Flash delivery riders are angry—what’s going on?
A delivery service that gets a crate of beer or the Parmesan cheese you forgot to buy to your home within ten minutes: that’s Gorillas. The flash delivery company started in Germany and is now conquering the Netherlands too, but not everything is rosy at this company. In Berlin, striking delivery riders held a demonstration.
The complaints from Gorillas’ delivery riders are serious: they don’t receive their salaries on time, or only receive part of them. The bags they cycle around with are often heavier than the agreed ten kilos. And the ten-minute delivery time causes stress. An employee who wanted to set up a trade union was immediately dismissed, and the delivery company’s management calls the dissatisfied employees’ strike ‘illegal’. It’s all reported in NRC.
Back problems
One protester tells the newspaper why she is striking. ‘You have to rush through the city and ignore red traffic lights,’ she says, because otherwise she won’t make it within ten minutes. On top of that, the groceries are far too heavy: ‘All my colleagues who work full-time have back problems.’ And to top it all off: the payslip is often incorrect; she saw that they regularly paid her for fewer hours than she had worked.
Delivered within ten minutes
If you don’t live in one of the ten major cities where Gorillas’ lightning-fast delivery riders operate, you may have missed it, but this is how the company works: you order your groceries through an app, pay a €1.80 delivery fee, and within ten minutes the full bags are on your doorstep. The company can do this because it has small warehouses throughout the city, so-called hubs, where the most frequently ordered groceries are stored. This allows them to collect and deliver groceries quickly—much faster than, for example, Picnic and Albert Heijn, which have to bring all the groceries from one large central warehouse.
Venture capitalists
Less than two euros per order—that’s not much. You may be wondering whether you can make money from that. No, not a cent. At least, Gorillas is currently losing millions. Its bank account is being filled by investors, particularly venture capitalists, and the company’s strategy is to grow quickly and push competitors aside. Once they have a strong market position, the profits will come naturally—that’s the philosophy. Meanwhile, their couriers pedal themselves to exhaustion to deliver the strangest groceries, ranging from diapers and pregnancy tests to a bunch of bananas, because a customer suddenly happened to crave them.
Crumbs
In the Netherlands too, Gorillas delivery riders made it clear that they were unhappy. A statement from the Gorillas Workers Collective says: ‘While the company receives millions from investors, we are left with the crumbs.’ The employees, generally young and not very well positioned on the labor market, have to collect and deliver orders under intense pressure.
Shopkeepers in the cities where Gorillas riders cycle around are also complaining about the company. A hub on the street causes a great deal of disruption: bicycles everywhere, trucks loading and unloading all day, and bicycle couriers who sometimes nearly knock you off your feet because they want to meet that fast delivery time.
Poverty line
Gorillas promised to improve things somewhat and blames the problems on the start-up phase the company is going through. The delivery riders have little confidence in this. Moreover: ‘These are not employees who can easily do without a few hundred euros a month,’ NRC writes. ‘The delivery riders, who usually receive an employment contract and are therefore employed by Gorillas, are generally students and workers living below or around the poverty line.’
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Source: NRC, image: Gorillas
