As synonymous with London these days as black taxis or red buses, food delivery drivers are visible everywhere as they weave in and out of traffic on their bicycles and mopeds, lugging their branded backpacks through heatwaves and hailstorms. But even though they are visible everywhere, unless their takeaway Big Mac is running late, do people give them any thought at all?
Acton, where I live, is full of young men driving around on scooters carrying Deliveroo or Uber Eats or Just Eat bags, and I worry about them. Thirty or so of them are in a perpetual ever-changing flock around the McDonald’s on the High Street, always with L-plates. Their work looks arduous and precarious, too.
As they are self-employed contractors, they don’t have the same rights or benefits as someone fully-employed, but, like many people trying to make a living in the gig economy, some say that in order to make enough to live on, they can never stop working.
Drivers get paid per delivery with a variable distance fee, but some complain that it is not clear how the changing rates are worked out.
If you are an undocumented migrant, or living adjacent to a normal set-up, you might be forced to work for little
“Flexibility means nothing when we’re forced to work excessive hours to support our families, pay our bills, or even just stay alive,” one rider was quoted as saying earlier in the year with reference to a pay dispute. Others say the flexibility suits them and the companies argue that their drivers are happy with the benefits they offer.
In response to a freedom of information request submitted by Reuters last year, the Home Office said a staggering 42 per cent of riders who were stopped by an enforcement team over six days in April last year were found to be working illegally.
All the food delivery apps allow riders to appoint “substitute drivers” to stand in for them and they aren’t currently subject to the same ID checks. Social media is flooded with offers to rent vetted profiles for small amounts of money.
A report published by Worker Info Exchange claimed to have found evidence of 49 riders linked to a single bank account receiving all the payments. How many more like that are there?
The substitute policy puts the public at risk and could encourage exploitation. If you are an undocumented migrant, for example, or for whatever other reason living adjacent to the normal set-up, you might be forced to work in this set-up for very little.
But of course, from the Government’s perspective, it’s complicated. Not only is it probably easier for them to turn a blind eye to illegal migrants working, but these food delivery apps contribute billions to the UK economy and support hundreds of thousands of restaurants. Earlier this year Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats did all commit to extra security checks on their riders, including the ability to check the registration of substitutes.
The online food delivery industry is valued at £10.5 billion and has grown by more than 35 per cent every year since 2017. The number of users is now nearly 13million, which is about a quarter of adults in the UK.
It doesn’t take much to look at the way these food delivery drivers are working to see that their lives are tough. Do we blame the companies striving to make profits and working within the law or should we really blame ourselves, and our culture of wanting everything delivered to us fast and cheap?
What kind of city do we want to live in?
