Today, on Valentine’s Day, delivery riders working for platforms such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats will be on strike, demanding higher wages. It will probably be the largest platform worker strike ever seen in the UK. I’m one of the organisers.
I live in south London. I spend most of the day on the road. I ride 80 miles a day on my moped over the course of nine to 10 hours, and usually make less than the minimum wage after costs. Because I’m self-employed, I have no guaranteed basic pay. Instead, I get variable fees for each delivery based on distance and other factors.
Adjusted for inflation, our earnings have been going down for years. A recent report looked at pay in the sector and found the vast majority of platforms couldn’t provide evidence that workers’ gross pay was at least the minimum wage after costs. I try to do three orders an hour and average about £10 before costs. Sometimes I make less, more like £7. Other riders who are less experienced or don’t have accounts with all the apps that I do make even less.
My costs are quite low. I own my moped outright, and I don’t have to pay someone else to lend me their login (a practice known as renting an account). Even so, I have to spend about £3 on petrol, insurance, maintenance and other costs for every hour I work. So if my account says I’m making £10 an hour, I’m actually making £7. I have to make nearly £14 just to earn the equivalent of the minimum wage. It’s rare that I make that much nowadays.
I work six days a week. On a normal day, I get up at 6.30am and have a coffee and a cigarette before hitting the road. I work all the peak hours: from 7am to 10am, noon to 3pm, and 5pm to 9pm. I get so exhausted that I have to go home for a nap between lunch and dinner. The apps talk about flexibility, but there’s no flexibility at all: you have to work the peak hours, or you don’t make anywhere near enough money.
Falling wages are making all our lives harder. In my local mechanics’ garage, they have a list on the wall of all the riders who owe them money. It used to just be one or two, but now all the regulars are on it. We are all scared of getting a big repair bill. My food bill keeps going up and up. I’m getting less healthy because I’m totally reliant on processed frozen food.
Work makes me anxious. There are lots of things that add to the stress. The only way to make more money is to ride faster, which means taking more risks. You can get an extra few pounds an hour if you’re willing to risk your life. I’ve been in situations where I’ve skidded and only just avoided crashing.
In other jobs I’ve had, if you worked hard you would be all right. But when you’re a rider, you have to be lucky, too: lucky to avoid being hit by a car, lucky to avoid being robbed, lucky to avoid being made to wait for orders. So far, I have been lucky. But the thing with luck is that it doesn’t last for ever.
I came to the UK thinking that this was one of the richest countries in the world. But things are always getting worse – I work more and more hours for less money. I have ended up asking myself if this was the right decision.
The lives of other riders are even harder than mine. Much of the workforce is undocumented. They rent accounts from other people, but they don’t have the right papers to get another job. That means they can’t find other work, no matter how bad the pay gets. Often they rent everything they need from one person: a mattress on the floor of an overcrowded house, a moped and a delivery account. They always have to stay alert to avoid immigration raids and police checks. They are living in poverty, but nobody seems to care.
Deliveroo has said that, “Thousands of people apply to work with Deliveroo each month, rider retention rates are high and the overwhelming majority of riders tell us that they are satisfied working with us.” Uber Eats has said: “We offer a flexible way for couriers to earn by using the app when and where they choose. We know that the vast majority of couriers are satisfied with their experience on the app.”
But we can’t go on like this. We’ve had enough. That’s why we started organising this strike. Thousands of us across more than 90 areas went on strike on 2 February, and we’re going to do it again today. Some might point out that Deliveroo riders have a union: the GMB signed a “partnership” deal with the platform in 2022, and calls itself “the union for riders”. But we are fighting for ourselves. Customers who want to support us should do a one-day boycott of the apps on Valentine’s Day, and join us when we protest in the streets.
The author is a food courier in south London and an organiser with Delivery Job UK. As told to Callum Cant
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