This is an almost unprecedented demonstration on the part of delivery men. Several dozen employees of the Just Eat meal delivery platform in France went on strike and gathered this Saturday in several cities including Paris to protest against an ongoing social plan and degraded working conditions.
“The delivery service was blocked in several provincial towns, in particular Toulouse, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand and Roubaix, by around 150 strikers” who responded to the call for mobilization launched Thursday by FO and the CGT , says Jérémy Graça, FO union representative. Gatherings brought together around 80 people, adds Jérémy Graça, including a dozen in Paris.
The Anglo-Dutch giant Just Eat Takeaway, which currently serves 2,500 municipalities in France, has experienced strong growth with the development of home deliveries favored by the Covid-19 pandemic, but the phenomenon has since subsided. Since the summer, the group has been carrying out a job protection plan (PSE) after which just under 400 employees could be made redundant in France.
Just Eat wants to outsource its delivery people
In 27 of the French municipalities where it is established, the model was based until now on the wage earning of the deliverers. Eventually, the group plans to stop exercising with its own troops in 26 provincial towns. Only the Paris region would keep deliverers on permanent contracts.
“If they want to lay off employees, then social measures are needed commensurate with the group’s means”, claims Jérémy Graça, present at the rally organized in front of the group’s Paris headquarters alongside a handful of delivery men wearing jackets and orange cap with the company logo, who came with their bikes.
Among the Parisian deliverers, Alassane Sy came as a sign of “solidarity” with his colleagues and “to put pressure on the company to improve the social measures linked to the PSE” ahead of negotiations scheduled for October 24. “We are afraid of being affected in our turn in the future”, he explains, deploring “a continuous deterioration in working conditions”.
Just Eat Takeaway assured, this week, in a statement to be “very careful about the impact of this social plan on (its) employees” and that the group wanted to “provide individual support” to everyone. For the moment, “nine positions” have been offered as internal reclassification in France, according to Jérémy Graça.