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Court Rules Deliveroo Used 'Discriminatory' Algorithm (vice.com) 185

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An algorithm used by the popular European food delivery app Deliveroo to rank and offer shifts to riders is discriminatory, an Italian court ruled late last week, in what some experts are calling a historic decision for the gig economy. The case was brought by a group of Deliveroo riders backed by CGIL, Italy's largest trade union. From a report: A markedly detailed ordinance written by presiding judge Chiara Zompi gives an intimate look at one of many often secretive algorithms used by gig platforms to micromanage workers and which can have profound impacts on their livelihoods. While machine-learning algorithms are central to Deliveroo's entire business model, the particular algorithm examined by the court allegedly was used to determine the "reliability" of a rider. According to the ordinance, if a rider failed to cancel a shift pre-booked through the app at least 24 hours before its start, their "reliability index" would be negatively affected. Since riders deemed more reliable by the algorithm were first to be offered shifts in busier timeblocks, this effectively meant that riders who can't make their shifts -- even if it's because of a serious emergency or illness -- would have fewer job opportunities in the future. According to the court, the algorithm's failure to take into account the reasons behind a cancellation amounts to discrimation and unjustly penalizes riders with legally legitimate reasons for not working. Deliveroo was ordered to pay ~$61,400 to the suing parties.
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Court Rules Deliveroo Used 'Discriminatory' Algorithm More

Court Rules Deliveroo Used 'Discriminatory' Algorithm

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  • "According to the ordinance, if a rider failed to cancel a shift pre-booked through the app at least 24 hours before its start, their "reliability index" would be negatively affected."

    So just like a real Human Resources On A Chip.

    • Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @10:56AM (#60902936) Homepage Journal

      "According to the ordinance, if a rider failed to cancel a shift pre-booked through the app at least 24 hours before its start, their "reliability index" would be negatively affected."

      So just like a real Human Resources On A Chip.

      Yeah...I read that and I don't get where the "discrimination" is either.

      Has this judge never worked a normal job in their whole lives?

      You don't show up, you don't follow the rules, you often no longer have a job at all....

      I fail to see how this is discrimination, unless in Italy they have put "lazy" or "Irresponsible" as a protected class?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bsolar ( 1176767 )
        As far as I understand a worker cannot be penalized if he has a legitimate reason for a cancellation, no matter whether the decision is made by a human or an algorithm.

        • Re: Really? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @11:38AM (#60903130)

          Clearly, the fallacy here is calling it penalization.
          If you cannot do the job, I cannot hire you. I pick the one that do the job better. What is so difficult about that?
          Maybe you should not work as a delivery driver, if you, you know, often cannot do delivery driving. Let alone expecting to be preferred.

          I don't complain either that my fat ass is not hired as a tightrope acrobat.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by patches ( 141288 )

            As I am not an Italian citizen, I have no real idea. However, considering it is an Italian judge, maybe Italy has laws that do not allow employers to penalize someone that calls off of work for a reason that Italian Law has codified is a valid reason. And in a gig job market, not offering a gig to someone is a form of penalization.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by bsolar ( 1176767 )

            If you cannot do the job, I cannot hire you. I pick the one that do the job better. What is so difficult about that?

            From what I understand, as long as the evaluation of "one does the job better" is done fairly, there is actually no issue. From the point of view of Italian law, it was not done fairly though.

            I think your point of view is that of an employer who "doesn't care" why e.g. an employee doesn't show up, but under Italian law that's not how it works.

          • "I don't complain either that my fat ass is not hired as a tightrope acrobat." How many times did you apply?
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • If you cannot do the job, I cannot hire you.

            You're thinking about this at the wrong stage of the employment relationship.

            The 'employee' was already 'hired'. They called in sick. Italian law says you can't punish someone for that, as long as they've got a doctor's note. The algorithm had no place to enter "had a doctor's note".

      • Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)

        by VAElynx ( 2001046 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @11:08AM (#60902984)

        According to the ordinance, if a rider failed to cancel a shift pre-booked through the app at least 24 hours before its start, their "reliability index" would be negatively affected. Since riders deemed more reliable by the algorithm were first to be offered shifts in busier timeblocks, this effectively meant that riders who can't make their shifts -- even if it's because of a serious emergency or illness -- would have fewer job opportunities in the future.

        Let's spell it out for the slow class.

