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Delivery cyclist (via YouTube)£100 a week and no access to toilet facilities – delivery cyclist says online food order firms aren't looking out for workers
An Edinburgh food delivery cyclist working for Uber Eats and Just Eat says she has been logging on to work for 60 hours a week, but has only been making £100. Alice Barker also said that with restaurants not allowing delivery riders to use their bathrooms during the coronavirus outbreak, she has resorted to trying not to drink any water during her shifts.
Barker told the BBC that with many restaurants closed and people often preferring to prepare food at home, there has been a shortage of work.
As she is paid per delivery, not per hour, this has had a significant impact on her earnings.
“If I’m waiting for an order and I don’t get one, then I’m not earning any money at all,” she said.
"A lot of people do assume that we are much busier now, but certainly for a lot of the push bikes, we're really struggling to make ends meet.
"The demand has just completely floored. Definitely a lot of the restaurants being closed has had an impact, and I think with people being at home, they are spending more time cooking and being at home.”
She added: "I've been logging on for over 60 hours a week, to get £100. I maybe wasn't even making that at the start of lockdown."
She said she was busier when KFC reopened. “I maybe made about £130 that week.”
Food chain workers, including those involved in delivery, have been classed as key workers during the coronavirus outbreak.
However, Barker says that while her employers have pushed for this, it isn’t reflected in her working conditions.
“We should not be having to work for that kind of time to make a living,” she said.
“These companies have all pushed for us to be classed as key workers. But it's really clear that this is about their interests, they haven't actually done anything to make us feel like we're key workers. We're actually quite disposable.
"It's just this weird feeling that we're key workers but no-one's actually looking after us. It feels like a really odd situation to be in."
She said that both Uber Eats and Just Eat had given advice on how to deliver in a socially distant way, but other than that there was a marked difference between what they’d said and what they’d actually done.
"They were going to give us some PPE – some masks and hand sanitiser. I know it's taken weeks for people to even get hold of any.
"And when they do arrive, we're being given single-use masks. How long are we meant to use that safely for?
"Also, with the restaurants, we're not able to just use the bathroom, whether that's to use the toilet or to wash our hands."
While the firms say they are offering sick pay should a delivery rider contract coronavirus, Barker points out these are the only circumstances where that would happen.
“Because we are classed as self-employed, we don’t have any access to sick pay if we were to become ill.
“They have said that they are providing sick pay if you get symptoms or you have to self-isolate, but the irony is that I could become ill for any other reason and I wouldn’t be able to access any sort of sick pay.”
A Just Eat spokesperson said: "We recognise that Covid-19 has brought huge uncertainty for many of the self-employed couriers in our network and have implemented a number of measures to help keep them safe.
"We've rolled out contact-free delivery procedures across our network, are supplying protective equipment to couriers and have asked all restaurants to keep hygiene facilities available to the couriers picking up their orders."
They also said the masks supplied to couriers were reusable.
An Uber Eats spokesperson said: "The safety of everyone using the Uber Eats app and preventing the spread of Covid-19 is a top priority.
"In the UK, Uber Eats has introduced a number of measures including contactless delivery as well as distributing over one million masks to drivers and couriers and over 50,000 hand sanitisers to couriers using the Uber Eats app."
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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38 comments
If you don't like your weekly income at your job. Look for a better job. No one is keeping you there but yourself. Stop complaining and look for something better
At the moment there might be a lot of looking and a lot less finding.
Oh fuck off you fucking Tory scum.
I see the kinder, gentler side have shown up.
Comments like Mybike's don't deserve kindness or gentleness.
By the time of the next election Labour won't have won an election for nearly 20 years.
To reverse that they'll need to convince a lot of people to switch from Conservative to Labour.
Do you think calling those people scum will make that task easier?
Maybe it could shock some people into the realisation that other people's welfare is not something to be diminished in return for higher profits. Maybe it'll show that there's a wider context than just exploiting others and an understanding that we rely on others for society to work.
Maybe.
Or you might alienate the very people you need to persuade to vote Labour.
Most elections in this country are decided by a small number of people switching from Labour to Conservative or vice versa.
They don't become good or bad people overnight based on their decision in the ballot box.
Calling them scum or not calling them scum won't make a blind bit of difference. People in the UK are too wrapped in their own self-importance and would far rather vote for what's best for their wallet than what's best for the country. Besides which, as incompetent as Boris is, he's just not quite stupid enough to call an election before the 5 years are up as even with the narcissistic British voters, he'd get voted out at the moment.
The vast majority of voters, both Labour and Conservative usually vote purely out of self interest. Both sides also pretend that they don't.
This last election was probably the first in which a lot of people voted for an idea rather than just to make themselves better off.
