A year ago, Anna (not her real name) would drive eight hours a day for food delivery platforms Just Eat and Deliveroo to earn £150 ($200 USD) a day in her home city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. To get close to that figure, Anna says she has to work 12-hour days. That’s before she deducts taxes, insurance, and fuel from her earnings.
Like many platform workers, Anna — who asked us not to use her real name because she feared Just Eat might terminate her account — says she’s caught between pay cuts from delivery platforms, increased competition for jobs and rising fuel costs. Anna relies on diesel, which peaked this month to a British record 179 pence per liter ($8.95 per gallon), partly in response to the war in Ukraine.
“The increase in fuel and all the cost of living just went through the roof,” she says. “During this time, Just Eat has lowered their prices, and that’s just not right.”
Platform workers who say their wages are being eroded by rising costs are going on strike this week. Anna plans to join other Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber drivers on Wednesday in a six-hour strike in Belfast organized by the App Drivers and Couriers Union (ADCU). “We’re just trying to get the price back to a level where we’re not working at a loss,” she says.
The ADCU alleges Just Eat has cut its fees by 25 percent, a figure Just Eat disputes, though the company has not provided an alternative number. That pay cut brings benefits in line with the “already terribly low” rate paid by other companies operating in the city, including Deliveroo, according to the union. Deliveroo declined to comment on the impact of rising fuel prices on its employees’ earnings.
Similar grievances among Just Eat workers are not only emerging in Belfast, where the company only uses independent couriers, they are also following other protests already taking place in the UK. In March, Just Eat drivers in the southern English region of Kent also went on strike, demanding higher wages to offset rising fuel prices. Just Eat and Deliveroo drivers have staged several strikes in another town in the eastern English region of Essex.
“Everything is going up, but the amount they are paying us is going down and they’re hiring more people, so it’s getting oversaturated and there aren’t enough jobs,” Just Eat driver Jimmy Zane told local news.
The fuel crisis sparks protests in another key European market for the gig economy: Germany. Employees of Just Eat subsidiary Lieferando also went on strike on Tuesday in response to rising fuel costs. “Lieferando pays an above-average mileage allowance at 30 cents per kilometer, the highest possible amount for tax-free payments,” said Nora Walraph, company spokesperson. But this amount is no longer sufficient, according to Oguz Alyanak. the German principal investigator for the Fairwork Foundation, a group that assesses labor practices at platform companies. “With rising gas prices, this is now unsustainable,” he says. “This is well below the cumulative cost for many of the workers.”
