Uber Eats facing one-month ban on deliveries in Amsterdam over illegal couriers

Uber Eats is facing a potential one-month ban on offering delivery services in the Amsterdam region amid continued allegations the platform is using food couriers who do not hold valid work permits. The Labor Inspectorate believes Uber Eats management has misled government offices for years, and the company has not taken adequate measures to prevent illegal couriers from working for the company, an Inspectorate spokesperson confirmed to both NRC and Nu in reports published on Wednesday.

A series of fines imposed by the Inspectorate have not had an impact, the news outlets reported, suggesting the cash penalties mean little to the pocketbook of the large platform and its tech giant parent company. As a result, the Ministry of Justice and Security is prepared to "preventively suspend operations" of Uber Eats, a ministry spokesperson told NRC.

The ministry, which has oversight on the police but not the Inspectorate, told the newspaper that Uber Eats has been caught using unauthorized couriers seven times since mid-2021. During five Labor Inspectorate reviews in five years, investigators discovered "multiple violations during each inspection," the ministry alleged. This despite company pledges to improve compliance with Dutch and European employment laws.

About 60 percent of the 44 food couriers whose documents were reviewed were "illegally employed," said the Inspectorate, which falls under the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. This includes five of the ten delivery workers who were involved in the inspection on February 4, the Inspectorate told NRC.

However, it is not clear whether a one-month shutdown is even legally possible at this point. The first step to shutting the platform down is the issuance of a formal warning, which happened in 2023, but was vacated by the District Court of Amsterdam earlier this year.

The platform helps fulfill orders placed with hundreds, if not thousands, of restaurants and food companies in and around the capital. The court ruled the government did not properly assess consequences of such a closure, the newspaper wrote.

The decision was appealed to the Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, where Uber Eats claimed "identity fraud was essentially non-existent" on the platform. It said the impact of shutting down Uber Eats would lead to restaurants losing "an average of 27 percent of their revenue," not to mention the loss of income for couriers, and a reduction in consumer choice.

Two years ago, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that delivery workers using gig economy platform Deliveroo could no longer be seen as one-person businesses, and must be treated as salaried employees. Uber responded by hiring its couriers via temporary work agencies and paying them an hourly wage.

With the high number of couriers hired, and a constant inflow of new workers to fill vacancies, the company uses digital verification procedures that can make it possible for those without a work permit to evade detection, such as using others willing to provide their documents and take selfies, NRC reported.

"Any delivery driver who shares their account will be removed from the platform," an Uber Eats spokesperson told the newspaper. The company claimed it "significantly tightened" procedures, and has "zero tolerance for illegal account sharing."

"Uber isn't the problem, it's the people committing fraud," Uber attorney Jan Reinier van Angeren told the newspaper.