Saturday, February 15, 2025

“More than just a job”: Food distribution cooperatives introduce fairness to the gig economy | The gig economy


Cristina González did a lot of waiting in 2018. At the time, the 29-year-old was a courier for Spanish food delivery platform Glovo in her Basque hometown of Vitoria-Gasteiz. She talked about feeling as if she was always on standby: “You actually have to keep working.”

Glovo provides services to restaurants, and customers can also order from supermarkets. Gonzalez said it was “a total shit show: supermarket orders are really easy to mess up.” If González completes the order without stocks in the supermarket, she may get bad reviews from customers because of the lack of goods. If she rejects the order, Gonzalez is worried that it will affect her score on the platform. “The pressure is very, very high.”

Gonzalez is still a courier, but earns 10 Euros (£8.70) per hour after tax and social security expenses are deducted, which is more than double her previous salary. She said that the customers of Eraman, the express cooperative she works for, are more aware of small issues and have more diversified work; she delivers goods like delivery, and has better communication, and she feels that she has more control.

Christina González is working for Eraman. Photography: Paul Iano / Eraman

She said that she can imagine staying in this form of gig economy may be much longer than in Glovo-5 to 10 years, she said. “This is a job, but it doesn’t stop there. In Eraman, you are a link in the chain and a member of the team. In Glovo, you are a chess piece and the last position in the hierarchy.”

In Berlin, Mattia Carraro went through a similar trajectory: The 33-year-old courier worked at Deliveroo for two years before joining Khora, a 30-person delivery group established in March last year.Germany offers relatively better conditions for food couriers-those who work for large platforms Is an employee and social Security Generally speaking Pay by the hour Instead of Every delivery like this Most express delivery in the UK.

Although satisfied with the salary, Carraro is troubled by the extreme insecurity of the job, “it may disappear day to day”, and anonymity.takeout Stop business in Germany In 2019, when Khora showed up, he signed. Although his role involves more administrative management—two-hour plenary meetings per week, consensus-reaching decisions, plus approximately 15 hours of unpaid management responsibilities per week—carraro feels happier as a member of the cooperative .

“For me, it’s okay to make less money, but working in an environment that always makes me feel good, I know the problem will be solved and we are all friends. This is because we don’t want to be in a season or until What we did before we found something better, but a job that you really want to keep and that you like.”

Mattia Carraro of the Khora collective resting at Hermannplatz in Berlin
Matia Carraro of the Khora collective rests at Hermannplatz in Berlin. Photography: Marvin Systermans

Carraro not only provides bicycle delivery services: Like other members of the cooperative, he is responsible for some of Khora’s dispatch work. “I took my dog ​​for a walk, had breakfast outside, and then at noon I started to work, smoking a cigarette while eating yogurt and popcorn. Then at the end of my shift at 10 in the evening, I ate normally.”

At different ends EuropeThese cooperatives are led by workers and proud of democratic management. Paul Iano, 28, the co-founder of Eraman, said that the 10-member cooperative reached a decision through discussion. “Regarding cooperatives, what I want to say is that if you have to vote, you have already encountered problems.”

However, without the bicycle delivery software they rely on, neither of these companies would exist.

CoopCycle is the brainchild of Alexandre Segura, a computer programmer from Marseille. Back in the spring of 2016, Segura found that he would go to Place de la République in Paris almost every night. Standing at night, the French protest movement Compared with occupation.

Segura helped build a website for this movement and spent a lot of time talking about how the gig economy is exploitative and harmful, and how users should operate more gig economy. “It planted seeds in my heart,” he said.

So, later that year, when his brother-in-law and thousands of other people lost their lives Take Eat Easy, a Belgian food delivery startup, Which prompted Segura to embark on a new adventure in his spare time, “as an intellectual exercise.”

He said he wanted to reverse engineer the technology provided by Deliveroo, Uber and other large platforms to enhance the capabilities of couriers. The result is a delivery application that provides software and support, but requires users to meet two conditions: they must be owned by the workers, and all profits must be distributed among the worker owners.

“No CoopCycle, no parties,” Carraro said. He told me that for the average collective, the cost of designing a customized delivery application would be prohibitively high.

Recently, the world seems to start thinking more like Segura. SpainThe Supreme Court ruled in September that the riders working for Glovo were not self-employed, but paid employees who were entitled to paid vacation and sick leave. On Tuesday, the country’s socialist-led cabinet approved a law to make the ruling effective and set a three-month period for companies to hire their couriers as employees. The Spanish Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, stated that the legislation puts the country “at the forefront of technological change and cannot go beyond employment rights”, adding: “Coordinating technological development and social protection needs to become the password of the future. .”

All over the world, at least 40 legal challenges Gig economy companies including Uber and Deliveroo have improved the employment conditions for passengers and drivers.

Deliveroo stock Plunged 26% When the highly anticipated London Stock Exchange debuted in March, many investors expressed concern about the situation facing their self-employed.

Increasing censorship accompanied the rolling lockdown, shutting down most of the hotel industry and sending food delivery orders through the roof.Headquartered in Amsterdam Only eat takeaway According to the report, orders in the first three months of 2021 have increased by 79%.Despite the catastrophic situation of the stock market launch, Deliveroo reports that double The number of orders in the same period.

Segura’s colleague Adrien Claude (Adrien Claude) said that 90% of non-profit food distribution cooperatives also reported that business has grown during the lockdown.

The cooperative stated that their business model provides better deals for restaurants and riders.For example, Eraman charges restaurants 10-20% of the order value, and Deliveroo 32%, Glovo’s average fee is 35%, and the commission for Just Eat and Uber Eats is 36.20%. In Berlin, Khora provides a flexible system that provides restaurant customers with more autonomy than paying a certain percentage of fees.

However, it remains to be seen whether worker-led delivery cooperatives can provide real alternatives to delivery giants.

Glovo food courier in Madrid during the first wave of pandemic
A Glovo food courier in Madrid during the first wave of the pandemic last year. Photo: Juan Medina/Reuters

Professor Vera Trappman of the University of Leeds, one of the co-authors of the study Global labor riots on the platform: the case of takeaway workers, Believes that the cooperation model shows us the possibility of a different future-“an alternative way of sharing risks and benefits.” She said that it seems unlikely that Coopcycle will bring about fundamental changes in the working conditions of couriers. However, she believes that the integration of digital platforms and worker-led cooperatives will continue to exist.

“We know that young people in particular do not like to work in the bureaucratic and exploitative environment provided by many companies, so they often choose to be self-employed. They are more likely to question the value of working for the company, and cooperatives may increasingly become their own Home.”

CoopCycle now has 67 cooperatives in the seven countries of its “Alliance” and has expanded from Europe to Canada and Australia. This is the first time that collective deals with Argentina and Mexico have been on the cusp, although the debate on whether motorcycles will violate the federation’s environmentally friendly values ​​is ongoing.

Claude’s voice is full of enthusiasm for the future, but also a little tired. “We are trying to change the world-it is difficult because we are human and nothing is perfect. It may never be perfect, but we are trying to make things better day by day.”



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