        Unlike in the third world, which includes USA where labour laws are concerned, certain types of emergency and especially illness, provided you have a stamp from a doctor saying that yes, you're on medical leave bc. of an illness of injury, makes for a legally protected reason not to show up and as such, you can't be retaliated against for it. Therefore, an algorithm that discriminates against workers with no-shows WITHOUT discriminating between lazy bums and people with actual reasons for not showing up is breaking labour laws.

        I'm sorry, if firing sick people is what a "normal job" does, then that norm needs to burn down and whoever set it needs to sit in jail.

        • Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by cmseagle ( 1195671 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @11:36AM (#60903126)

          Unlike in the third world, which includes USA...

          [unrelated pedantry]

          Wiki: [wikipedia.org] "The term 'Third World' arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact." The USA, by definition, cannot be a Third World country.

          [/unrelated pedantry]

          • Unlike in the third world, which includes USA...

            [unrelated pedantry]

            Wiki: [wikipedia.org] "The term 'Third World' arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact." The USA, by definition, cannot be a Third World country.

            [/unrelated pedantry]

            That is not entirely accurate. There is an older definition. Though the older one has "The Old World" (Europe and Asia) as first, and "The New World" (the Americas) as the second. So the US is either a first or second world country by strict definitions. Though by labour and contracts laws they have more in common with developing countries.

          • Spot on - the Third World refers to countries formally not in either NATO or Warsaw Pact. This, however was the case because of mismanagement and/or underdevelopment putting them in a position where neither player went through the effort of associate them overtly, which is why the word is being used the way I did above.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bsolar ( 1176767 )
            In general, "Third World" refers to all underdeveloped nations [merriam-webster.com]:

            1 : the aggregate of the underdeveloped nations of the world

            The point of the parent was that from the point of view of labour laws, the USA are arguably underdeveloped.

            • Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm well aware of the accepted connotation of "Third World" and am not going to be so obtuse as to pretend to have misunderstood what the poster was trying to say. Hence the "[pedantry]" tags.

          • You can't take it too literally, "America doesn't have workers rights" is the go to whataboutism for europhiles. Any time Europe's unemployment issues, or slow economic growth, low pay, failure to compete in certain industries, etc. is brought up they whip out that reflexively. From a Canadian perspective it's quite amusing watching them explain how anything less than 4 weeks paid vacation (plus public holidays) means your country is a 3rd world shithole. God forbid anyone have a different time / money pref

            • Funny, as a humble retail worker that has a union, I get 5 weeks of vacation, 3 personal days to use anyway I want (cashed out if I don't use them) and I get 6 days of sick leave on top of the 6 days mandated by the city of San Diego.

              As you see, I live a hard life in this 3rd world shit hole country. Just terrible I tell you. Horrible.

              But y'all do you. Seems to be working just fine.

          • [unrelated pedantry]

            Languages evolve over time, and the use of words and phrases changes over time.

            "Third World" stopped being about the Cold War a long time ago, even though it originally was about the Cold War.

            [/unrelated pedantry]

        • Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @12:03PM (#60903234) Journal

          Well I have never worked for an company in the US that would actually penalize people for a no-show if they had a legitimate excuse like an "unexpected medical emergency." It would be pretty usual practice to ask most classes of employee for some evidence that 'event' actually happened. A doctors note, hospital bill, police accident report etc.

          As to the question of basic fairness and not specifically law:
          Personally I CAN see how this algorithm might be considered discriminatory. Because my guess is the 'app-y' nature of this entire process is that there was no way for someone to explain themselves to anyone empowered to decrement the number of no-shows, delete the record, flag it as 'excused', etc on presentation of evidence it was legally protected or otherwise permissible event.

          I would say however the ONUS is on the employee to communicate some explanation for a no-show after the fact to an employeer if they want any special consideration for it. However the employer needs 1) have a path/procedure to communicate such information, (2) have the information available for how to do that someplace like an employee handbook where someone can easily discover it.

          • Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)

            by VAElynx ( 2001046 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @12:36PM (#60903352)
            Walmart does so, as do a host of other companies From the above:

            A report released Thursday by a workers’ advocacy group says Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, routinely refuses to accept doctors’ notes, penalizes workers who need to take care of a sick family member and otherwise punishes employees for lawful absences. The report, based on a survey of more than 1,000 employees, accuses Walmart of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act, among other worker-protection laws. The group argued in a lawsuit filed last month, and in an earlier complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that Walmart discriminated against pregnant workers.

