How to Obtain It
Every person has the right to access their personal data collected by an organisation under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Personal data refers to certain information collected about an individual. For a gig economy worker, this is likely to include details about jobs done, e.g. orders, fees, and GPS location logs for every order delivered by a courier. The organisation is legally obliged to respond to a request to access your data (referred to as a Subject Access Request), usually within 30 days and free of charge.
Why should you access your data?
The data companies collect is often used to control our work. For example, a food delivery company may use the data collected from thousands of couriers to improve their algorithms for assigning orders, calculating fees, and so on to maximise profit at the expense of their workers. By learning what kind of data about us they store, we may get a better idea of how they it to control our work.
In the gig economy, personal data can be used to answer questions about one’s own work and pay. For example, if a delivery company stores location data of the courier, it could be used to calculate whether delivery fees per distance travelled have changed over time.
How can you access your data?
You may access your data by contacting the Data Protection Officer of the organisation, or another general contact if you are unable to find them. You can use this Template Letter to send.
E-mails addresses for gig companies in Edinburgh:
Deliveroo: dpo@deliveroo.com
Just Eat: dpo@just-eat.com
Uber: Follow link
You have the right to request the deletion of some personal data in certain circulstances, such as if you have stopped working for a company. In such a case, using your right to access and then your right to erasure can help you take control of your data at no cost to you.
For more information on how to request data erasure, you can follow this link.
GDPR: Resarching Tools and Tactics
These tools for demanding data developed from a research project to explore whether workers can amass useful data via GDPR and other legislation. Getting data is useful, but legal tools of taking data are limited. Understanding how work is being organised and how decisions about them are made requires collaboration to build up networks for sharing information and data. That is one function of the Workers’ Observatory.
The research by Karen Gregory, Wenlong Li, and Cailean Gallagher will be published as a paper: Emancipating Gig Workers from Algorithmic Control: A Multidisciplinary Inquiry into Data Rights, Data Flows and Databased Worker Science. For more information contact cgallagher@stuc.org.uk.