Today we publish the second part of our interview with Adam, who worked as a delivery driver in Berlin. You can find the first part here
You can also find the whole interview in our brochure “This is what exploitation looks like”. You can download it for free here
What do you like about this job? What are its advantages?
It was a very migrant job, there were almost no Germans there, but you could meet interesting people from all over the world, I made friends there that I still keep to this day. Many friendships were formed, people supported each other, there was a lot of solidarity. Apart from that, I liked working outside, in the fresh air and on a light bike. Later I worked a bit on cargo bikes and it wasn’t for me, I prefer fast road bikes and light loads.
Have you ever had any unpleasant, dangerous situations? Did anyone help you then?
I had a few accidents, including a serious one when a car hit me and the ambulance took me to hospital with a concussion and broken ribs. The doctors were nice and turned a blind eye to the fact that I was working in Germany on a Polish EHIC. Of course, there was no way to get sick leave as a self-employed person, the company was not interested in such cases at all, and I lost my source of income for several weeks. My courier colleagues and the union helped. Accidents happened regularly and as a union we tried to help the couriers who were in trouble, mainly by collecting money so that they could pay for rent and food when they couldn’t work. The company was not interested in these accidents.
If you could give some advice to those who are just starting out, what would you tell them? What should they pay attention to and what should they avoid?
Think twice before becoming self-employed. It pays more and may make sense in the short term, but in the long run there are a lot of problems with insurance, years of contributions and so on. And all the costs are on the employee’s side, and the equipment breaks down, especially in winter. Once I slammed my old road bike into a heavy door on a client’s staircase, my fork broke and I had to invest in a new bike. Or after my accident it turned out that the EHIC covers hospital costs, but not the ambulance, and I got a bill for €600. The earnings seem OK only as long as things like that don’t happen. Besides, if you don’t have sick leave, every flu causes you to lose a third of your monthly income. Generally speaking, it’s a risky job that constantly generates some equipment and health costs, and if the employer doesn’t want to cover some of them, it’s probably better to let it go. The European Union has passed the Platform Work Directive, which is to be implemented in Poland within two years. What do you think about it?
In Germany, the state has recently put pressure on platforms and now most of them either employ workers under an employment contract or at least offer such an option. But it’s good that the directive is coming into force, because otherwise nothing would probably change in this matter in Poland.
Have you been involved in union activities? What do you think about it?
Yes, we were unionized in the FAU, which is a syndicalist trade union, the equivalent of the Workers’ Initiative. When we decided that we wanted to organize, only the FAU agreed to accept us, because we were not officially employees and the big unions did not want to talk to us. In the union, we collected employee signatures for petitions, e.g. for an accident insurance supplement, for a refund of some equipment costs, etc. The company refused to negotiate, we organized pickets in front of their headquarters and local wildcat strikes. The problem with union activity in this industry is that there are hundreds of couriers, people don’t know each other and you have to literally catch them on the street and inform them about the existence and activities of the union. This is completely different ground than a workplace, where people see each other every day, eat lunch together and spend breaks together. In a platform, organizing employees takes incomparably more time and energy, and people often work only for a few months, so an organization once created can quickly fall apart and has to be constantly created anew. That’s why at some point we focused on media activities, publicizing the company’s illegal activities, cooperating with activists and researchers from universities and local politicians, to put pressure on the company. We managed to publicize many problems. The union was unable to push through the main demands, but we had some minor successes, for example the company introduced a small flat-rate fee for equipment costs. The union was also simply a support network for couriers, and that was one of its main values.
In the end, did you resign yourself or were you a victim of Deliveroo’s sudden withdrawal from Germany?
At the end of the summer of 2019, Deliveroo suddenly ceased to exist. They announced that they were closing down in Germany. They literally sent us an email on Monday saying that they were closing down on Friday. Over 2,000 couriers across the country lost their jobs. They offered us two or three hundred euros each to waive any potential claims against them. Together with three colleagues from the union, we decided not to take the money, but to go to court. The idea was for the court to check whether we shouldn’t have been employed full-time all this time. In such cases, the court doesn’t check what kind of contract the employee signed with the employer, because it is known that such a huge platform as Deliveroo can offer people any junk contracts, and people will sign them because they have to eat something. So the court checks whether the work met the definition of an employment contract or not. If it did, it means that there was an employment relationship and the self-employment contracts were defective, because they should have been full-time positions.
We wanted to go to court earlier, but we were afraid that we would be fired for it, so we only went when the company announced that it was closing. We were represented in court by a union lawyer, and Deliveroo by a lawyer who tried, among other things, to convince the judge that we were bad employees. She had our data from the app and showed, for example, who was late for work when. In any case, the case unfortunately ended at an early stage. At one point, Deliveroo offered us a few thousand euros to leave them alone, and we were out of work and without income, and we had to pay rent and eat something, so we took the money. One colleague, who had enough to live on, didn’t go through with the settlement and the idea was to continue supporting him in the trial. At that point, the case became political, it was about creating a precedent and getting an official court ruling on whether platforms have to give couriers jobs or not. Unfortunately, the case ended when the last colleague got a job at another courier company as a self-employed person, broke his bike, ended up in hospital and went bankrupt. Deliveroo then offered him quite a large amount, which he needed, and neither we nor the union were able to provide such financial support. So this last case also ended with a settlement. I regret that we didn’t manage to see it through to the end and win against the corporation. But on the other hand, Deliveroo was the last platform with such an employment model in Germany. Those that came after, Gorillaz, Flink, Wolt, Uber Eats, etc. were already offering jobs and paying insurance. I think that through our union activities and this process we have contributed a little to changing standards for the better.