Today we present an interview published in September 2018 in the online magazine notesfrombelow.org (thanks and regards!)
by Joe Hayns (@JoeHayns)
“The street is our factory”
Collectif Des Livreurs Autonomes de Paris (Collectif Des Livreurs Autonomes de Paris, or CLAP) is a group of Parisian delivery drivers — employed by Deliveroo, Uber Eats, etc. — who are collectively organizing themselves across the city.
In August 2017, CLAP members staged a series of strikes against Deliveroo’s change in pay structure from a guaranteed minimum hourly wage to a fully piece-rate system, the exact same change that sparked the Deliveroo delivery protests in London in late 2016. Since then, CLAP has organised Delivery Platform workers on bikes and mopeds. Their latest action – a mass deactivation on the weekend of the World Cup finals – contributed, they believe, to Deliveroo and other platforms suspending their services.
JH – Joe Hayns
S – Steven, founding member of CLAP
This interview was conducted in English, while travelling through Paris in September 2018; it has been lightly edited for clarity. We would like to thank CA for their support before and during the meeting.
JH – How did CLAP come about?
S – We started around February last year with a meeting of a few bikers who wanted to strike against the platforms and take an activist, rather than just ideological, approach.
Six months earlier, another platform, Foodora, had closed without paying its Delivery Partners. The company went bankrupt and many Delivery Partners were not paid. Of the original members of CLAP, many worked for the company. They said “we can’t be without protection – they, the Platforms, have to protect us”.
JH – How do larger, longer-established organisations build relationships with Delivery Partners? Do you work with them?
S – In CLAP, some of us are in the Sud (Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques) trade section and others in the CGT (Confédération Nationale du Travail)
Both unions have sections representing Deliveroo and Uber Eats workers, but both are struggling. There are now structures in place, after the Delivery Partners fought a huge battle with the Platforms.
The first Delivery Partners strike in France was in Bordeaux in 2016. They approached the CGT for support, but the CGT said “no, you’re a small business”. The Suppliers had to strike alone, but after this fight – carried out despite the opposition of the CGT – the union said “OK, you are workers”. Then Sud did the same and tried to unite many Suppliers.
But the structure of the union is not adapted to Suppliers, because we do not have a factory, a place to hand out leaflets, we do not have coffee machines to talk. But we say: “Le rue est notre usine”, “This street is our factory”.
JH – But you meet physically, as members of CLAP?
S – I think there is a certain contradiction in these Platforms. We do not have a workplace, but when we work, there are certain strategic places – for example between two large restaurants – that, when you work, you know.
Every Supplier goes to this place. And at that moment, at that place, we can talk.
JH – I will ask about tactics in a moment. As for Suppliers – in the UK they are usually young people, with a significant number of men who have emigrated here. Is it similar in France? What do you think is the connection between migration status and this job?
S – There are many Bangladeshi Delivery Drivers for Deliveroo and Uber Eats. The platforms try to hire a lot of immigrants because they think they will keep quiet and not strike.
The “undocumented” have to buy an account from a Frenchman because in France you have to set up a business to be legal, and you can’t do that if you are “undocumented”. So they pay for the Deliveroo account to the French. They buy it and give 50% to the Frenchman. We are fighting against it.
We say that a guy who sells his account to an “undocumented” immigrant, for profit, doing nothing, is doing the same as the CEO of Deliveroo or Uber Eats.
JH – During the first wave of Deliveroo and Uber Eats strikes in the UK, in late summer 2016, workers protested outside the companies’ offices, while logging out of the app. This was followed by a legal campaign by the Independent Workers Great Britain (IWGB) union to classify Delivery Drivers as workers. And at the end of November last year, Deliveroo Delivery Drivers blocked the restaurant “Editions Kitchen” in Brighton. There, the restaurants prepare food exclusively for delivery, and this is also happening in France now.
I think we can talk about a series of “spontaneous” strikes running parallel to the legal campaign. And what tactics did you use?
S – Our biggest tactic is to blockade restaurants. We all stop working at the same time and go to the same place, the same restaurant, and ask them to stop the tablet [used to organise deliveries], so they don’t make a profit. If they don’t do what we say, we stay outside the restaurant shouting – and when they turn the tablet off, OK, we’ll go to another restaurant. We’re trying to strike that way.
From September we’ll have a permanent location in the city – a place where we’ll be one day a week, where we’ll help Delivery Drivers with a range of issues – give advice on jobs etc.
JH – In the UK, the strategy of the Independent Workers Great Britain (IWGB) union has been not to ask Delivery Drivers to be paid more per unit, but to argue in the courts that Delivery Drivers are employees – not, as Deliveroo claims, independent contractors – and therefore entitled to certain statutory minimums.
In an interview with the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA), last March, you mentioned the status of Providers and social security – access to services. You said that you are in a grey area when it comes to both employee benefits and access to social services.
Could you tell me how your relationship with your employer relates to access to social security?
S – We want social security, dignity and a little money to live on. If we get it through legal recognition as employees, OK; if through some micro-enterprise statute, OK too.
[At this point in the interview, my companion got stuck between the doors of the metro car, distracting me from the question, to which we never returned. So I quote the interview with the NPA: Since we are not considered employees (salariés), we do not have to have social security. When we have an accident, all costs are borne by us, unless we have private insurance, which 60-80% of couriers do not have.]
JH – The Macron administration recently proposed a “social card”, which seemed to be a suggestion of how the Platforms could relate to workers. What does CLAP think about this?
S – This was another media nonsense from the Macron government. When we went on strike during the World Cup, the question of a “social card” was put to the Senate, and the Senate said “No”. It was not a success, it was a time-waster. What we say about the “social card” is that the Platforms and the government simply discuss among themselves, without involving the Suppliers.
In reality, the “card” does not impose any obligations on the Platforms. They can say whatever they want and we know our own – “tout passe par la lutte” – everything comes from the struggle.