I’ll tell you what happens to the riders’ contract
Deliveroo, Glovo, Eats, Uber: how is the riders' contract going? The article by Nunzia Penelope for Il diario del lavoro
The "rider war", for now, has ended with an armistice.
After months of moves and counter-moves, accusations and counter-accusations, various twists and turns, in the meeting of 11 November at the Ministry of Labor everyone softened the tone, everyone recognized that we must come to an agreement in some way: the CGIL CISL trade unions and Uil, Ugl, Assodelivery , the same government. On the table there was, on the one hand, the disputed Ugl – Assodelivery contract, weakened by JustEat's surprise move to leave the association by announcing the future hiring of cyclists as employees; on the other hand, the request from CGIL CISL and UIL to apply the logistics contract to all riders, as per the agreement signed last week with a series of business associations. Associations that, however, do not include the four or five major platforms, which have merged into Assoldelivery, such as Glovo, Uber Eats, Deliveroo and, in fact, JustEat, which has just come out. JustEat, it must be said, is one of the big names in the industry, but more as a mediator of orders for restaurants than as a delivery carrier, often done directly by the staff of the restaurants themselves. Furthermore, JustEat is focused on food, unlike others who, since the lock down last spring, have developed a vocation to deliver a little of everything, from supermarket shopping, to drugs or anything else.
It is clear that for those who work on such a large scale, the traditional activity ranges of the riders, generally linked to the lunch and dinner hours, are greatly expanded. As a result, some riders explain, JustEat offers work in packages of limited hours, while other platforms, providing the most varied services, have a longer working span and represent greater opportunities for work and earnings for the deliverymen. Moreover, they are not required to work exclusively, but can make themselves available, simultaneously, to different platforms, thus seizing more opportunities. The employment contract envisaged by Just Eat, from the first advances of the same company, not surprisingly also includes an exclusive performance clause. This does not seem an irrelevant detail: expanding the action of the platforms and therefore the demand for messengers, it is likely that very soon the most precious material, the real market, will be the riders themselves. Already today the various companies are competing for them, especially in large cities like Rome and Milan, where the demand for home delivery is constantly increasing. All in all, hiring riders on a fixed salary, securing their exclusive performance for a package of hours, could in the end be a great deal. Regardless of the "ethical" aspect.
It should also be noted, on the other hand, that in the face of riders who work only a few hours a day, with relative low pay, there are several others organized in a, let's say, professional way: they have given themselves full-time working hours. , spread over ten hours a day, including breaks, have abandoned the bike for a rented or leased moped (the costs of which the VAT numbers can be tax deducted), the accident insurance is paid, and at the end of the month they lead to house around two thousand euros net. We could also define the first "poor riders" and the second "rich riders", but there would be no answer to the problem of how to reconcile the different needs: the first, who want greater guarantees and stability, with perhaps a low but safe and punctual gain. , and the latter who want to be free to continue earning a lot, with maximum flexibility, even at the price of greater uncertainty. This is the whole "war" of the riders: on the one hand the workers who aspire to an employment contract that gives security, and on the other the supporters of the "free profession".
But food riders are only the tip of the iceberg of an evolving phenomenon: new services are born every day that follow this model. Just think of the workers in charge of recovering and recharging the thousands of electric scooters that we see scattered on the sidewalks of our cities, paid 3 or 4 euros, depending on the case, for each scooter brought back to the base; or to the platform that offers home repair services of any kind, you book in one click, you pay by credit card on the platform itself, all in the clear, nothing in the black, no one hired with a contract, all freelancers with VAT. But there is also, then, all that magmatic and dark world that moves "under" the large platforms, that "middle world", to use a definition that enjoyed a certain success years ago, where the gangster reigns and illegality is the rule: a world against which all trade unions, major platforms and the government intend to move by mutual agreement. So much so that a new meeting on this very topic, strongly requested by the participants at the November 11 summit, will be held at the ministry next week.
In short, all this to say that there is now a world of work linked to this type of services that is increasingly composite, evolving, rich in multifaceted, and increasingly difficult to frame according to traditional contractual logics; much less finding as the lowest common denominator the use of any means of transport on wheels, as the agreement for the application of the logistics contract signed by Cgil, Cisl and Uil seems to understand. In parallel, it is possible that not even the Assodelivery – Ugl contract provides all the answers. Even if, it must be said, it can hardly be canceled, as the other unions have requested: especially since the UGL is a full-fledged trade union confederation, also recognized by its major sister companies CGIL, CISL and UIL, which makes it very difficult to define "pirate" a contract with his signature. The same legal office of the Ministry of Labor, while raising many doubts and criticisms of the contract in question, could not define it as "illegal". But it is clear that a solution to the impasse in which the riders' affair currently finds itself – wedged between the logistics contract, the Assodelivery one and the nothing – must be found. And from this awareness come the more accommodating tones mentioned at the beginning. At the end of the meeting on 11 November, all the participants declared their intention to continue to discuss, to confront each other, until an overall understanding was reached.
Moreover, the horizon in which this new world of work is moving is increasingly broad and its borders are not seen at the moment. It must be regulated, no doubt, but, in fact, new points of view, new tools are probably needed. Just as it will be used to regulate the smart working that will come, and which will be different – perhaps wider, perhaps tighter, but certainly different – than how we had to quickly get to know it with the lock down and the pandemic. It will not be easy, it will not be linear, it will be necessary to study thoroughly, observe, experiment, listen to all the voices, because not everyone, not always, sing the same song, have the same expectations: not even in the varied world of riders. And yet it is the only way to get out of it well and together: to exercise this patience, this listening, this ability to question oneself, to look far. Farther than a bicycle wheel.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/vi-racconto-cosa-succede-al-contratto-dei-riders/ on Sat, 21 Nov 2020 05:33:18 +0000.