Deliveroo: human rights, labour subordination and the technology of digital platforms

This article uses the recent Deliveroo case as a springboard to explore two seemingly unrelated themes: the human rights approach to employment status litigation and the role of technology in digital platforms. The human rights approach is critiqued not so much for depoliticising labour demands, as the argument often is, but because it does little to remedy contractualised approaches to employment status. The article argues that if the latter are replaced by socio-economic considerations, the human rights route to employment status will be superfluous. Technology comes in as part of said socio-economic considerations. Specifically, it is argued that labour law must be re-informed by a socio-economic/class approach, if it is to reflect its historic rationale of corrective intervention in the conflict between the working and the capitalist classes. Here, the working class is understood in terms of economic subordination to capital, with platform technology exemplifying this dynamic. Positioned within the broader context of valorisation and surplus value extraction, the technology of digital platforms is seen as an instrument of class domination. Consequently, workers' subjection to such technology, once understood as a reflection of subordination, should suffice to extend labour protections to them.