More and more citizens are ordering food online. Thousands of couriers deliver it. Their work is risky, they don't earn much. Now the drivers start to defend themselves against their employers.

By Michael Kläsgen and Thomas Öchsner
There's a freezing wind blowing that night. Bernd Gräber has delivered the last Sushi-Box. It's just before 9:00. The young man gets on his racing bike. He wrapped himself in thermo-clothes, which he had to buy himself. The top layer consists of a thin jacket from his employer Foodora, for which a deposit was due. Gräber has also traveled a good 20 kilometres on this day at temperatures below zero degrees, always with the pink Foodora backpack on his back. Now he has to drive home through the cold and wait for his bike. His bike is particularly dirty on such winter days. It has to be ready for takeoff again tomorrow. "The bike check can take half an hour,"he says. Adjust brakes, tighten bolts, inflate tyres, clean. It takes time. It is working hours for which the courier is not paid.

It is not included in the hourly wage of nine euros. And that's not the only thing that annoys him and many other drivers of delivery services like Foodora, apart from the clothes soaking wet so quickly.

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Graves, a slim, athletic guy with short hair, doesn't go straight home that night. He is now sitting in a burger roasting house talking about his plans. He wants to found a works council in his city. This puts his job and that of his fellow combatants at risk. That's why he doesn't want his real name and the city he works in to be mentioned in the newspaper.

The young man pulls out his contract of employment, that's all he needs to show why he wants to defend himself now. He scrolls to paragraph 15, in which he is obliged to ride his own bicycle and take care of repairs himself. Unpaid overtime is for him and an infiltration of the minimum wage. Gräber must also have a smartphone for his work, not just any one, but a relatively new one. Only then does the Foodora app work and only then does it know where to pick up the food and where to deliver it.

Everyday life has nothing to do with a regular working life
The smartphone also costs money and the app data volume. All this is at the expense of the courier. Gräber is in his early twenties, he works on a 450-euro basis and goes out for dinner in the evenings and on weekends, as do most of the people who work for "digital ordering platforms". Thus, courier services such as Foodora, Deliveroo or Lieferando are officially called. They don't prepare food themselves, they just pick it up and deliver it. They advertise with a "fascinating take-away experience", with "favourite food to bite into". They promise the riders a "great working atmosphere", a "fair pay" with up to twelve euros per hour.

The new delivery services business is booming. While inns are closing down in the countryside, more and more people in the city are ordering their food to their homes or offices via the apps of digital delivery services. Quick catering is growing in Germany, also because of Foodora, Deliveroo and Co. The boom is taking place on the back of the couriers. The result is a new everyday working day that has little to do with the regular life of an office worker or factory worker.

Precarious workers discover their power
The friendly façade of the new delivery services conceals large financially strong investors, who count on every penny, want to earn a lot of money as quickly as possible and, cautiously formulated, sound out by all means how far German labour law can be extended with its social standards that have been tried and tested for decades. But in the meantime there is resistance.

Foodora alone employs 2500 drivers in 19 German cities, as full-time drivers with up to 168 hours per month, as midi or mini-jobbers or as working students - for at least nine euros an hour, usually for a limited period of time. That's how much the 1000 permanently employed drivers get from Lieferando. Only for the British competitor Deliveroo, the brand with the kangaroo in the logo, almost half of the 1000 drivers are still self-employed. They're on call. The drivers say they get five, six euros per delivery.

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A food courier is looking for the right address. (Photo: Getty Images)
In fact, this new class of precariously employed workers was considered unorganisable. They are now demonstrating, founding works councils and discovering their negotiating power like the first striking workers of the 19th century, as is the case in other European cities such as London, Marseille or Vienna.

In Germany, Cologne is next to Berlin one of the rebel strongholds of couriers. Gräber is in constant contact with colleagues from Cologne via Facebook. There are dozens of demonstrators on Hans-Böckler-Platz in February. They wear the cheerfully coloured Foodora and Deliveroo jerseys over thick sweaters and jackets and hold up posters. It says "100% time limit - 0% security." And:"9 € wages - minus your own winter clothes, minus wear and tear, minus repair time, minus work safety." On a white sheet, they painted the keyword in capital letters, under which they meet, discuss and inform each other in online forums: Delivering at the limit. That sounds like life at the limit, and that's no coincidence.

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One of them tells how he lost his apartment because Deliveroo didn't pay his wages for unknown reasons even though he was working. Another says he has to pay his church tax because Deliveroo forgot to pay it. A third reports that Deliveroo sometimes changes shift schedules, although the shift has long since begun. As a result, many couriers suffered losses of earnings. However, their employer is often not available on the phone and mails remained unanswered for weeks.

The day of the demo is also the day on which they founded the first works council of Deliveroo in Germany in Cologne. Keno Böhme is also present. He helped to set up a works council at Foodora in Cologne last year and was now the initiator of the committee at Deliveroo. Except he's not in the council. Deliveroo quasi fired him or said it correctly: he didn't renew his contract for a limited period of time. While a works council was able to form at Foodora without the employer's big fires, the reactions of Deliveroo are reminiscent of early capitalist patterns.

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Böhme personally fought with Deliveroo Germany boss Felix Chrobog, son of a former State Secretary in the Federal Foreign Office. They squabbled over the place and time of the election meeting, winter clothes and loss of earnings. In the end Böhme had to leave - like many others whose contracts expired. "From mid-November to the present day, the number of employees has fallen from 140 to 35,"says Orry Mittenmayer, Chairman of the Works Council. "They were replaced by so-called freelancers. Deliveroo wants to deprive us of the legal basis for a works council." The committee now exists, but if Deliveroo continues to let the contracts expire - as expected from Mittenmayer - there will soon no longer be any employees the works council could represent.

