On Sheffield high street, a busy picket line has formed. Couriers who work for Stuart, the delivery company, are refusing to pick up McDonald’s takeaway orders made via the Just Eat app.
“The support we’ve been getting is incredible,” says Khalil Lange, 31, who has been a Stuart driver for three years. He says he used to enjoy the work and made reasonable money, but that has steadily changed.
The final straw has been a new pay structure that couriers say slashes the minimum rate of pay per delivery by 24% – from £4.50 to just £3.41. Just as a cost-of-living crisis hits the country with inflation going through the roof.
“My insurance is £2k per year and my fuel bills are now £140 per week,” Khalil says. “I have to stay out working maybe 12/13 hours a day to make sure I make that. I used to work four or five days a week. Now I do seven.
“I liked the flexibility before – I never missed any of the children’s school plays and things. Now, I’m working all the time.”
Bryn Atkinson-Woodcock, 31, another Sheffield courier, puts it another way. “We’re not even treading water any more, we’re drowning. I have to work more to get the same money.
“My target is £100 a day. Now that means doing 11-12 hours a day instead of eight. And it means working seven days a week. Last Friday and Saturday I worked 14-15 hours. I only have very, very rare days off – like if my car breaks down.
“The new pay structure doesn’t match the old one. Tax and insurance and fuel have all gone up so that makes it a pay cut too. We get no holiday, no sick pay, no maintenance for our cars… I’m on my third car – we just do so many hours driving that it’s hard on any car.
“When we tell people why we’re striking the public are actually pretty supportive.”
Six weeks after it began, the Sheffield picket, by members of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, is now Britain’s longest-running gig economy strike. Protests have spread to Chesterfield, Sunderland, Blackpool and Huddersfield.
“We are not alone in the shadows any more,” says Parirs Dixon, Chair of the IWGB Sheffield Couriers & Logistics Branch, says. “And there is no going back.”
You could think you have never used Stuart Delivery Ltd, but if you have ordered from Just Eat you may well have done. As Just Eat says on its website: “We work with logistics partners such as Stuart in the UK… to deliver orders to our customers.”
In some areas of the country, including Sheffield, the IWGB says Stuart fulfills all of Just Eat’s orders.
Stuart, in turn, is owned by DPD deliveries – who in turn are owned by La Poste. Which is owned by the French government.
Thanks to its couriers, who became a fourth emergency service during the Covid crisis – even doing medical deliveries for Superdrug – Stuart saw a £20million increase in turnover at the height of the pandemic.
In 2020, its highest-earning director received a 1,000% pay rise over the previous year to more than £2million. Yet the riders and drivers themselves say they are trapped on poverty pay, and are still denied basic workers’ rights.
The IWGB and law firm Leigh Day are also bringing a claim against Stuart on behalf of over 150 couriers nationwide alleging unlawful denial of worker status and basic rights like holiday pay and a guaranteed minimum wage.
“It’s time for Stuart to come to the table and negotiate,” says Alex Marshall, President of the IWGB. “The very workers who risked their lives daily to provide a vital service for the public are seeing their pay slashed. These heroes deserve a pay rise.”
It’s not just Sheffield couriers who are being affected.
Jim, who is in his sixties and asked for his name to be changed, is a Stuart driver in Blackpool where couriers are also on strike.
“I don’t see my family as much as I used to,” he says. “I leave at 7am and I’m not back from work until after bedtime, 8pm. The job was already difficult – now it’s impossible. When you work it all out, I’m earning about £7 an hour. I’ve made plans to leave… it just isn’t going to work for me now.”
Fran Scaife, 25, from Teesside, says she stopped working for Stuart three months ago due to stress. “There have been a lot of changes since I started in 2019,” she says. “The pay for waiting times has been scrapped. The basic pay rate has been slashed and we no longer get bonuses.”
Fran has a chronic disability and is now having to rely on Universal Credit and her elderly mum. “I am so skint. I used to come out with £500 from my job at Stuart, but more recently I would make £89.”
Stuart insists its new “linear pay” system is a fair payment model. “This action by a small group of individuals is unnecessary,” a spokesman said. “Stuart’s management has met with couriers in Sheffield and Blackpool to listen to all their concerns, including pay. Stuart is committed to ensuring it is the most courier-centric platform that guarantees pay per hour that is among the highest in the sector.”
In Sheffield, McDonald’s staff have been watching the strikers nightly through the glass. The fast-food company has had its own issues with picket lines and workers’ rights as precarious workers take on the giants.
Its new pandemic business model relies on delivery companies like Stuart. Stuart relies on its couriers. But its couriers say they can’t rely on Stuart.
Olivia Blake, MP for Sheffield Hallam, says: “Sheffield will not stand idly by while Just Eat and Stuart exploit and ignore our key workers.
“Their families must not be allowed to pay the price for Stuart’s corporate greed. On behalf of our city, I call on them to do the right thing: reverse the pay cut and sit down to talk with the IWGB.”
