Food delivery riders and Uber drivers are demanding a clearer view of the algorithms that decide which jobs they receive and how much they earn. They say platforms have placed too much power inside a “black box”, leaving workers unable to understand why pay changes or why certain jobs are offered.
The dispute covers Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat, where automation now shapes daily work. Riders in Edinburgh say their earnings have fallen and their conditions have worsened as platforms rely more on automated systems. They want the companies to explain how their systems set pay, allocate jobs and affect working conditions.
For workers who depend on these platforms, the issue is not only technical. It affects whether they can pay rent, cover bills and continue working the same hours for a living.
Riders describe a steep fall in earnings
David, a food delivery rider in Edinburgh, has worked as a rider for seven years. He says his income has fallen to half the level it reached four years ago, even though he still works the same number of hours. “I am making half the money I was making four years ago, for the same amount of hours. It makes no sense,” he said.
Xabier Villares, a Deliveroo rider and lead organiser of the Workers’ Observatory, has been riding for eight years. He says the last three years brought a major shift in what riders can earn, making the schedule that once supported him impossible to maintain.
“There has been a dramatic change in the last three years,” Villares said. “I used to work four or five days a week, especially evenings and some lunchtimes, and was able to pay my rent and bills and make a decent living with that. But that’s not an option any more.”
Trades unions are campaigning to ban dynamic pricing, a system that can change pay and prices through an algorithm. The unions say this leaves workers uncertain about what they will earn, even when they work the same hours or accept similar jobs.
Research points to wider concerns about automated pay
Research from the University of Oxford and Columbia business school examined the effect of a dynamic pricing algorithm introduced by Uber in 2023. The research found that Uber drivers earned “substantially less” an hour after the system was introduced.
The study analyzed 86,157 services contracted through a platform. It also found that discrimination in ratings rose 33.9% for workers perceived as minorities, alongside a 6.5% income gap linked to biased evaluations. Those findings add another concern to the debate: automated decisions can affect workers without giving them a clear way to challenge the result.
Drivers from the UK, the Netherlands and other countries have launched a class action against Uber. They say they live in “constant fear” of the algorithm used to set pay and allocate jobs, because they cannot see how its decisions are made or what might change their earnings.
Uber denies adjusting trip prices based on individual driver behavior. The company attributes differences to other system features, including GPS. That response highlights the central disagreement: drivers want to know which parts of the system affect their pay, while the platform says price differences can come from other tools and data.
Workers want oversight, not just explanations
Cailean Gallagher, director of the Workers’ Observatory and a lecturer at St Andrews university business school, says platforms hold a large body of knowledge and data that workers cannot access. He describes gig workers as “working in the dark”.
“What we are trying to do with the observatory is to get on the ground floor in terms of understanding how the whole apparatus works,” Gallagher said. The goal is to examine the systems behind platform work instead of asking workers to accept decisions they cannot inspect.
That demand also includes human review. One statement in the debate says every decision that might affect a worker should pass through criteria of reasonableness and proportionality, rather than being made through a standardized, opaque and discriminatory process.
The campaign is supported by a wider concern over digital rights and trade union power. Rights Digitales is an organization defending digital rights, while the Confederación Sindical Internacional, known as CSI, is an organization of trade unions. Their presence in this debate reflects the growing focus on how automated systems shape work and earnings.
For delivery riders and drivers, opening the black box means more than revealing a piece of software. It means showing how jobs are assigned, how pay is calculated and how workers can question decisions that affect their income. Until those answers are available, they say platform work will remain controlled by systems they cannot see.
Based on
- Food delivery riders call on platforms to open up AI ‘black box’ they say has cut pay — theguardian.com
- Uber drivers launch European class action over ‘soulless’ and ‘scary’ AI algorithm | Uber | The Guardian — theguardian.com
- Mi “jefe” es un algoritmo: cómo la automatización afecta a los repartidores en América Latina | WIRED — es.wired.com
