What happened 

The Labour Court of Bologna ruled that Deliveroo Italy used a discriminatory booking system comprising an algorithm called Frank to assign "reliability" and "participation" scores to riders.

Riders who failed to cancel a shift at least 24 hours in advance or failed to log in within 15 minutes of a shift start saw their scores drop. 

Because riders with higher scores were given first pick of the most profitable shifts, those who missed work, even for legally protected reasons like emergencies, illness, or participating in a union strike, were systematically pushed to the back of the queue, leading to a significant loss of future income.

Deliveroo, which says it no longer uses the algorithm, was ordered to pay EUR 50,000 to every affected rider. 

The company had previously claimed the algorithm cut delivery times by 20 percent.

Why it happened 

The root cause was the algorithm's contextual blindness. Deliveroo designed the system to prioritise efficiency and "reliability" above all else, intentionally choosing not to distinguish between a rider who skipped work for a "trivial" reason and one who was legally entitled to be absent.

The court noted that Deliveroo could have programmed the algorithm to recognise legitimate absences (as it already did for insurance-covered accidents), but chose not to.

By hiding behind the "neutrality" of math, the company attempted to bypass traditional labour protections, treating human workers like interchangeable components in a machine-led logistics system.