            See, even if it's illegal, employers, especially larger ones will constantly probe what they can get away with and rely on learned helplessness as well as actively spread lies and misinformation to protect themselves against retaliation from regulatory organs, provided those organs aren't bribed in the first place.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by DarkOx ( 621550 )

              Well we'd have no need of enforcement agencies, or courts if everyone just followed the rules. Obviously this isnt unique to the US either because it seems based on the article here these things happen in Italy too at least.

              Walmart might be a bad actor. Its probably the case whatever judgement against them occurs won't be enough to really change their behavior. I don't know what the solution to that is. My rule is rules ought to be followed because they are the rules, if you don't like the rules work on g

              • Squeaky wheel gets the grease, balky horse gets shot. The court system is stacked in favour of those with more money, and even beyond that, you often will get lied about what your rights are, never mind attemptedly gaslit by removal of evidence of misconduct when someone gets the idea you might try and bring the authorities in. For most people, the risk to their livelihood is daunting ,so little action is pursued unless someone outright gets fired or quits
                Oh, and did I mention stuff like what happened in

            • See, even if it's illegal, employers, especially larger ones will constantly probe what they can get away with and rely on learned helplessness as well as actively spread lies and misinformation to protect themselves against retaliation from regulatory organs, provided those organs aren't bribed in the first place.

              They also rely on the penalty being civil.

              I worked for Home Depot. There were multiple instances where management made me work more than 8 hours in one shift, and instead of paying overtime they had me leave early the next shift.

              That's completely against federal law - non-exempt employees are due overtime pay if they go over 8 hours in a day, or 40 hours in a week. The employer can not offer "comp time" in lieu of overtime.

              However, it's not a criminal violation, it's a civil violation. The remedy is for

        • If a person cancels their shift with less than 24 hours notice, it creates a hardship for the company and a scramble to fill the shift. It is an impact to the business and those called in on short notice to fill in for them, if someone can be even be found. A business might even have to reject orders if they have open shifts. If it is a regular thing, customer service suffers and people could take their business elsewhere. If this is a one off, fine. I'm guessing the algorithm will clear it out pretty quick

          • Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by VAElynx ( 2001046 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @12:48PM (#60903384)

            If a person cancels their shift with less than 24 hours notice, it creates a hardship for the company and a scramble to fill the shift. It is an impact to the business and those called in on short notice to fill in for them, if someone can be even be found. A business might even have to reject orders if they have open shifts. If it is a regular thing, customer service suffers and people could take their business elsewhere.

            So? The onus is on them to run their business with enough redundancy (which btw dynamic allocation like the above allows for) that they can cover the rate of legitimate no-shows that takes place.

            Besides - I find it ironic you're pleading with me for empathy with a business being taken to court for having zero empathy with employees in legitimately dire straits

            If this is a one off, fine. I'm guessing the algorithm will clear it out pretty quickly

            That doesn't matter, not only because it's only your guess but because the legal measure for the amount someone can or should get penalized for doing something they have a right to is zero. It's like asking how much of your pay is it "reasonable" to dock for voting for a different candidate than your boss does.

            If it is recurring, this person is basically asking the business and other workers to subsidize their behavior (whether legitimate or not). It also creates a burden where the business now needs to have a way to take into account the reasons, and potentially validate the reason; all extra work. In a normal large business (even in the USA) this is fairly standard and the process is just part of employing people. Someone with recurring attendance issues, due to legitimate reasons (health, family health, etc...) would typically get an accommodation such that when they miss a shift it isn't an impact to the rest of the business or to the others who do show up for their shift. Move them to asynchronous tasks, or something where the pool of workers is large enough to handle variability.

            I mean, yeah? If someone has a permanent difficulty with doing their job due to health reasons, and they, after a talk with their boss get reassigned to a job they won't have problems carrying out or working out a functional schedule, nobody will bat an eye? That's normal? What we're talking about is punishing them via effectively docking hours *after* they've come back, all without any human intervention whatsoever, which besides being illegal is also gross and wrong.

            Another option would be for a business to have an additional rider per shift to handle absences and just distribute the work across more riders. Less money per normal shift per rider if everyone shows up but then they can handle surge and absences.

            The whole point of this distributed economy stuff is easy and rapid allocation of employees, so yes, they should be able to fix an absence without much issue. You see, for most serious or recurring issues, the person knows reasonably well in advance (like in the morning before shift), and the truly unpredictable stuff is rare.