According to Deliveroo, the freelancers are self-employed. And they cannot have a works council at all, just as they have no entitlement to leave of absence, do not receive a salary in the event of illness and are not covered by the employer's professional association in the event of an accident at work.

The first works council could soon be obsolete
"These are often people who speak hardly any German and who have no idea of German labour law,"says a demonstrator on Hans-Böckler-Platz. "They accept everything because they don't know otherwise." Drivers are often connected via social networks, but as a rule there is no company premises, no break room where they can meet colleagues. You take a look at the traffic light and you're done. The fluctuation rate is high and the bond with the employer is low. Old-established trade unions can hardly reach them. Many also do not want to be reached, or they join together in the anarchist Free Workers Union (FAU) as in Berlin.

The recently founded works council of Deliveroo in Cologne could soon become obsolete. The contracts of the works council members also expire. If they do not manage to free their contracts from deadlines in a few weeks' time, they will be out.

Elmar Jost of the Food and Catering Union in Cologne says:"The business model of delivery services is based on the precariousness of its employees. Deliveroo Germany boss Chrobog, on the other hand, says:"The mood among our drivers is good." Protests by couriers, who threw old hoses and bicycle coats in front of the German company headquarters in Berlin,"we do not see it as representative". That's what he said in an interview more than half a year ago. He does not comment in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The company left a list of questions from the SZ unanswered, even though a PR agency commissioned by Deliveroo made an honest effort to respond to the company's management.

A bonus of one euro
In the colourful new world of supply, the usual start-up narrative is preferred: We are all a team, we all want to be successful. The globally active companies are still not generating any profits. But they are hoping - as in the case of Flixbus, which now dominates the long-distance bus market - that they will be able to squeeze competitors out of the market in the face of fierce price competition and put themselves in a monopoly-like position. To achieve this, drivers like Bernd Gräber are driven to top performance.

The supply platforms always know what their employees are doing. The GPS satellite navigation system makes it possible to track their current location in real time. The company knows the speed at which the delivery staff drive, the speed at which they accept the orders and how long they are with the customers. But how the performance is evaluated does not depend on the average speed.

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Gräber shows a mail on his smartphone that Foodora sent to him. It is intended to motivate him to receive the bonus of one euro in addition to the nine euro hourly wages. The mail says where his vulnerabilities are: He just doesn't drive often enough, and his "delivery quota", the number of deliveries per hour, is not good enough.

Every Thursday, an online platform is used to draw up the shift schedule for the next week. Graves can indicate when he has time, often Foodora does not comply with his wishes. According to his contract, however, the prerequisite for the one more euro is full commitment on the weekend anyway. Most orders are received during this period. For the drivers this is the most stressful time. If they want the bonus, they must have worked at least 20 hours from Friday night to Sunday night. Those who were absent and lost due to illness, for example, have no chance of getting hold of the euro per hour.

Drivers bear a high financial risk
In Graeber's contract, the weekly working time is limited to 50 hours, which is considerably more than usual. Surcharges for night, Sunday or holiday work or even additional holiday pay, as regulated in German collective agreements, are not provided for. According to Foodora, vacation days are paid, but there are "no special payments", the company says. In return, Gräber can look forward to a few euros in tips per shift, and every second customer gives him something, he says.

But neither has the amateur athlete, who has even competed in cycling races in the club, come anywhere near the bonus. He is still a member of the company's sophisticated hierarchy, which is designed to encourage drivers to perform better. For example, there is the "Rider Captain", a kind of leader of a group of drivers for whom, according to Foodora, there is an extra euro per hour. Or even the "Senior Rider Captain", who is allowed to train new riders and earns an extra Euro.

 Bicycle courier from the internet portal Foodora delivers warm meals in the snow-covered downtown F
Foodora drivers are also tormented by the snow. (Photo: imago/Ralph Peters)
Gräber says that it is of little use to the driver to drive fast for the bonus if there are problems in the supply chain elsewhere. "It's not up to the drivers whether they have to wait for dinner at the restaurant when they pick them up." The bonus system is questionable not only because of this:"It invites you to drive riskier than it would make sense and not to be too precise with the road traffic regulations,"he criticises. Accidents and damage to the bicycle are part of the everyday life of the cyclist. At the request of the company management, the Cologne-based Foodora works council was informed that 535 accidents or damage to property were reported by Foodora drivers in the cathedral city alone in 2017. In 21 cases, couriers had injured themselves so badly that they had been taken ill by the doctor for more than three days.



Drivers must also bear a high financial risk, however, because they themselves have to ensure that their equipment - the bicycle - functions properly. Since February at least Foodora has been paying 25 cents per hour driven or a maximum of 42 euros for a full-time job of 168 hours for repairs and spare parts if the drivers use a certain bicycle service. "This means that the amount of repair costs is not even remotely covered,"says Gräber. "If the bike is in a garage, I can't work."

Maybe they're on strike
The other courier services are no better for employees. Among the colleagues of Deliveroo and also at Gräber, Lieferando is very popular. The food supplier, an offshoot of a Dutch company, sometimes even provides its employees with e-bikes and pays surcharges on Sundays and public holidays. However, there is no works council in Germany. The company takes care of all driver concerns in every city. A works council, on the other hand, informs Lieferando,"basically does not correspond to our culture as a young, modern and open company".

Graves cannot be discouraged by this. "We've learned to organize ourselves and fight back,"he says. The drivers are already talking about a strike.