It was a little late that the small platoon of bicycle delivery men arrived at Place René-Goblet in Amiens, Monday, November 6, to the cheers of a group including local MP François Ruffin (La France insoumise) . “They did 74 kilometers instead of 62 from Beauvais, because they had to go through small roads”explains Brahim Ben Ali, general secretary of the VTC INV drivers union, who follows them like a broom car.
Six bicycle delivery men of five different nationalities, 384 kilometers between Paris and Brussels and five stopover towns: this is the program for “La Grande Delivery”, which takes place between Sunday November 5 and Thursday November 9. Its goal ? Raise visibility of the deterioration in the working conditions of self-employed bicycle couriers, and defend a draft European directive which plans to transform platform workers (delivery workers and VTC drivers in the lead) into employees.
This square in the city center of Amiens was chosen because it is there that many delivery people gather, the majority of them of Afghan origin. The latter say they earn 209 euros gross per week for one working seven days a week, while others never earn more than a thousand euros per month. They would all like to quit to find a real job.
Added to these low salaries is the absence of paid leave, sick leave or real job security, inherent to self-employment. “The broader issue is the transformation of the job market and the spread of the self-employed model which is dangerous, and threatens more and more professionsargues François Ruffin. If there is a principal who sets remuneration and working conditions, it must be salaried employment as required by the directive, not bits of unrecognized work without social protection. »
Setting identical rules at Union level
This draft legislation, launched at the end of 2021 by left-wing MEPs, aims to set identical rules at Union level, while the regulations are still very disparate depending on the country. It will be discussed on Thursday November 9 in Brussels in trilogue, with representatives of the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. France is one of the countries most opposed to this presumption of employment, which already exists in Spain.
The platforms are the first to disapprove of this text. “We welcome efforts to provide a framework, more clarity and stronger protection for platform workerssays an Uber spokesperson. We observe, however, that some of the current discussions risk bringing no improvement, while going against what the vast majority of delivery people and drivers tell us they value most: the flexibility offered by the independent model. » Maybe, but not at any cost. “We should be paid 22 euros gross per hour, so at least double what we currently receive, with leave for this status to be interesting”replies Jérémy Wick, Deliveroo and Uber Eats deliveryman in Bordeaux.
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