          • "standby" list needs to paid like an extra broad job or they can have just an big list of workers benched at $0/hr
            also under EU laws people ‘sitting on the bench’ in-between projects.' have more rights then in the usa.
            I think instacart had issues with that under the law (you must sign up for an shift and sit and wait at the store for no pay if no orders came in.)

            • That sounds blatantly illegal - if the company demands you to sit and wait somewhere, that's effectively working for them and you have to be reimbursed, even if it's minimum wage.

      • Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)

        by mridoni ( 228377 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @11:22AM (#60903052)

        You don't show up, you don't follow the rules, you often no longer have a job at all...

        I fail to see how this is discrimination, unless in Italy they have put "lazy" or "Irresponsible" as a protected class?

        Shit happens: have you ever woken up with a severe headache or flu, had an incident while going to work or a relative/partner need immediate assistance? In Europe we usually try to protect people'sjob from employers who simply don't care while imposing some rules to prevent other people from abusing the system.

        The problem is in those "24 hours in advance" and in the fact that you cannot justify your absence after the fact. The law in Italy (and I guess in similar ways in the rest of Europe) clearly mandates how much time you have to warn your employer you're sick: this ranges from a few hours before your shift starts (usually 2 to 4,) or even after it has started, depending on the national contract applied to the sector you work in. Then you have 2-3 more days (again, depending on the contract) to transmit the official certification written and authenticated by your physician.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          There are plenty of instances where you may feel normal and then come down with something during your shift as well.

          Do you really want someone who started their shift feeling normal to continue working if they come down with something suddenly? Because if people are penalized, guess what? People will continue working.

          Perhaps a cook or waiter came to work feeling perfectly fine, then comes down with something during their shift. If they were made to continue their shift because they get penalized, do you rea

      • Yeah...I read that and I don't get where the "discrimination" is either.

        It's discriminatory because it doesn't take the reasons for cancelling a pre-booked shift into account. It's clearly discriminatory if you get rated down for being in hospital with a burst appendix.

      • Only shit jobs fire you for not showing up when sick. Frankly, I'm in favor of laws going the other way and penalizing people who show up while communicabley diseased - enforcement would be a nightmare however.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          Yeah, mandatory work from home or sick leave if you've got a communicable disease...
          No spreading it to your colleagues and/or customers.
          No spreading it to your fellow commuters.
          etc etc

          COVID has caused lot of companies to do temperature checks at the door, and they won't let you enter the building if you have a fever or other identifiable symptoms.

        • Only shit jobs fire you for not showing up when sick. Frankly, I'm in favor of laws going the other way and penalizing people who show up while communicabley diseased - enforcement would be a nightmare however.

          In (economic) theory, laws shouldn't be needed. It costs the company more to force a sick person come to work and infect several other people than it would to force the sick person to stay home.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Nugoo ( 1794744 )
        From the summary:

        this effectively meant that riders who can't make their shifts -- even if it's because of a serious emergency or illness -- would have fewer job opportunities in the future

        The people of Italy have decided that there are some circumstance which an employer cannot hold against an employee. This ruling simply means that companies can't evade this requirement by coming up with an algorithm to make their decisions. If you don't like the outcome of this case, it seems to me that your problem is with the pre-existing Italian labour regulations, not this particular case.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by isomer1 ( 749303 )
        The 'rules' are fundamentally unsound. You cannot expect people to know about health or related emergencies 24 hours in advance. This obviously discriminates against those with children, those that care of other family members, and those with preexisting conditions. How is this even a debate for you? Have you been so broken capitalist propaganda that you just accept you employer as god?

    • well, a real human might understand if someone has a good reason for cancelation and not hold it against them.
      I mean , if you cancel suddenly because your house is on fire or you suddenly are sicker then a dog , most people cut you some slack.
      ( on the other hand you will be fired pretty quickly if you house burns down every week or so because you are a liar..)
      I think this algorithm makes no distinction between a 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' reasons, not being aware of Italian law and if they have some fo

    • If one rider is hit by a car doing his job as "independent contractor"
      he will cancel his shifts.
      And the app will mark him as unreliable for his whole life.
  • ...is now discriminatory? Against who? The unreliable? This has truly gotten out of hand.

    • Re:So objective ranking of reliability... (Score:4, Informative)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @11:14AM (#60903008)

      The problem is that they weren't taking the reason for the person not being reliable. If somebody had some sort of medical problem that they didn't know about less than 24 hours before their shift, then they would get marked as unreliable.

