Uber Ordered to Reactivate a Driver After Speeding Complaints Weren't Proven: How Unfair Deactivation Claims Work

Uber must restore a Melbourne driver's access to its platform within seven days and offer to engage him on the same terms that applied before it deactivated him on 9 April 2025. Commissioner Crawford made the order on 10 September 2026 in [2026] FWC 3444, on an application for an unfair deactivation remedy under section 536LU of the Fair Work Act. Lost earnings are to be agreed between the parties or determined by the Commission (report of the decision).

The driver came to Australia on a student visa in 2022, delivered on Uber Eats from October 2022 and moved to rideshare driving in September 2024 under a services agreement with Rasier Pacific Pty Ltd, the Uber entity. Riders complained about his driving on 5 December 2024, 8 January 2025 and 2 April 2025. Uber sent a preliminary deactivation notice on 4 April 2025 that suspended him immediately, gave him seven days to respond and two days to ask for a discussion. He replied twice, saying the allegations were false and pointing to his clean record and rider ratings. The final notice came on 9 April. He lodged his claim on 22 April, inside the window, and the Commission had already found he was protected from unfair deactivation because he had worked regularly for at least six months.

Uber's case rested on the three complaints, from riders it did not call as witnesses, and on a review of trip data by its own witness that indicated speeding on each trip. The driver produced driving data generated by Uber itself showing he had completed 100% of trips without speeding between 19 March and 15 April 2025, a window that covered the third complaint, and said he checked that data fortnightly with the same result in December and January. Commissioner Crawford called that material "particularly damning for Uber's case", because Uber filed nothing to contradict it and offered no explanation.

The driver also produced phone records showing he was not on a call at the time alleged in the first complaint, evidence that his iPhone 14 has no split-screen function, and Victorian Government records confirming no traffic offences since he arrived in Australia. An engineering professor from the University of New South Wales reported that the speeds in Uber's trip data were "internally inconsistent", while noting his conclusions were weaker because Uber had not provided the raw data from the vehicle or the phone.

The Commissioner said that had Uber supplied the raw data, or the driver's own driving data, and had it confirmed speeding, he would likely have found dangerous driving proven. Uber did neither, which "significantly reduced the strength of its evidentiary case". On the balance of probabilities, dangerous driving was not made out on any of the three occasions.

Because serious misconduct was not established, the exclusion in the Digital Labour Platform Deactivation Code did not apply, and the deactivation had to meet the Code's process requirements. It did not. The warnings and the preliminary deactivation notice were too vague to comply: they did not identify the trips or the conduct in a way that let the driver answer them. Uber's witness agreed under cross-examination that complaints not flagged as fraudulent were "on their face, accepted", and the Commissioner recorded that the final decision was apparently made by two Uber staff in the Philippines, with the reasoning kept in a ticketing system.

For platforms, the message is procedural: a preliminary notice has to say what was alleged, when, and give the worker something concrete to respond to. For workers, the message is evidentiary: the platform's own data, your phone records and your driving history can carry a case.

The unfair deactivation regime for "employee-like" workers on digital labour platforms came in with the 2024 Closing Loopholes changes. A worker who has performed work through a platform on a regular basis for at least six months, and who is deactivated in a way that is unfair or inconsistent with the Deactivation Code, can apply to the Commission for a remedy: reactivation, and in some cases compensation for lost earnings. Applications must be lodged within 21 days of the deactivation. The Commission's regulated worker pages explain the framework.

The same regime produced the first minimum standards order for on-demand delivery workers: an Expert Panel made the interim order on 11 August 2026 and it has operated since 17 August 2026 (Commission case page). Applications covering small-vehicle delivery through platforms and road transport contractors are still being heard. Our gig worker rights checker tells you which protections apply to your platform work, and the which-claim triage points you to the right application if you have been deactivated.