just take our word for it.’”
Suggesting that other food delivery apps use similar IT and management systems, she added: “This situation leaves workers in the impossible position of trying to defend their innocence against a surveillance system that the platform claims has been reviewed by a human, even if evidence
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