Not Delivering: the UK ‘worker’ concept before the UK Supreme Court in Deliveroo - IWGB v CAC and another [2023] UKSC 43

Abstract

The present article offers an analysis of some key aspects of the UK Supreme Court (SC) Deliveroo judgment. After a short description of some of the facts and findings of the case, the article argues that the Supreme Court may have actually misconstrued the personal scope of application of Article 11 ECHR and, like the other domestic jurisdictions before, misapplied the law (and the concept of ‘employment relationship’ deployed by the ECtHR) to the facts of this case. While the SC judgment did not expressly elaborate on the domestic ‘worker’ definition contained in s. 296 TULRCA 1992, the article explores the extent to which the Deliveroo saga has incorrectly construed this concept, embracing a very narrow concept of ‘personal work’ that neither the statutory wording itself nor the context in which it was applied arguably support. Finally, the concluding section of this article offers an alternative approach to the legal construction and legal regulation of ‘personal work’, one that is already emerging in other jurisdictions and that should underpin any future reform of the personal scope of application of UK, but also EU labour law - a reform, the article concludes, that is long overdue.