      It isn't discriminatory in the sense of racial or sexual discrimination, and i'm not even sure why the word "discrimination" was used. But it seems like the fact that they tried to get an algorithm to handle everything and didn't really account for legitimate reasons why somebody might now show up for their shift shows that they didn't really apply the necessary discretion when marking people as unreliable.

      I think the major problem is that there isn't really a way for many employers like this to even verify why their employees are cancelling their shifts. Anybody can just say they had an unexpected medical emergency and there isn't really any way of verifying what is going on.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bsolar ( 1176767 )

        It isn't discriminatory in the sense of racial or sexual discrimination, and i'm not even sure why the word "discrimination" was used.

        Because what the algorithm ultimately calculated was a "score" trying to measure the woker "reliability", which was then used to literally *discriminate* between reliable and unreliable workers, preventing workers deemed unreliable to access work opportunities.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bsolar ( 1176767 )

        Anybody can just say they had an unexpected medical emergency and there isn't really any way of verifying what is going on.

        Of course there is: such a justification would definitely only fly if the worker is able to provide a valid medical certificate.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's discrimination because some medical conditions are protected, i.e. you can't just fire someone because their disability is sometimes inconvenient to your business. Legally you have to make reasonable adjustments to allow them to work for you.

        Other things like pregnancy and family emergencies are covered by employment law in many places too. I don't know about Italy specifically but I wouldn't be surprised if covering a child's medical emergency or having to pick them up from school unexpectedly would n

      • ...Anybody can just say they had an unexpected medical emergency and there isn't really any way of verifying what is going on.

        A make-believe HR department, has no way of verifying.

        Seasoned HR specialists started asking for proof from employees around high school age, and if there's one thing the medical community does well to an obscene level, it's generate paperwork.

      • Sure, but how precisely do you figure that the reason someone is an unreliable changes the fact that they are, in fact unreliable?

        If you need $x number of bodies to perform a certain number of tasks, and only $x-1 show up; it doesn't matter *why* the -1 didn't show, you're still screwed. And near as I can figure from the writeup; this algorithm generates an objective, purely fact-based, metric for reliability with no bias or discrimination. That makes this ruling ludicrous. And how much do you want to be

    • No such thing as objectivity.
      Not for the human brain and it extrnalizations (software) anyway.

      And not necessary either.
      What one experiences *is* one's reality. And it is right to act based on reality, not on what somebody tells you is their reality. Especially when they call their particular reality "objective" or "absolute truth", those manipulative assholes.
      If one's experiendes are incomplete (e.g. only ever having seen black swans), then surely, changing that is easy. Just show em.

      But if I do experience

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        This has nothing to do with your definitions. It has to do with law of the land in a country with rule of law.

        Deliveroo tried to get advantage over competition by breaking law of the land. It was sued and found to be indeed in violation of law of the land. If your mindset is such that it requires business models that go against law of the land, you shouldn't do business in said country in your way, or you should adapt to laws of the land.

        Notably, the operating principle of your argument is the exact same ar

    • Re:So objective ranking of reliability... (Score:5, Informative)

      by orlanz ( 882574 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @11:30AM (#60903104)

      No it hasn't. Details are scant in the article but what happened here in court is more important than what happened to the company. More on that later. As for the company, we have plenty of worker protection laws, you can't fire someone because they couldn't come into work due to being in an ER. You can't fire someone for taking their PTO, etc, etc.

      Similarly, the court basically said, they can't punish workers without any review of the offense. You need to provide the employee an official recourse path to see if they had a legitimate case that would null the offense. This varies by jurisdiction, but a doctor's note or COVID positive would probably suffice in most.

      And it helps the employeR too. They may have a star worker who dropped into the naughty list over the last 2 weeks. Well, you blackhole them, they may leave. If you have a proper process, you would see that they had COVID and went into isolation and would be back to normal productivity going forward. By punishing them, you would disincentivise them by making them work their way back up the ladder.

      Computers are infallible but that operate for and in a human world. And that brings a whole set of fallacies that should not be ignored and brushed aside. If there are humans involved, you need to provide a human service, not a mechanical one. And I think that is the most important part of this ruling. The courts basically set a precedent that people can't hide behind blackboxes when they see poor inhuman results.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nugoo ( 1794744 )

        The courts basically set a precedent that people can't hide behind blackboxes when they see poor inhuman results.

