Just Eat, ads are multiplying and hiring is halving
What the latest Just Eat announcements hide
“Two thousand hires in one year”, i.e. in the period between May 2023 and May 2024. This is the latest proclamation that the country manager of Just Eat Italia, Daniele Contini , has entrusted to news agencies in recent years.
THE MYSTERY ABOUT JUST EAT'S ITALIAN RECRUITMENT NUMBERS
Announcements of this kind have multiplied in recent months and have only had the effect of halving, from time to time, the promised hirings. We started on 4 December 2021 when all the newspapers had taken up the promises of Jitse Groen , founder and CEO of Just Eat: «6 thousand riders with contracts in Italy» and we will end up with 2 thousand spread between 2023 and a good part of 2024. Subject to further corrections.
It should not be forgotten that the six thousand hirings had already dropped to 4 thousand after a few months. In fact, we read in an article in Il Sole which appeared on the page in April 2022: "Just Eat hires 4 thousand permanent riders and starts career paths". The Confindustria newspaper detailed: “Just eat relaunches, announcing 4 thousand hires during 2022. «We are satisfied with the results achieved in the twenty-four cities in which we operate», states the country manager for Italy, Daniele Contini. «Our model is working well after an initial phase of adjustment and we want to continue in this direction»”.
Be careful, however, because Il Sole 24 Ore always specified that it was not a question of 4 thousand new hires: "The entry of 4 thousand new riders, however, will not lead to a similar net balance in the number of employees, because in part the new entries will go to replace outgoing workers. The turnover is quite consistent given that, the company specifies, a courier normally stays in the company for around six months, even if there are people who have been with Just Eat since the beginning". But even those four thousand soon evaporated between one delivery and another. Earlier this year, Wired , interviewing the Italian CM, explained: Just Eat has 2,500 delivery drivers in 24 cities. No trace, therefore, of the four thousand hirings.
THE END OF THE SCOOBER MODEL
However, there seems to be no doubt about the numbers of delivery drivers left at home in Great Britain, where Just Eat cut almost 1,900 units in March, of which around 1,700 riders were hired, thus bringing the adventure, which began in the middle of the pandemic, to a sad end (and, therefore, thanks to the lockdowns in the midst of the golden period for the sector) the 'Scoober' employment model, which provided for the classification of couriers as employees, with a guarantee of a minimum hourly wage, payment of sick days , holidays and pension contributions. The company, reports the British newspaper BBC , said that using employees rather than self-employed workers in the UK places it at a competitive disadvantage.
The reorganization in Great Britain raises some questions about the sustainability of the model. Just Eat said it will maintain its dependent courier model in most of continental Europe.
But, looking at the issue more closely, the Scoober model is applied patchily. In Ireland and Slovakia the company uses the gig model. In France, Just Eat uses “Scoober” employee couriers in Paris, but not in other cities. In the rest of the European Union the company hires its own couriers. In Great Britain itself, over 90% of deliveries are made by self-employed workers.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia-on-demand/just-eat-si-moltiplicano-gli-annunci-e-si-dimezzano-le-assunzioni/ on Tue, 26 Sep 2023 09:25:07 +0000.