Uber Deactivated Your Account? Since February 2025 You Can Apply to the Fair Work Commission (Within 21 Days)

The email arrived at 11:40pm: “Your account has been permanently deactivated due to a violation of our Community Guidelines.” No detail. No chance to respond. You’ve driven for the platform for three years, five days a week, and the app that was your job is now a login screen. Support replies with the same paragraph every time.

Until 2025, that was the end of it. Drivers and couriers are not employees, so unfair dismissal never applied. The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Act 2024 changed that. For a deactivation on or after 26 February 2025, “employee-like” workers on digital labour platforms can apply to the Fair Work Commission for a remedy for unfair deactivation. The application must be lodged within 21 days, and the Commission can order the platform to switch you back on.

Your rights

• The jurisdiction. Chapter 3A of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) covers “regulated workers”, and Part 3A-4 (ss 536LE–536LU) deals with unfair deactivation of employee-like workers. An employee-like worker is an independent contractor performing work through a digital labour platform who has low bargaining power, low authority over how the work is performed, or is paid at or below what an employee doing the work would receive. Rideshare drivers and food-delivery couriers are the paradigm case.
• Eligibility. You must have performed work through the platform on a regular basis for at least six months before the deactivation, and your earnings from the platform must be below the contractor high-income threshold. Deactivation means your access to the platform was suspended or terminated so that you can’t accept work, for a period that isn’t temporary.
• The test. A deactivation is unfair if it was harsh, unjust or unreasonable, having regard to whether there was a valid reason related to your capacity or conduct, whether you were notified of the reason, whether you were given an opportunity to respond, and whether the platform complied with the Digital Labour Platform Deactivation Code 2024. A deactivation that follows the Code is not unfair.
• The remedy. The Commission’s primary order is reactivation of your account, and it can order the platform to make up remuneration lost between the deactivation and reactivation.
• Time limit. 21 days from the date the deactivation took effect, with extensions only in exceptional circumstances.

This is Commonwealth law and applies identically in every state and territory, so this post has no by-state section.

What to do right now

1. Write down the date and time the deactivation took effect. Day 21 is your deadline. Count it today.
2. Screenshot everything before it disappears. The deactivation notice, your ratings history, trip and delivery counts by week for the last six months (this proves regularity), earnings statements, and any prior warnings or the absence of them.
3. Use the platform’s appeal process, immediately and in writing. Ask for the specific reason, the evidence relied on (the complaint, the photo, the verification failure), and an opportunity to respond. Keep copies. Don’t let the appeal run past day 21; the Commission application goes in regardless.
4. Write your account of the incident. If it was a customer complaint, what actually happened on that trip. If it was a rating, what your rating had been and what changed. If it was “fraud” or “identity”, what the platform is referring to and why it’s wrong. Dashcam footage, GPS logs and messages help.
5. Lodge Form F82 with the Fair Work Commission. The form asks for the platform, the deactivation date, why you say it was unfair, and the remedy sought. A supporting statement carries the detail.

What the platform will argue

Expect the platform to say the deactivation was for a valid reason (safety, fraud, guideline breach) and that it followed its own process. The Code is the yardstick. It requires that a deactivation be for a valid reason related to capacity or conduct, that the worker be told the reason in writing, that they be given a genuine opportunity to respond before the decision except in limited safety or legal circumstances, and that there be an internal avenue to dispute it. A platform that deactivated first and asked questions never, on the strength of a single unverified customer complaint, has a problem under the Code even if the underlying allegation is serious. Your application should go through each Code requirement and say whether it was met. The Commission conciliates first; many matters resolve with reactivation at that stage.

“Suspended pending review”? Watch the clock anyway

Platforms often describe a deactivation as a “temporary hold” or “pending investigation” that never lifts. The Act treats a suspension that isn’t temporary as a deactivation, and the 21 days run from when your access to work was effectively withdrawn, not from the day the platform finally uses the word. If you’ve been locked out for more than a few days with no end date, no work and no substantive reply, treat the first day of the lockout as the deactivation date and lodge inside 21 days from it. The Commission can sort out how the suspension should be characterised; it cannot reliably restore a deadline you let pass while waiting for support to answer.

Who to complain to

The platform (internal review, in writing, in parallel). The Fair Work Commission (Form F82, within 21 days). The Fair Work Ombudsman for information about regulated-worker rights. The Transport Workers’ Union represents gig workers and has run deactivation matters. If the deactivation followed a discrimination complaint or a safety complaint you made, the general protections provisions for regulated workers may also apply; the time limit is the same 21 days.

Get the application drafted — $49

Stop reading. Start doing. Claim Done drafts your Unfair Deactivation Application content for Form F82: eligibility (six months’ regular work), the deactivation facts, the Code requirements the platform did or didn’t meet, your account of the incident, the loss, and the reactivation and compensation sought, plus a written internal review request to the platform.

Challenge My Deactivation — $49 →

You review every word before it’s sent.