Will your Christmas Eve pizza be delivered? The CGT of the Just Eat meal delivery company called for walkouts on Friday evening for a “delivery man’s eve”, in Paris and Lyon in particular, in order to demand an improvement in wages and working conditions.
Ludovic Rioux, secretary of the CGT for bicycle delivery workers in Lyon, denounces an “extremely high turnover, low wages caught up by the minimum wage on October 1” and insufficient support for equipment by the company.
Delivery people “must participate in the rental or use their personal bike, while the company should provide their work tool,” he underlines.
Delivery people brought to deliver throughout Paris
Another point of tension: the company recently put an end to the “zoning” system for the 500 Parisian delivery men. They can therefore now be required to deliver to customers at the other end of the capital.
“Work is becoming more physical, with an increase in delays and less quality services,” recalls Ludovic Rioux. Outside the big cities, delivery people don’t always have a place to rest and warm up, he adds.
The deliverers mobilized Friday will not block orders all evening, but hope to put a “pressure stroke” on this symbolic date of December 31.
CDI recruitments
Asked by AFP, the management of Just Eat affirms its “sincere desire to offer a more responsible approach to the delivery of meals”, while offering “prospects for development” to its French couriers.
At the start of 2021, the Anglo-Dutch group announced the recruitment of 4,500 deliverers on permanent contracts over the year in France, an unprecedented decision in a sector where the majority of platforms (Deliveroo, Uber Eats) use freelancers.
According to a spokesperson for Just Eat, this status grants employees “all the benefits and social protection associated with it”, thus offering them “a decent income with pay by the hour and not by the race, a salary fixed at the hourly minimum wage, and a bonus when ordering ”.
After a year, “only a thousand of these employees are still there”, however laments Ludovic Rioux, who evokes a “marketing argument”.
FO is preparing another movement
Favorable to salaried workers but skeptical of the “announcement effects”, the CGT regrets that this change was not accompanied by a real improvement in working conditions.
The FO union has no plans to mobilize Friday evening, even if most of its demands converge with those of the CGT.
“We already have a movement in preparation for the next few days, for all delivery people who suffer unfair dismissals, for our working conditions and against cases of harassment”, argued Jérémy Graça, FO union representative.