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, there were a few dozen of them who 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”, the platform justified.
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. Gatherings of striking delivery workers are planned for Saturday and Sunday, notably in Paris, Bordeaux, Nice, Strasbourg, Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille and Armentières, in the north of France.
Protest movements by independent delivery drivers, some 65,000 of whom use Uber Eats in France, had already taken place in November.
In Bordeaux, around twenty delivery men, accompanied by around ten CGT activists and NPA spokesperson Philippe Poutou, also gathered at Place de la Victoire at the end of the morning to demand an improvement in their remuneration and of 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.”
– “Modern slavery” –
According to LFI MP Danièle Simonet, present at the Parisian gathering, the platforms are using their promise to pay a minimum hourly rate of 11.75 euros to “lower the price of groceries” for delivery people, these “task force of the 21st century”.
“It’s 11.75 euros per actual hour of travel,” without counting the waiting time, she told AFP. So “you accumulate races over an hour so that they are paid in total at 11.75 euros, this means that you significantly reduce the price of each individual race.”
“It creates a situation of modern slavery,” protested David Belliard, elected mayor of Paris, a city where “meal deliveries have exploded in recent years”. 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 obviously 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!”
© 2023 AFP
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