Waiting for Delivery: Ensuring the Gig Economy Benefits All Participants
In a new whitepaper, Alain Dehaze, CEO of a leading group, offers recommendations for improving working conditions and establishing fairer relationships between delivery platforms and affiliated workers. The whitepaper, which focuses on the working conditions within the delivery platform business ecosystem, comes as the industry, including Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Just Eat, has grown significantly in recent years, particularly during the pandemic.
The whitepaper aims to promote a model that ensures a fairer relationship between delivery platforms and affiliated workers. It highlights several key recommendations:
- Recognize Worker Status and Rights
- The whitepaper suggests moving beyond the binary classification of workers as either employees or independent contractors by creating a new, intermediate employment category adapted to platform work. This would ensure that platform workers have access to social protections such as health insurance, unemployment benefits, and retirement plans, regardless of their status.
- Enhance Transparency and Accountability
- The whitepaper calls for platforms to be more transparent about how algorithms work, including how tasks and pay rates are assigned, to reduce opacity and potential exploitation. It also recommends implementing clear rules for dispute resolution and safeguarding workers’ ability to voice concerns without fear of retaliation.
- Promote Collective Representation
- The whitepaper encourages facilitating and recognizing collective bargaining rights for platform workers to negotiate terms and conditions more effectively. It also suggests platforms engaging in social dialogue with worker representatives.
- Ensure Fair Pay and Working Conditions
- The whitepaper proposes establishing minimum standards for wages, working hours, rest periods, and occupational health and safety for platform workers. It also recommends encouraging platforms to provide or facilitate access to training, career development, and decent working environments.
- Regulatory and Policy Frameworks
- The whitepaper suggests governments should adapt labor laws and social protection systems to the realities of platform work rather than forcing platform models into traditional regulatory frameworks. It also encourages multi-stakeholder cooperation among platforms, workers, policymakers, and social partners to design balanced, fair rules.
The whitepaper's recommendations are directed towards both delivery platforms and policy makers, reflecting the need for collaboration to create sustainable, inclusive labor markets in the digital age. The increase in the number of delivery platforms and affiliated workers has necessitated the regulation of their relationship, and the whitepaper presents key takeaways on the subject.
As independent contractors, delivery workers typically lack the social benefits and protections that accompany direct employment. Operating margins in this industry are often thin, resulting in lower profits for merchants and less disposable income for delivery workers. For delivery workers, the most commonly cited benefits of gig work are flexible hours, low barriers to entry, and easy access to income and work experience.
The platform charges a commission to connect the three parties: customers, suppliers (such as restaurants), and delivery workers (often referred to as "riders"). The work for delivery workers is often unpredictable and the earnings heavily dependent on parameters set by the platform. The proliferation of digital platforms, including instant delivery platforms, over the last 15 years has been driven by globalisation and digitalisation.
The whitepaper offers recommendations for delivery platforms and policy makers to promote a responsible, flexible model that ensures a fairer relationship between delivery platforms and affiliated workers. The recommendations are based on interviews with representatives from platforms, unions, and policy makers.
- The whitepaper proposes that technology can be leveraged to create a more transparent finance system within the delivery industry, ensuring delivery workers have access to details about their earnings and working conditions.
- To address the personal-finance concerns of delivery workers, the whitepaper recommends that delivery platforms should invest in financial literacy programs or collaborate with financial service providers to offer affordable savings, investment, and insurance options tailored to their needs.
