A potentially significant development will take place on December 2 when the Irish state is obliged to transpose into law the EU Platform Work Directive, which will reclassify delivery workers as employees.
When asked about this on October 15, Minister Alan Dillon stated that while they are committed to meeting the deadline no draft legislation has yet been prepared.
In October 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against a Domino’s Pizza franchise which ought to have already classified delivery workers as employees and not contractors. It has been reported by the Revenue Commissioners that this led to the reclassification of 6,600 employees by more than 280 companies.
However, the main delivery companies like Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats have managed so far to resist this. The chief distinction between them and Dominos being that the people they use are not tied to any work schedule or indeed to one company.
Delivery riders are now a ubiquitous sight in all major cities and towns. There is no accurate estimate of the numbers involved but Deliveroo on its own was estimated to have around 2,000 riders in 2023, and the overall figure across all of the three main operators now must be over 6,000.
Just Eat is the largest such operator and had 55% of the restaurant delivery market in 2023 compared to 32% for Deliveroo and 13% for Uber Eats.
The business model is classic rentier capitalism. They do nothing other than supply the digital platform and apps. All of the other costs are borne by the producers (or retailers), delivery riders, and of course the consumer.
They are effectively charging a rent for connecting the seller, deliverer and the buyer digitally. Food and retail outlets are happy to pay for increased turnover; the delivery rider is content to accept precarious conditions and wages, and the consumer is content to pay significantly higher prices for items they are too lazy to go and get themselves. – or simply because it is convenient and habit forming to order things they would otherwise be happy to do without.
I don’t know about the rest of you but I find the fact that fast food breakfast deliveries is one of the growth areas in this caper rather sad. It’s also a reminder that as with other aspects of our economy and society we are in many ways the authors of our own misfortune.
There are no comprehensive surveys of the impact on consumer prices here but research in the UK showed mark ups of more than 50% in some cases on food, and around one third on groceries. Those who use deliveries will know themselves that they are paying substantially more for their takeaway curry or bag of cans.
The most recent estimate of the value of the food and takeaway delivery market here that I could find was from 2023 when it was put at €2.2 billion. That is a luxury and, some would argue, largely unnecessary spending. A British Medical Journal survey found that lower income groups are 2.3 times as likely to order takeaways.
As yesterday’s article points out, students are a prominent source of cheap labour in the so-called ‘gig economy.’
(Someone asked me what the ‘gig economy’ means. Being of historical bent I explained it by pointing out that the late 19th and early 20th century Irish equivalents were the children hired out to work as farm labourers and ‘slavies’ to “strong farmers,” and “gintry.” The urban example is the Dublin dock workers who turned up each morning for “the read;” to see if they had a day’s work – often at the whim of a publican or foreman who expected a cut. Publicaneroos and UberForemen.)
It has been estimated that a large proportion of delivery riders are students from outside of Europe who have a Stamp 2 visa. Legally they should not be, as Stamp 2 does not allow self-employment which is the category that those working for the major platforms fall under.
What happens then is that an EU national or a holder of Stamp 4 will rent out their account with one of the delivery companies to a student. A Stamp 4 is granted to non-EU/EEA nationals who have long term residency rights and no longer need to have a work permit. Crucially, for this purpose they are also allowed to be self-employed.
There have been reports that riders were paying a percentage fee to the legitimate account holder to substitute for them even though as Brazilian or other nationality students they are not entitled to work for one of the main delivery companies.
The Irish Examiner also did a report in 2023 which found that the 20 hour limit for students in term was being exceeded and they spoke to some students who were working 60 hours a week. A Brazilian rider told them that he was working for the equivalent of €6 an hour.
Deliveroo and Just Eat do allow the account holder to basically subcontract another person and under the current ‘self-employment’ criteria that presumably absolves the company from any responsibility for who is actually peddling through the rain and the wind with your curried chips and batter burger.
Lack of regulation by the state
As with the English language schools from which many of the delivery rides emerge, there has been little or no attempt by the Irish state to regulate the delivery sector, nor to discover the extent of illegal work practices. In contrast a British Home Office sample in April 2023 found that 42% of riders stopped were working illegally.
The whole system is obviously open to abuse and those working as riders have little or no defence given their ambiguous status. Hence none of the main platforms have been taken to the Workplace Relations Commission.
Ironically a press release from the WRC in 2018 on a seminar about the ‘Shifting Landscape of Work’ featured a comment from Liam Cox, who was manager of Deliveroo Ireland, that the ‘gig economy’ benefitted all who participated.
Tomorrow I shall be looking at who the real beneficiaries are. Apart your own lazy asses who can’t see beyond the next snack box.