Thousands of Just Eat couriers launch legal action to improve workers’ rights
More than 7,000 Just Eat couriers are taking legal action against the food delivery company in an attempt to gain better employment rights including the minimum wage and holiday pay.The employment tribunal, which begins on Tuesday and is set to run until 2 June, will determine if the couriers are classed as workers, a status that comes with improved rights, or self-employed independent contractors.Judgment is expected later in 2026.Just Eat dismissed about 1,700 couriers in the UK in 2023 when it returned to a gig economy model and scrapped an experiment that offered guaranteed minimum pay, sick pay and holiday pay in six cities in the UK and Europe.Under its “Scoober” experiment, couriers who Just Eat said handled less than 5% of UK orders at the time and also worked set shifts, were provided with e-bikes or e-mopeds and had the option to operate from a central hub, where they could pick up equipment and take breaks.
A Just Eat spokesperson said: “In the UK, Just Eat partners with over 70,000 self-employed couriers who choose to work with us for the flexibility and freedom that we offer.When and how often couriers deliver from our restaurant, retail and grocery partners is up to them, and is reflective of their status as self-employed contractors.”The Just Eat couriers’ legal challenge is being led by Leigh Day, the law firm that last year led a successful employment tribunal action by Addison Lee drivers for rights including holiday pay and the national minimum wage.This followed a 2024 ruling in favour of Bolt drivers and a 2021 supreme court decision backing improved rights for drivers working with the taxi app Uber.The UK government last month set up the Fair Work Agency (FWA) with the aim of improving oversight of employment rights.
A report for the new body identified the gig economy, alongside construction and social care, as a high-risk area in which workers “often experience precarious conditions, systemic barriers to redress”.Currently HMRC has powers to enforce the national minimum wage and will continue to do so until those powers are absorbed by the FWA in 2027.Nigel Mackay, Leigh Day’s joint head of employment and discrimination, said: “Whilst we might hope that the new agency will be more willing to challenge gig economy operators, it may be that, as is often the case now, individuals will first need to bring a tribunal claim to show that they are a worker and therefore entitled to the national minimum wage, before enforcement takes place.”The government has promised to consult on simplifying the various levels of employment status – from employee, which gives full rights to all legal protections, to worker status, which has limited protection, and self-employed, for which there is almost none.Campaigners say the lack of clarity has led to people being falsely classified as self-employed.
A government consultation on changing the system was expected early this year but it is understood there is still no set date for its launch.New legislation under the Employment Rights Act, which came into force last month, has improved a number of conditions for employees and workers but does not appear to have been published.Just Eat said: “We support the government’s intentions to reform the UK’s current employment framework and see this as an opportunity to recognise the tech-enabled work that we, and other platform businesses, offer today.”Just East was bought by the South African-owned internet investor Prosus for €4.1bn in early 2025.
Spirit Airlines says it has nearly finished refunding customers after shuttering
Spirit Airlines has almost finished refunding customers for flights abruptly canceled over the weekend as the company folded.The budget airline left thousands of customers and staff stranded after deciding on Saturday to pull the plug on a business that was struggling for years, before a surge in the price of jet fuel blew a new hole in its budget.Spirit had scheduled about 4,000 flights through 15 May, according to Reuters.The airline has not made a profit since 2019, according to CNBC. The company attempted unsuccessfully to restructure in recent years after two bankruptcy filings
Investment or waste? How the M4 relief road plan for Newport sums up Wales’s economic quandary
It is afternoon rush hour on the M4 and drivers are yet again making slow progress around the city of Newport, often seen as the gateway to south Wales given its location between Cardiff and Bristol.Cars and lorries are stuck in gridlocked traffic in both directions on the approach to the Brynglas tunnels, where the road narrows to two lanes in each direction, while flashing lights warn motorists in Welsh and English of a ciw (queue).Traffic jams may be an everyday reality for commuters and businesses trying to move goods around, but they have also become a hotly debated topic before the Senedd elections on 7 May, in a vote predicted to bring sweeping political change to the country, and send Labour into opposition for the first time since devolution in 1999.Congestion on this part of the M4 – the main route linking south Wales with England – has been complained about by businesses and commuters for decades, while a relief road around Newport has been proposed for almost as long. Motorists say tailbacks cost time and money, and make the country less attractive to potential investors
Trump may not be a fan of clean energy but Iran war is accelerating global shift from oil and gas | Heather Stewart
Operation Epic Fury has thus far achieved none of Donald Trump’s war aims, but it may well accelerate the global transition towards the clean energy he loves to hate.Last week brought the latest exchange of verbal blows in the standoff over the strait of Hormuz. Iran was “choking like a stuffed pig” on the oil it was unable to export because of the US blockade, Trump claimed.From Tehran, the supreme leader shot back that foreigners who “maliciously covet” the waterway “have no place there except at the bottom of its waters”. To the rest of the world, the exchange raised the spectre of a prolonged impasse
UK airlines given green light to cancel or consolidate flights to conserve jet fuel
UK airlines will be able to cancel or consolidate flights this summer to conserve jet fuel as the war in the Middle East continues to disrupt supplies.The measures are being taken to avoid major disruption as Britons jet off on their summer holidays. Airlines are looking carefully at their timetables to see which flights can be cancelled in advance and cause the least delays.New legislation would allow for actions such as consolidating schedules on routes where there are multiple flights to the same place on the same day, which could be put in place to stop last-minute cancellations, the government announced on Sunday.The changes will allow airlines to give back a limited proportion of their allocated takeoff and landing slots without losing the right to operate them the following season
Dynamic pay on platforms such as Uber should be banned, says TUC
The practice of using “dynamic pricing” to set pay on gig economy platforms including Uber should be banned because it leaves workers at the mercy of shadowy algorithms with no certainty over their earnings, trade union leaders have urged.In a report exposing the human cost of the gig economy practice, the Trades Union Congress said pay was becoming decoupled from time, skill or effort. Instead, work had become a speculative practice with the rewards determined by an algorithmic process with little transparency.Under dynamic pricing, computer-driven algorithms set variable prices on a gig economy platform for customers and rates of commission for workers to match real-time supply and demand in a market.However, union leaders say the practice replaces fixed rates or transparent tariffs with opaque, constantly shifting pricing mechanisms, where the data used to determine the rewards and decision-making process are largely obscured
Political blame game begins and passengers left adrift after Spirit ceases operations
US airlines and government officials battled on Saturday to deal with stranded passengers and stricken employees after discount carrier Spirit Airlines abruptly ceased operations – and a political and business blame game got under way over the collapse of the low-cost carrier.“If you have a flight scheduled with Spirit Airlines, don’t show up at the airport; there will be no one here to assist you,” the US secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, warned at a press conference after laying out measures for customers booked with the Florida-based company to obtain refunds or find discounted flights on other airlines.Spirit’s airport check-in desks sat empty across the country on Saturday after the company went out of business in the early hours, posting on its website that after 34 years of flying it had “started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately”.At the Orlando international airport overnight, a digital departure display sign was filled with bright red notifications of canceled Spirit flights.There were no more Spirit planes in the air, with their distinctive bright yellow paint, after the last flight landed in Dallas, Texas, after midnight and Spirit’s management announced it was the end, after talks for a government rescue failed
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