Long break, quick deactivation: Fair Work's ruling could reshape how you manage contingent workers
An Uber driver took almost nine weeks off, was deactivated on return, and the Fair Work Commission ruled on 20 April 2026 he remained protected.
The case, Ravi Kiritbhai Bhadaliya v Uber Trading AS Uber Australia [2026] FWC 1403, is an early test of Australia's new gig worker protection laws, and the outcome has direct implications for any business working with people on a non-traditional basis.
Mr Bhadaliya had been driving for Uber since December 2020. His account was deactivated on 9 February 2026. The respondent, Rasier Pacific Pty Ltd trading as Uber, argued that he was not protected under the Fair Work Act 2009, because he had not been performing work on the platform on a regular basis for the required six-month period. The trigger for that argument was an absence of almost nine weeks, from 9 December 2025 until 7 February 2026, during which Mr Bhadaliya was travelling to India and performed no work at all. He was deactivated shortly after returning, on 9 February 2026.
The numbers, however, told a different story. Across the six months leading up to his deactivation, Mr Bhadaliya had worked an average of 4.46 days per week and 69.43 hours per month on the Uber driver platform, comfortably exceeding both thresholds set out in the Digital Labour Platform Deactivation Code. The Code deems a worker to be working on a regular basis if they average at least 60 hours of paid...
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