Gig-work fundamentally challenges what we strive to create as decent work employers

Our position on app-based jobs – we’ll call it gig-work – rests in our values as decent work employers and business leaders.

We know that people enter gig-work for various reasons. In the case of delivery, many newcomers, students, and people who need extra income beyond their regular employment sign up to delivery apps. Many drivers are well-educated and professionals in various fields but are dependent on low-wage gig-work jobs to help them afford life as they settle into education or careers, which can be a long process.

Apps also attract people who are drawn to flexible work and self-employment. A fundamental tenet of contract/freelance work is that the worker sets their own wages, schedules, and many aspects of their working conditions. However, this is not what is happening in the delivery app industry. Algorithmic software manipulates work habits. Workers are tracked and surveilled. Continuous soft surveillance controls the work and performance reviews. Workers are pressured to take jobs that are economically not worthwhile. Workers can even be kicked off the apps if they do not meet the app’s completion rate, and these decisions are unappealable.

Gig workers on delivery apps are unable to appeal unfair conditions because they are not classified as employees and told that as “freelancers”, they are empowered to decide whether to work for the apps. Workers are disempowered by this ill-defined employment structure: in many cases, it is their only work opportunity and they do not have negotiating power over their work contracts.

This means they cannot fight their employer for being paid less than minimum wage or poor working conditions. In jurisdictions around the world, app companies have continued paying drivers below minimum wages and withholding benefits despite regulations that appear, on the surface, to protect drivers. App companies actively appeal to governments to develop regulations that allow them to side-step basic employment standards through stripping drivers of classification as employees.

Most drivers cannot find other employment as delivery drivers because the apps have distorted the market to the point where very few businesses can afford to hire full-time or part-time drivers anymore.

The apps are not invested in furthering drivers’ skills or offering career progression – which they can get away with because drivers are undervalued, and kept at arm’s length from the company.

In other words, delivery app businesses have distorted prices for delivery services to the point of not covering the cost of providing delivery services, and at the same time have created market conditions that force businesses into using the apps. It has set up an exploitative economy where there are no alternative employment models. Delivery drivers have rallied against driving conditions (see Gig Workers United) but have been unable to gain negotiating power. There are too many workers that choose to work for the apps and keep them going, based on reasons from lack of knowledge of working conditions to lack of alternative job options.

As a network that supports decent work, we care because this distorts the delivery industry and drives a wedge between the customer-facing prices of our goods, versus the good of companies that cut labour corners and exploit drivers.

Costs are being driven down for everyone – it’s now normalized for a delivery charge to be $3 rather than $11. Offering delivery for $11 is a significant risk to a small business – it’s so easy to lose a sale once the customer sees the high sticker price for delivery services.

At the same time, we are investing in our staff and seeing the benefits, and many of us have major issues with the cost of delivering through these apps that completely oppose how we view the value of labour. Small businesses must pay a roughly 30% surcharge to use an app-based delivery service. That translates to a 30% discount on every delivery sale, and so little of that discount benefits the people doing the delivery work.