        Yes, I like this aspect of the ruling a lot. Imagine if, for example, media companies were liable for invalid DMCA claims that were sent automatically by their audio and video analysis algorithms.

    • ...is now discriminatory? Against who? The unreliable? This has truly gotten out of hand.

      This has truly gotten out of hand - the war cry of the Daily Mail reader.

    • "discriminatory" here means "racial discrimination". That's not what this means. They mean in the general sense.

      This is a labor law dispute. It was posted by the /. editors because they new the word "discrimination" would generate a lot of clicks and posts and engagement. We all just got played. Shame on you /. editors.

  • There is an old joke about a guy looking for his keys under a street lamp because that is where he can see, rather in the dark area between street lamps where he actually lost them.

    Obviously, it is much harder for the computer to decide if the excuse is true or valid. But that does NOT mean the computer can ignore the excuses, thereby illegally punishing people protected by the law.

    Just as Facebook had to change their policies, (losing ad revenue) to not let people discriminate when posting job or housing

  • There is too much removing humans from many a business and replacing the decision making by a computer. This automation might reduce business costs but can result in mistakes/bad-decisions being made as real life can be more complicated than a programmer coded to deal with. Decisions like this should be reviewed by a human ... although that will cost. I am assuming that the humans who work in HR actually care - which is not always the case.

    Yes: the business might not care if a worker is erroniously disadvan

    • You do realize the human resources department is there to protect the company, and not the employee? Get a union if you want that.

  • I don't think that anyone would argue that such algorithm is inhumane and cruel, but discriminatory? Maybe laws in Italy have a broader definition of discrimination, otherwise I don't see it not getting overturned on appeal.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      Years ago, working adults expected pension and stability provided by Unions. Businesses declared this to be too expensive and waged war on unions. Eventually this resulted in pensions being replaced with contribution plans, where all the risks related to retirement were offloaded to the workers. Financial sector looted and pillaged workers, to the tune of 5% MER, and that left most retire into poverty without savings. Now businesses are after other benefits. They don't want to pay for workers that get sick

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        But as long as you screw over all workers equally this isn't discriminatory.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sinij ( 911942 )

          But as long as you screw over all workers equally this isn't discriminatory.

          Yes, this is how it works. Likewise, if nobody died, there would be no murder committed.

      • And before that, you didn't get to retire. period...Be grateful that you even get to retire.

    • I don't think that anyone would argue that such algorithm is inhumane and cruel, but discriminatory?

      The word "discrimination" is not limited to things like racial or gender discrimination.

  • What was needed was a means for a manager to 'excuse' or remove the knock on them.

    Yeah, good call by the judge.

  • picking / forced / bid on shifts sounds like an employee. And in the EU there rights are good + they git sick time by law as well.

  • the court determined that even if an algorithm unintentionally discriminates against a protected group a company can still be held liable and be forced to pay damages.

    What is the protected group? Nowhere in the article could I find a mention of who was being discriminated against. The closest mention I could find was:

    this effectively meant that riders who can’t make their shifts—even if it’s because of a serious emergency or illness—would have fewer job opportunities in the future.

    So, people with bad luck are a protected group?

    • They also seem to be using the English word "rider" completely backwards. Riders need a "ride" drivers would be the ones getting shifts to go pickup riders.

      I do realize this is in Italy. Maybe it got lost in translation.

    • What is the protected group?

      You realize that Italy and the US have different laws, right?

      "Protected group" is not required here, because this isn't US law, and the word "discriminate" is not limited to things like racial or gender discrimination.

      • You realize that Italy and the US have different laws, right?

        Yes. Why are you asking me this?

        "Protected group" is not required here

        I'm just going by what the article says. I never said a protected group was required.

        because this isn't US law

        Yes, I know. Why do you keep saying this?

        and the word "discriminate" is not limited to things like racial or gender discrimination.

        I also know this, and I never said it was. Did you even read my post? You keep asking me things that have absolutely nothing to do with my original question. You took all that time to post snark, but didn't actually answer my question. If you don't know the answer to my question, then why did you post?

  • This fine is a non-issue financially. The real issue is that the EU court system is actually starting to examine the rampant abuse of gig workers. Deliveroo and their ilk hide their abuses behind "algorithms" and get away with policies which, if written down in a corporate HR manual, would never fly. This could be the first of many cases which examine the real problems with software based human resource management.

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