Even legitimate breaks can disrupt continuity needed to access protections
An Uber Eats driver lost his unfair deactivation claim after working fewer than three days a week and taking a 15-week break during his qualifying period.
On January 28, 2026, Deputy President Saunders dismissed Sherif Wagih Mahmoud Elsheikh's application against Rasier Pacific Pty Ltd, which trades as Uber, ruling he had not been working regularly enough to claim protection under Australia's new platform worker laws.
Elsheikh had worked as a delivery person on the Uber app since March 2024. When his account was deactivated on October 15, 2025, he argued the platform had treated him unfairly. Uber countered that he was never eligible to bring the claim in the first place because he had not been doing regular work for the required six months.
The case turned on new protections for platform workers that took effect on August 26, 2024. To qualify for unfair deactivation protection, workers must have been performing paid platform work on a regular basis for at least six months at the time they lose access.
A critical detail: any work done before August 26, 2024 does not count toward that six-month period. That meant only Elsheikh's work from late August 2024 to his October 2025 deactivation mattered.
In the six months before losing access, Elsheikh averaged just over two days of work per week and about 50 hours per month. The Commission looked to the Digital Labour Platform Deactivation Code, which provides benchmarks: workers who average 60 hours of paid work per month or work three days each week are considered regular. Elsheikh fell short on both measures.
Then there were the gaps. For two to three weeks in late April 2025, Elsheikh could not work after someone gained unauthorised access to his Uber account. The Commission did not view that brief interruption as a problem.
The real issue was a much longer absence. From early June 2025 to mid-September 2025, Elsheikh did no work at all for Uber. His driver's licence had been suspended for three months after he exceeded the demerit point limit, and he traveled overseas during that time, intending to return to the platform once the suspension lifted.
That 15-week break represented roughly 58 percent of the six-month window the Commission examined. Deputy President Saunders found "the evidence does not establish a repetitive pattern to the work undertaken by Mr Elsheikh for Uber during the six-month period leading up to his deactivation."
The decision emphasized that sporadic work does not meet the threshold. As the judgment put it, "Conversely, if a person performs work sporadically, occasionally or on an ad hoc basis, they would not be regarded as performing work on a regular basis."
The combination of below-benchmark hours and days, plus the extended absence, meant Elsheikh was not considered to have been working regularly enough at the time of his deactivation. Without meeting that threshold, he had no protection under the unfair deactivation provisions. The Commission dismissed his application without needing to assess whether the deactivation itself was fair.
The outcome carries practical weight for those managing platform or gig workforces. Protection under the new regime hinges on recent, consistent patterns of work and on how long workers have stayed active since August 26, 2024. Extended breaks, even for legitimate reasons like licence suspensions or travel, can disrupt the continuity needed to access protections.
The ruling also underscores the value of keeping precise records of hours and days worked for platform-based workers, as these details now determine whether someone can challenge a deactivation at all.
