Energy prices have spiked due to the (disastrous) US-Israel war on Iran. The ceasefire looks like it could end any moment, but even if it does hold, the impact of the shutting of the Strait of Hormuz and the destruction of a significant amount of energy infrastructure on both sides of the Persian Gulf means that global energy prices will not drop any time soon, and may still rise further. We have been speaking to ridehail drivers across Europe to find out about the consequences of the rising cost of fuel on their livelihoods.
For drivers in the gig economy who are hired on an independent contractor basis, the cost of fuel falls entirely on their shoulders. Petrol or diesel costs are normally somewhere around one-third of their total work expenses, and around one-sixth of their gross income. An increase in the cost of fuel therefore significantly affects the capacity of these workers to earn enough money to get by. The extent to which the cost of fuel has risen since the war began on 28 February differs across Europe, from a 17.5% rise in France to just a 6.1% rise in neighbouring Spain, but everywhere it is has gone in the same direction, and so everywhere the take-home pay of drivers has gone down.
One driver in Poland, Tomasz, tells GEP he has essentially been operating at a loss since fuel prices began to rise. Tomasz is rejecting many trip requests from Uber and Bolt now because they are no longer economical for him. "Drivers are leaving the industry en masse", he says. Drivers in Poland are by no means alone in their discontent.
"We look at the prices from afar," Christophe Ballestero Cochet, a driver in the French city of Yvelines, tells 'TF1'. "We think there is a mistake, but no, there is no mistake,". Christophe says he is now paying €68 to fill up his tank, €20 more than before the Iran war began. Like Tomasz, Christophe now rejects more trip requests, but has to compensate for that by working longer hours, giving him less time to spend with his family.
Not all drivers are being hit equally. For those who have already switched to electric vehicles, the cost of electric charging is much cheaper. One driver in Ireland told GEP that this is the first energy price crisis which has "not caused anxiety" because he now uses an EV, although he feels for the farmers and truckers, who have been protesting in Dublin over the price of fuel.
While many more ridehail drivers may have wished they had switched to an EV before this crisis began, the cost of EV vehicle purchase remains prohibitive for many, while subsidies and charging infrastructure remain limited. EVs are yet another case where the cost is pushed onto drivers, many of whom are already in car debt and can't afford to take more on until they have extracted everything they can out of their current vehicle.
We have not heard of any examples across Europe where the ridehail platforms are raising driver earnings to compensate for the higher cost of fuel. In 2022, the last time there was a major energy price spike when the Ukraine war began, Uber brought in a surcharge to ameliorate increased driver costs, but that has not come yet this time. In the US, Uber is offering drivers access to reductions on fuel via its 'pro' card and increased subsidies to transition to EVs, but this offer is yet to make its way over the Atlantic.
James Farrar from Worker Info Exchange believes that the reason why there has been no surcharge this time is because Uber has since rolled-out it's dynamic pricing system, which de-links the price for the customer and the pay for the driver from time and distance travelled. Because customer prices and driver pay rates are no longer based on objective criteria and are not linked to one another, raising fares on customers would not automatically lead to higher pay rates for drivers anyway.
“Every global crisis is a payday for Uber," Farrar says. "Boom or bust, war or peace, Uber’s dynamic pay algorithm ensures it always comes out the winner. When oil prices spike, living costs soar and drivers bleed cash, while Uber’s algorithm recalibrates in milliseconds to protect the company’s profit."
Indeed, Uber's roll-out of dynamic pricing was the trigger for pay cuts-by-stealth, with pay rates for drivers falling on average from 2022 onwards. Worker Info Exchange's research has found that gross pay for Uber drivers in the UK fell from £22.20 to £19.06 after dynamic pay was introduced. French government data shows that Uber drivers' pay per trip fell 9.1% in real terms from 2021 to 2024. WIE are taking a class-action claim against Uber in Amsterdam on the basis that drivers' own data has been used by the company to systematically reduce their earnings.
It's within this larger context that we have to consider this latest, Donald Trump-induced hit to the pay of ridehail drivers across Europe. This is not a one-off income reduction, it's part of a sustained assault on their pay which has been going on for nearly half a decade, and explains why the company is now profitable. That squeeze on drivers is why so many are leaving the industry, but Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is unlikely to be panicking any time soon about driver supply.
Why? Because, while more drivers walk away during an inflation spike, others decide to start driving for Uber as they need to make more income to get by.
“72% of drivers in the U.S. are saying that one of the considerations of their signing up to drive on Uber was actually inflation,” Khosrowshahi told CNBC in 2022. “Life is getting more expensive, they need to pay extra for their groceries. So on the supply side we may be actually benefiting from the inflationary environment.”
The Uber CEO made a similar point last year, stating that the company was "recession-resistant" because when "there is more unemployment, the cost of Uber will come down, because, to some extent, the cost of labour comes down."
This is what happens when the gig economy model meets a precarious labour market more broadly: companies like Uber get to treat drivers as elastic; they can be stretched, strained and disposed with as platforms see fit. In a climate of job insecurity, rather than inflation leading to workers pushing their employers for wage rises, they instead find second and third jobs to compensate for their rising costs. It is never the platforms that pay the price for an inflation crisis or a recession, it's always the worker.
If every crisis - invariably caused by the rich and powerful - falls on the shoulders of those with least capacity to bear it, we are in big trouble as a society. Humans, like elastic, can only be pulled so far before they break. We need to realise that all wars are also class wars, and we will only start winning the class war if we fight back collectively. Otherwise, the Trumps and Khosrowshahis of this world will continue to make the rest of us pay for the crises of their making.
