Not all of Just Eat’s orange-clad couriers switched to paid contracts, and the company did continue to use self-employed gig workers hired through outsourcing companies to fulfill some of its orders. Under French employment law, workers and unions have four months to fight the Just Eat restructuring. If they lose, Rioux expects the lost contracts will be replaced by gig workers who technically work for French outsourcing firm Stuart. He said the transition from Just Eat staff to Stuart gig workers would be a major change. “Stuart couriers basically have no rights, they get paid for every delivery and the chances of getting social protection are very low.” Stewart declined to comment.
France is not the only country in which the rights of gig workers are regressing. Gorillas — a grocery delivery app that has pledged not to use gig jobs from the start — is shutting down its operations across much of Europe. In places like Belgium, Gorillas’ retreat means its couriers will be denied the company’s regular employment contracts and insurance, returning to Uber Eats and Deliveroo as self-employed gig workers. The same happened when another German courier company, Jokr, withdrew from the U.S. in June after hiring couriers as employees.
In countries where the employee model has survived, workers are under increasing pressure to do more. Just Eat couriers in Paris do not expect their employment contracts to be affected by the restructuring, which they have already started to experience. “Before December, Paris was divided into zones: southeast, southwest, northeast, northwest, central,” a Paris courier told Wired, who asked to remain anonymous. “In January, everything merged. Everything became ‘Paris.’ That meant that from January, I had orders from the other side of the city.” Now he says he can cycle more than 50 kilometers a day, By the end of his shift, he could be 20 kilometers away from home.
In Gorillas’ home country of Germany, the company has submitted a proposal to the local Works Council to get the fastest 25% of its couriers to get better shift service.
Europe is ahead of other countries such as the US when it comes to platform worker protection, and the European Commission is working on new rules to govern the platform economy. But Katie Wells, who studies platform workers at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said that even if passengers do earn guarantees that they will receive minimum wages, the dynamics of the fast-delivery sector make it difficult to maintain those gains. “Margins in this workplace are so high and companies are so unequal in the distribution of power that workers have no ability to retain whatever protections they have,” she said.
Instead, the paradox of the gig economy remains. While investors doubt it’s possible to hire couriers and calculate profits, some workers’ rights advocates wonder if the economics of the courier industry mean there will always be good working conditions there. Wells said she has yet to see an example. “Is it possible? Of course,” she said. “A lot of crazy things are happening in the world.”
