Yavuz Cikar still seethes at the injustice that followed his nephew Burak Dogan’s death.
Dogan, an Uber Eats rider and 30-year-old Turkish student, was riding an electric bike in Sydney’s inner west in April 2020. About 26 minutes after he cancelled an Uber Eats delivery, he was hit by a truck.
He died instantly at 12.51pm, about the same time he received two further delivery requests from the app.
In Uber Eats’ view, however, he was not working for the company. It declined an insurance payout because Dogan was hit outside a 15-minute window following a delivery or cancellation.
The decision denied Dogan’s family a $400,000 death benefit and a claim for funeral expenses.
Cikar, Dogan’s nearest relative in Australia, could not bring himself to tell the rest of his family in Turkey what Uber Eats was saying.
“At least, a company their size should have some sort of humane approach to this matter,” Cikar told Guardian Australia. “But they completely disowned him at the time of his death. They didn’t want to know about him.”
Now, though, Dogan’s family are making a new bid for some form of justice.
The Transport Workers’ Union is helping them lodge an application for workers’ compensation through the Personal Injury Commission.
It is also helping prepare compensation claims on behalf of the families of two other gig workers, Akshay Deepak Doultani and Adil Abbas, which will be first put to Uber and iCare.
Doultani died while riding for Uber Eats in July after a collision with an SUV in Epping in Sydney’s north-west. He was 22.
Abbas was also killed in Sydney while delivering food for Uber Eats last month. He was 20.
The TWU national secretary, Michael Kaine, said the deaths of the three young men were tragic and shocking, and warranted compensation to their families. He said families of workers should not have to fight “in individual battles just to get what they’re owed”.
“Food delivery riders need rights and protections to keep them safe at work, and compensation in the event the worst happens,” Kaine said.
“While we take up these workers’ compensation claims, transport gig workers are calling on federal parliament to urgently pass lifesaving reform tabled on Monday to set fair, safe and sustainable standards for all transport workers.”
The government this week introduced reforms to give the Fair Work Commission the power to set minimum standards for hundreds of thousands of “employee-like workers” on digital platforms.
Labor hopes the bill will help reduce incentives for unsafe practices and say it will allow parties to apply to the commission for orders for minimum standards, including on pay, penalty rates, superannuation, payment terms, record-keeping, insurance and deactivation. The gig economy reforms are estimated to deliver $4bn in increased wages for workers over 10 years.
Cikar, who is in Canberra to share his story this week, said the legislation was the “best thing ever that has happened since we lost him”.
“I’ll be proud of myself if this thing is going through the Senate as well, that’s something we could achieve for the next generation of people who are affected by this kind of unfair treatment,” he said.
An Uber spokesperson said the company’s thoughts were “with Burak Dogan’s family and loved ones” after the accident.
“While Mr Dogan was registered on the Uber Eats platform, he was not making an Uber Eats delivery at the time of his accident and had not completed an Uber Eats delivery that day,” the spokesperson said.