Ben Wray, Gig Economy Project co-ordinator |
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Gig Economy news round-up |
WOLT RIDERS STRIKE IN COPENHAGEN AGAIN: Food delivery couriers in the Danish capital went on strike on the second Friday evening running, in what they plan to make a weekly event. The grassroots-organised strike, motivated by falling pay rates at the company, saw significant protests once again outside Wolt's Copenhagen headquarters. One rider, Rafael Escaño Yuste, told 'The Local Denmark' that pay had collapsed over the past year, with a 500 metre trip being worth 30 Kroner last year, while a kilometre trip today only pays 25 Kroner. Wolt's Danish CEO Søren Meier Svendsen sought to justify the pay rates by admitting that they are set algorithmically and therefore vary for trips of the same length. "The model changes all the time, " he said. "Some shorter or more simple tasks might pay a bit less, while others are paid more". The riders once again engaged in a mass rejection of delivery requests on the platform in a specific part of the city to see if they get offered higher rates as a consequence. They did the same last week and prices rose 40%. The riders want a minimum fee per delivery. Read more here. WOLT PROPOSES CHANGES TO DRAFT PLATFORM WORK LAW IN ESTONIA: Food delivery platform Wolt is pushing the Estonian Government to make changes to its draft proposal for the transposition of the EU Platform Work Directive to weaken provisions protecting platform workers' rights. Mindaugas Liutvinskas, Wolt's head of public policy for the Baltics, said that he wanted the government to make the text clearer that the legal presumption of employment only applies when facts indicate direction and control. "Without additional context, the provision appears to suggest that platform work always presumes the existence of an employment contract when the work is paid," he said. The Wolt lobbyist said he also wanted Estonia to allow for data to be processed on the worker's psychological and emotional state, despite the fact that this provision is a core part of the Directive. Wolt also does not want transparency obligations to apply to the algorithmic pricing logic of the platforms, even though an Amsterdam court found in 2023 that dynamic pricing systems did fall under the scope of GDPR. Unions also criticised aspects of the draft, including that joint liability for platforms and intermediaries only applies in the absence of an agreement. Kaia Vask from the Estonian Trade Union Confederation said: "Ensuring the rights of platform workers should not depend on how the platform and the intermediary have divided responsibility between themselves. Therefore, the law should clearly stipulate that, where necessary, a platform worker has the right to file a claim against both." Vask added that they are pushing for health & safety and algorithmic management obligations to apply to all platform workers regardless of employment status. Read more here. GLOVO RIDERS TO HOLD 3-DAY NATIONAL STRIKE IN SPAIN: The CCOO union has announced the first national strike of Glovo riders in Spain since they became employees last year. The strike, which will be held from April 24th to 26th, comes after the Spanish food delivery platform announced last month that it was firing 750 riders across the country, as part of a re-structuring plan. The union said that as well as opposing the redundancies, the strike was in opposition to the "labour abuse" that has been suffered by the riders since they have been made employees from 1 July 2025. This includes an "illegal sanctioning regime" and that Glovo ends "its commitment to hinder the organisational process of workers through the union elections that have been held for a few months." The union added that Glovo has spurred continuous attempts by the union to negotiate a collective agreement which has led them to take action across the southern European country for the first time. Read more here. FLINK GETS $100 MILLION IN NEW FUNDING FROM BIG TOBACCO: Flink, the German grocery delivery platform, has obtained $100 million in new funding from Prosus Ventures and Btomorrow Ventures, the venture wing of British American Tobacco. The new funding round values the company at $900 million, even though Flink has raised a total of $1.4 billion in venture capital funding since it came into existence in 2021. At that time, Flink was just one of a number of specialist grocery delivery platforms that emerged during the pandemic, but most either went bust or were bought out by bigger firms, with Flink one of the few Q-Commerce specialists still operating in Europe today. The company, which operates in Netherlands and Germany, said it would use the new funding to expand its operations in its current markets. The latest filings show the company made a €213 million loss in 2023, though it claims to be profitable at EBITDA level today. Flink has been accused by workers of union-busting. Read more here. UBER LAUNCHES FIRST EUROPEAN ROBO-TAXI IN ZAGREB: The first commercial robotaxi in Europe was launched on 8 April in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. The launch is a partnership between Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company Pony AI, Uber and Verne, a Croatian based fleet company. The robotaxis are initially available on Verne's platform but will soon also be available on the Uber app. They will initially operate only in the centre of Zagreb and to the airport. The three companies said they plan to scale the number of robotaxis available to thousands over the next few years, with Pony AI providing the AV tech, Uber providing the ridehail platform and Verne managing the fleet. As part of the deal, Uber is taking a minority stake in Verne. Regulations on autonomous vehicles are currently decided at national level in the EU, although the European Commission plans to centralise rules around AVs. Read more here.
Have we missed something important? You can help keep us informed about what's going in the gig economy in Europe by e-mailing GEP@BraveNewEurope.com. |
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Savannah Taylor takes a global perspective on the gig economy, finding that rather than empowering women, it is leading to new forms of dependency. |
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The next webinar of the European Campaign for Decent Platform Work will hear from Maria Laura Birgillito, lecturer in labour law at the Complutense University of Madrid, discussing Article 3 of the Platform Work Directive on intermediaries, April 17, 10.30-12 CET. Register here.
P-Will Cost Action is organising a conference in Prague on 30 June titled ' Mapping the Transformation: Intersectional Analysis of Platform Work and the Shifting Labor Landscape'. It is a hybrid event. Click here for details |
Contact project co-ordinator Ben Wray at GEP@BraveNewEurope.com with news, events, ideas, feedback...whatever you think might be useful.
And if you like the Gig Economy Project newsletter, why not get your friends and colleagues to subscribe? Here's the link. |
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