On Thursday [23 October], Lieferando (Just Eat) riders in the NGG union in Berlin took a one-day strike action over the company's plans to cut 2,000 jobs across Germany and to replace direct employment with sub-contracting in much of the country, including Berlin.
The Gig Economy Project spoke to 'Mo', an NGG member who is part of the Lieferando Workers' Collective in Berlin, which has majority representation on the Berlin Lieferando Works' Council, following the conclusion of the strike.
GEP: What is your analysis of the strike?
Mo: It was the biggest Lieferando strike so far. We had around 150 couriers on strike, which is about 10% of the workforce in Berlin.
We had a big strike rally with many supporters come and support us, as well as politicians.
We also had Lieferando couriers come from Austria, Denmark and other German cities to show their solidarity as well. The strike has also had a huge press coverage.
We think this has been very useful for us in deepening our contact with riders, so we are building up our capacity to take even stronger action in the future.
So I think it was a success and we have put pressure on the company.
GEP: Lieferando has claimed that there was not much appetite among the couriers in Berlin to strike and that consumers were unaffected.
Mo: Well, they have brought in sub-contracted riders on higher pay especially for the strike, as strike breakers, so I think that if they are using strike-breakers that shows that Lieferando has been affected by the strike. For sure the company has continued to operate, but with some difficulties.
GEP: Lieferando has said that workers being laid-off will be “supported with a social plan” and that negotiations with NGG are ongoing in respect to this. What is your understanding of the situation as it stands?
Mo: Right now, the status is that in Berlin we had 2,000 workers at the beginning of the year and now we are down to 1,500, so we have already lost 500.
Lieferando was successful in harassing people out of their jobs, so they didn’t need to terminate more people because they had already met their targets for reduction. In fact, they over-fulfilled their targets, because they started to hire again because they had got rid of too many riders.
So at first they got rid of workers on a 'voluntary' basis - by putting extreme pressure on them to leave their jobs. So this was done without acknowledging that they are closing their operations. At least now, since July, they have acknowledged what they are doing across Germany, and that they have to negotiate redundancies. Right now there’s a voluntary-redundancy scheme in place, so if you leave the company early you get some benefits.
It has not been confirmed, but we think that in Berlin there will be a full closure of the company’s operations, so they will move completely to sub-contracting. There’s no counter-argument from the company to this perspective, so that’s what we think is going to happen.
Probably by the end of March, or next summer, we no longer have a job. They need us to get through the winter, but then they will get rid of us and we will be replaced completely by sub-contracted riders.
GEP: It has been reported that Lieferando riders working for sub-contractor Fleeterly in Berlin have experienced atrocious worker abuses, including only being paid for the time spent delivering not the whole time at work, only being paid cash-in-hand, having to be constantly on-call for shifts and even having to pay the sub-contractor to access work. What role does the sub-contractor Fleeterly play in Berlin at the moment?
Mo: Lieferando gave a district of Berlin to Fleeterly in March, and now they are giving them another district of the city.
GEP: What about the politicians, the German Government, are they intervening at all in this situation?
Mo: The NGG are working with politicians to push for direct employment, so effectively it would prohibit sub-contracting in the food delivery sector. It has been done in the meat industry in Germany, so there is a precedent for that. But there is likely to be no majority for it, because we have a very right-wing government.
I think a more probable solution is that we are reclassified as postal delivery workers. In that case, we will be covered by the Postal Service Act, which requires an official register of sub-contractors, if a sub-contractor breaks the law they get black-listed, and other things which would not be perfect but would definitely be an improvement. We are currently misclassified.
GEP: The Platform Work Directive has to be transposed in Germany in one year’s time. Do you have hopes that this could improve the situation of Lieferando riders?
We have just been talking with colleagues from Austria about the Platform Work Directive and how this could help. We are looking at the details of that in terms of sub-contracting. We will work with our colleagues internationally on this.
I think we have seen with this strike that more and more politicians are having to position themselves in relation to what is happening at Lieferando, so there is some optimism from the political perspective.
Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator
