The Court of Appeal has held that Deliveroo riders do not fall within the scope of the right to form and join a trade union under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (and therefore domestic law did not need to be construed to give the riders Article 11 rights).
The Court confirmed that the question of whether Article 11 is engaged in this respect depends on the existence of an employment relationship, which is to be determined having regard to the International Labour Organisation Recommendation 198. This requires that work be carried out personally and therefore the Central Arbitration Committee had been entitled to conclude that the riders did not have an employment relationship within the ILO concept, given the riders' genuine and "virtually unlimited" right of substitution. The Court noted that how often a right of substitution is exercised will only be relevant to the question of whether the right is genuine. (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain v Central Arbitration Committee)
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