In fact, many people voted for an idea that will most likely make them worse off.
Completely agree.
I don't understand why Jeremy Corbyn was so popular?
Just because you don't like the answer, is there any need to resort to calling people Tory scum. If you haven't got anything constructive to say, it's probably best to say nothing.
There's absolutely loads of delivery work out there due to the pandemic, a lot of it with businesses that have far more ethics than Uber, Just Eat and Deliveroo.
Oh - that's what we've all being doing wrong! Thank you for your sage advice, O Wise One!
What kind of an arsehole are you? It's clear that you are an arsehole!
Why on earth shouldn't someone complain if they're being paid badly? It's not the 1960s, people can't always just wander off from one job and find one that pays better. People have bills to pay, families to support - these things keep people in jobs that are not ideal. If a job's worth doing, people should be paid a worthwhile wage to do it.
She hasn't worked 60 hours a week, she's been available at the end of a smartphone for 60 hours a week. Nothing to stop her doing other things while she waits for an order to come in.
We've been in lockdown, what exactly does she expect?
I suspect that's a stupid comment. IMO.
If I take a day off from my office work, but am 'expected to be available to deal with enquiries from the end of a phone or email' then realistically can't do anything else (halfway through an Xbox game / doing some plumbing / fitting new brake pads / etc) in case that 'must answer' phone call or email comes in. I imagine it's very similar for a Uber/Roo rider.
I do plenty of 'on-call' shifts.
Sitting round in your work clothes watching netflix is in no way equivalent to actually being in work.
I could also do a bit of plumbing or change brake pads if I so desired.
Your mileage may vary
I definitely remember that when I did a try-out for Deliveroo, part of the deal was waiting around in a public park for jobs. That was the assigned 'on-call' place, as it were. It wasn't a case of waiting around at home.
It depends where you live, if you're close to shops you can do it from home.
I got chatting to a deliveroo rider a while ago, he was busy scamming deliveroo at the time and apparently whoever is closest tends to get the job.
Of course it's a stupid comment, it's a stupid industry that relies upon gullible people to make it work. This is the business model that Uber, Just Eat, Deliveroo, DHL, TNT, Hermes etc, etc, etc, employ and it stinks. Pass all the cost onto the customer facing "employee" while only paying them for the deliveries they actually do.
How it hasn't been made illegal is beyond me, but these businesses working practices have been put before the courts and found in most cases to be legal.
It's fake self employment, but here's the really odd thing, even with all these shady business practices the likes of Uber, Just Eat and Deliveroo are still failing to make a profit even though they are burning through millions of investors money.
Then again, the consumer, the person actually placing the order wants delivery for nothing, or as cheap as possible, so who actually is to blame, the businesses "employing" the gullible or the consumers wanting everything for as little cost as possible and as quickly as possible.
No point in calling me out, if you, as an online shopper aren't ready to pay the going rate for quick delivery, but nobody is.
What a bollocks comment. What the hell other job will enable you to drop everything at a moment's notice and maybe not come back for the rest of the day?? Seriously mate...
They did post previously they run a cargo bike delivery service, so I guess they do have an idea of what is possible.
Not sure other things meant work, but study, proofreading, anything where you make a batch of widgets and dare I say domestic chores.
£100 a week sounds like a poverty trap unless you are studying at the same time.
Seriously?
I've worked in the logistics industry for over 25 years and wouldn't advise anyone to work for these ridiculous businesses. It's a fake job used to circumvent employment law, but if people are stupid enough to take the work they only have themselves to blame.
Without "employees" there is no business, so the business model would have to change, yet people still sign up to do this work because they don't have the foresight to research what they are really committing to.
Then again, you obviously know far more about the industry than I do, so it's pointless me taking the conversation any further.....
In a hundred years or so, will people be tearing down statues of app-based, zero-hours, no-employee employers? Or will everyone - even doctors, architects, and the software developers who're enabling this model - be working that way? We have a choice.
(Of course, there'll be few statues, because few of today's mega-rich feel the need to buy their way into heaven by paying for public buildings.)
We won't be here in 50 years time, let alone 100, as we're well on the way to destroying our own planet. Effectively long, drawn-out, protracted suicide. We're all idiots!
I think that some humans could be around in a bit, I do hope so.
I won't, no children either.
Global warming keeps rolling on, there are more and far worse zoonoses out there to get us, and we have been on a society ending nuclear armaggedon knife edge for over half a century.
People do seem to forget that once we can all go socially distanced shopping, or when they come up with a vaccine, we still have to deal with No-Deal Brexit, catastrophic climate change, the Sixth Great Extinction, and the Trump vs China Mega-Smackdown.
Oh happy days...
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