A ‘rider’ is known in the jargon of the guild as a delivery man who provides service for companies such as Globo, Deliveroo, Stuart o UberEats. He is officially a self-employed worker who sells his services to these companies through a partnership agreement. The most common method among the ‘riders’ when providing their services is the bicycle or, if not, the motorcycle, although in their independent status they are free to choose any format, from a car, a van or even on foot. They charge between four and six euros gross per order in companies such as Glovo or Deliveroo, although the fees must be deducted from this money National Insurancewhich they have to pay themselves, in addition to the private insurance that most companies force them to take out.
The delivery people are organized at work through a mobile application; the ‘smartphone’ which they also have to pay for themselves, as well as the data needed to stay connected. The ‘collaborators’ sign up in time for the time slots they prefer to distribute, these being assigned by the application’s algorithm according to the score given by the end customers. And according to a study by CCOO of Catalonia published in July 2018, more than one in three freelancers in the platform economy work more than 40 hours a week.
Being self-employed, they are also not obliged to ride for the same company, although in the vast majority of these the delivery person signs conditions that accredit him as an economically dependent self-employed worker (TRADE), that is to say, despite being self-employed he recognizes that 75% of his income comes from the same payer. In this sense, the delivery people of, for example, Glovo are not obliged to deliver with the brand’s distinctive backpacks and could do so with any container that would allow them to deliver the package in optimal conditions. They could also deliver an order from, say, Deliveroo, using a competitor’s backpack.
Questionable model
It is in this flexibility of schedules and working methods that the different companies rely on – of the large ones, only JustEat operates with salaried workers – to consider their collaborators self-employed. Glovo, the largest in Spain, claims to work with around 5,000 across the country and Deliveroo, the second, with around 1,000. However, there is currently a legal battle surrounding the business model in which these companies are supported, as the Labor Inspectorate has so far ruled unanimously against Glovo and Deliveroo. The organization has considered that in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Zaragoza their relationship is more typical of a salaried employee.
All this is not futile for the coffers of the Social Security, since the contributions paid by a self-employed delivery person are significantly lower than those paid by a worker under the hospitality collective agreement. theUGT he recently carried out a calculation according to which he calculated that the Treasury no longer receives 93 million euros annually with these companies operating under this model.