And ‘rider‘ is how a delivery man who provides courier service for companies such as Globo, Uber Eats, Stuart o Shargo. He is officially a self-employed worker who sells his services to these companies through a collaboration contract. That is, it charges per order delivered. Although this employment relationship has been questioned and censored during the last five years by the Spanish courts and the Labor Inspectorate. Various investigations by the ‘labor police’ are currently underway and firms such as Glovo accumulate more than 100 million euros in sanctions for continuing to distribute to self-employed workers.
The most common method among the ‘riders’ when providing their services is by bicycle or, failing that, motorcycle, although as freelancers they are free to choose any format, from a car, a van or even going to foot. They charge between four and six euros gross per order in companies such as Glovo or Uber Eats, although the fees to the Social Security, which they must pay themselves each month, in addition to the private insurance that most companies force them to take out. In the case of Glovo, said insurance is paid by the company, as specified by the company.
The distributors organize themselves through a mobile application; whose ‘smartphone’ must also pay for themselves, as well as the data necessary to stay connected. The ‘collaborators’ connect to the application and try to ‘hunt’ orders. They offer to distribute them and mark their own rate, although this is predefined by the Glovo or Uber application. And the algorithm, depending on its proximity to the collection and delivery point and the rate offered by the ‘rider’, assigns the order to one or the other.
economically dependent
Glovo defends that with the current self-employed model the ‘riders’ earn more money than if they were salaried. According to data provided by the company in 2019, a delivery person who dedicates an average of 5 hours and 28 minutes per day enters 1.274,64 euros per month, counting as worked from the moment the order is accepted until the delivery is made. An estimate of income that does not include maintenance of the vehicle, mobile phone or Social Security contributions. According to consulted distributors, other applications, such as Uber, pay about five euros per order delivered.
As they are self-employed, the distributors do not have the obligation to pedal for the same company and it is common practice among the union to be registered in more than one platform so that when they do not find orders in one, they go to the other. In this sense, the distributors of, for example, Glovo do not have the obligation to distribute with the distinctive backpacks of the brand and could do so with any container that would allow them to distribute the package in optimal conditions. They could also deliver an order from, say, Stuart, with a competitor’s backpack.
model in question
Related news
It is in this flexibility of schedules and work methods that the different companies rely -of the large ones, only JustEat operates with salaried workers- to consider their collaborators autonomous. However, there is currently a legal battle surrounding the business model on which these companies are based, since the Labor Inspection has ruled, until now, unanimously against Glovo and Uber. The body has considered that in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Zaragoza, among other cities, their relationship is more typical of an employee.
All this is not trivial for the coffers of the Social Security, since the contributions paid by a delivery person being self-employed are significantly lower than those that a worker would pay under the collective agreement for hospitality.