When Lucía came to the Canary Islands from Venezuela five years ago, the first thing she did was try her luck at the hotel business as a waitress.. The contract they offered him stated in writing that the working day was 40 hours a week, but he always worked 90 hours. Those who work below the minimum wage and only have one day of rest a week, are tired of working until they get tired and give up. That’s when some compatriots offered him to stay in the hospitality industry and gain some “independence” when it came to arranging his schedules by working at a thriving home delivery company.. As a foreigner and having no connections to recommend him for other jobs, he now asks on the air: «What could I do but join one of these ‘startups’? We don’t have a job anymore.”.
After years of working as a ‘rider’ and becoming one of the most combative women in childbirth in the Canary Islands – even facing retaliation for it – Lucía is clear: «We are not autonomous. We are fake self-employed ». And, as he explains, “it’s the delivery company that coordinates the work each delivery person does and sets their fees, so there’s no autonomy.” That’s what two Supreme Court rulings in Spain have said, one against Glovo in 2020 and the other against Deliveroo in 2021. Also known as the “rider” law (Royal Decree Law 9/2021), which came into force in Spain on 12 August 2021, it recognizes the collective’s rights on paper..
Lucía calculates that, despite the repeatedly recognized “job” for “riders”, there are at least 200 deliverers on the Islands who continue to work as freelancers for companies like Glovo and Uber Eats.. Although he admits that This figure “needs to be taken with tweezers” because “registrations change every day”.
Francisco Javier Velasco, secretary of Union Action for the Federation of Workers’ Commission Services (CCOO) in the Canary Islands, confirmed to this newspaper that frequent questions come from union ‘riders’ about who should bear the costs of the jobs. There are still “many shortcomings” with regard to “obtaining the material” – if it is the worker or the company – and preventive measures. As for the work material, there are those who even have to pay for the square box they carry on their backs and put their food. Also, some employees, like Lucía, pay to access the app where orders come in.
With regard to fake self-employment, the unions can now do little more than press for “more labor inspections” and “faster” handling of complaints in accordance with “rider law”. And repression measures such as protests or strikes are not viable in a “very unstable” and “poorly organized” industry.
This fact is also supported by Lucía, who is affiliated with the UGT union in the Canary Islands and led a boycott against a delivery company’s mobile app in 2020. For one day, the Canarian ‘riders’ agreed to keep the app active but did not accept any orders, meaning the company lost almost all of its revenue from that day forward. However, the company learned the names of the organizers and suspended their accounts for months, leaving them out of work.
The CCOO defends that the accidents that occur during distribution are “work accidents” and struggles to be recognized as work accidents. When a ‘rider’ who has had an accident on the Canary Islands roads seeks their help, the union’s technicians take charge of the company, in cooperation with the Labor Inspectorate and in parallel with Traffic. worker’s rights.
But if he is not condemned, what happens is that companies barely accept 30-day sick leave. That’s what happened to Lucía. fell off his motorcycle and hit his face on the asphalt. Doctors told him he would need three months of rest, but the company he worked for “left in the second month” and barely paid him a thousand euros. In addition, in order to receive this payment, Lucía had to attach multiple photos of the accident and the damage sustained.
The ‘rider’ describes what he feels as ‘fatigue’ with the struggle he carries and the ‘sticks on the wheels’ they attach to him, and assures him that he has lost the desire to keep fighting: ‘For what, if it has only brought me results? He misses the day he was brought in” and stops receiving only 2.5 euros for each trip he makes.
Vulnerable to accidents and sun on islands
The Canary Islands have just passed through a heatwave that has left record temperatures in many municipalities. To prevent this intense heat from affecting workers on the street, Royal Decree 4/2023 of 11 May was approved in Spain in May this year, which deals, among other things, with the prevention of occupational risks during periods of high temperature. But CCOO and UGT fear that delivery companies operating in the Canary Islands, such as Glovo and Uber Eats, are failing to take action to protect workers.
“Riders” often work by riding bicycles that require “significant physical exertion”, and they do so on asphalt and in the sun. That’s why Francisco Javier Velasco (CCOO) reminds you that if an accident occurs due to these conditions, it must be considered “labor” like any other accident that occurs during the day. They even produced a leaflet from UGT with prevention measures for delivery people.