Delivery workers working for Uber Eats demonstrate to demand better pay, December 2, 2023 in Bordeaux (AFP / Christophe ARCHAMBAULT)
“What’s next, soon we’ll have to pay to deliver?” Uber drivers demonstrated across France on Saturday to demand better pay after a change in the group’s algorithm that they consider disadvantageous.
Despite the cold, around a hundred of them gathered on Place Stalingrad in Paris, union vests on their backs and some with bicycles in their hands.
“I am here to denounce this new pricing which was made completely unilaterally by Uber,” explained Adrien, a 37-year-old deliveryman, to AFP, who did not wish to give his last name. Deliveroo and Stuart, “it’s the same madness”, he also criticized.
Since October 10, a new system has been put in place by Uber Eats in the urban areas of Lille, Rouen and Valence, to “valorize the time spent completing the trip”, justified the platform which works with 65,000 delivery people.
Generalized since November 1, this new pricing “may cause certain journeys to vary upwards and others downwards, but is not intended to reduce the average remuneration per journey”, Uber Eats assured AFP on Friday, which said it had even noted “a slight increase in average revenue per trip of 1.4%” in the pilot cities.
But delivery drivers evoke another reality: “I noticed that trips one or two kilometers away are paid 2.85 euros on Uber, whereas before they were 3.30 euros,” said Adrien, who uses Uber since 2020 and recently also Deliveroo. “We’re fed up!”
Delivery workers working for Uber Eats demonstrate to demand better pay, December 2, 2023 in Bordeaux (AFP / Christophe ARCHAMBAULT)
“With inflation, salaries are increasing everywhere, we are the only ones to see our remuneration drop. What will the next step be? 0.50 euros per trip? Having to pay to deliver?” protests the one who has the impression of to be the “adjustment variable” of the system.
– “Not profitable”-
The call for a strike was launched by Union-Indépendants, the CGT Transports federation and SUD Commerces. Paris, Bordeaux, Nice, Strasbourg, Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille: mobilizations took place in 52 cities on Saturday, according to the Union-Indépendants, “an unprecedented figure”.
In Bordeaux, around twenty delivery men, accompanied by around ten CGT activists and NPA spokesperson Philippe Poutou, gathered at Place de la Victoire at the end of the morning to demand an improvement in their remuneration and their working conditions.
Delivery workers working for Uber Eats demonstrate to demand better pay, December 2, 2023 in Bordeaux (AFP / Christophe ARCHAMBAULT)
“It’s not a profitable job. You’re going to sacrifice your whole day to get 50 euros,” Ousmane Doumbia, a 22-year-old Uber Eats courier, told AFP. The “2 km races for 3 euros, which in reality are longer”, if “you do them on a motorbike, if you count the petrol, the Urssaf, the maintenance of the motorbike, in the end you won’t you have nothing.”
“According to our estimates, the new system leads to a drop (in remuneration) of 10 to 40%,” assured Lilian Pouill, a 22-year-old deliveryman who came to demonstrate in Paris. Result: “I work more to compensate for the loss.”
For Fabian Tosolini, national delegate of the Union-Indépendants, “the mobilization was historic”, particularly because it was very well attended in small towns like Périgueux, Brest and Auxerre.
– “Modern slavery” –
However, he does not provide precise figures on the number of strikers, but tells AFP that “the real justice of the peace is the price of groceries”, a reflection of the shortage of delivery workers: this has increased during the day up to “30 euros to do 100 m” in certain cities, he says.
The Paris police headquarters recorded 150 people gathered at Place Stalingrad in Paris.
According to LFI MP Danielle Simonnet, present at the Parisian gathering, the platforms use their promise to pay a minimum hourly rate of 11.75 euros – without taking into account waiting time – to “bring down the individual price of each race” for delivery people. , these “teachers for the 21st century”.
“It creates a situation of modern slavery,” protested David Belliard, elected mayor of Paris. Mr. Belliard asks these platforms, which “exploit these people”, to reclassify their contracts as salaried employment. He regrets that this remuneration system pushes delivery people “to take reckless risks for themselves and those around them”.
“Most of us want to remain independent,” said Adrien, but “with a minimum of protection and above all, better remuneration!”