Purposive Reading of Uber BV v Aslam and IWGB v CAC (Deliveroo): Performance-For-Pay or Fee-for-Access

This paper examines how UK employment law should classify and protect individuals who work through digital platforms such as Uber and Deliveroo. It traces the gap between platform work and the existing tripartite structure—employees, limb (b) workers, and the self-employed—and shows how the recent Supreme Court judgments in Uber BV v Aslam and IWGB v CAC have deepened that gap. By treating contractual freedoms such as the right to substitute another individual to perform an accepted job, or the ability to engage in multi-apping (remaining logged in to more than one platform at the same time), as conclusive evidence of autonomy, those decisions move away from the purposive, protective reasoning adopted in Autoclenz and Pimlico and leave many platform workers in a ‘legal non-place’ where none of the three recognised statuses apply.

This paper argues that the statutory scheme itself is sound; the difficulty lies in its quasi-formalist application by the courts. Reapplying Autoclenz’s purposive method, centred on economic control and dependency, would restore coherence and address the unequal distributions of risk without inventing a fourth category. To achieve this, tribunals should recast platform arrangements into one of two mutually exclusive economic options: the performance-for-pay or the fee-for-access model.