Food Delivery Apps and Digital Labour

  The questions of who becomes a delivery app deliverer and why people become delivery workers are intrinsically linked, and will thus be discussed jointly in this section. This analysis is based on studies in French high-frequency delivery areas (Paris, Lille).   To begin, an overview of the demographic of delivery workers. Delivery workers are usually younger than 25, and male. This statistic may vary in other countries, as in France most delivery workers go out on bikes. Women might feel less safe going out on a bike, and older people may feel less comfortable with the physical aspect. Comparisons of macro trends between countries’ delivery apps will be discussed later in this blog. Unsurprisingly, because of this regional focus, most of the delivery workers said that they enjoy bike riding. Many are students, and those who are not most likely do not have a diploma in post-secondary education. For many of the deliverers, but especially students, this was their first for...

The ‘gig economy’ has created two categories of workers within food delivery app riders/drivers, divided partially by the different demographics of workers discussed in the previous article. The first category is those who work part time. This category is mostly made up of young students, using delivery apps as work on the side. These are most likely the students previously discussed that joined the apps for extra money. Because this group has been the largest percentage of the delivery worker labour market, there is a very high turnover rate. A growing section of the deliverers are not in the part time category, and are pushing the job towards ‘professionalization.’ These deliverers treat the food delivery apps as a full time job. Full-time deliverers often choose to focus and optimize on a single platform, and thus often choose to apply for the more selective platforms. They see themselves as more serious than those working part time. The drivers/riders looking to ‘professionalize’...

  Despite the increasing professionalization of food delivery apps, the employment of deliverers is still fragile. Even on apps with shifts, there is no consistent work or professional relationships. Due to the ‘horizontal’ nature of the profession, few deliverers come in contact with corporate employees of the food delivery apps. Deliverers are not under contract with these apps. They are in a sort of ‘intermediate stage’ between self employed and employee, mostly classified as ‘contractors’ - but a very limited form of contracted work as there are so few apps. One consequence of the lack of contract is no protection or health insurance. In France, most medical fees are covered by public insurance, but the idea of physical work and possible bike injuries becomes more problematic in countries where this is not the case. Compensation is also a contentious issue amongst delivery workers. In interviews in Lille, most deliverers thought that the apps took too much from them. The maxi...

 This basic economic structure of food delivery apps was constructed in Aguilera et al.’s 2018 paper “L’envers et l’endroit des plateformes de livraison instantanée: Enquête sur les livreurs micro-entrepreneurs à Paris.” Their profit P is defined as: P = n(tv+p-l) - C n= Number of meals delivered t= Commissions taken by restaurants  v= Average meal value  p= Revenue from consumers (delivery fee) C= Costs for the platform (Fixed app development costs and Marketing costs + Salaries of deliverers)  Though this model, we can see that the only real variable of profit delivery apps can control is the payment of drivers. The others are mostly controlled by exterior forces. P can not be shifted very much as consumers will quickly switch to another app if the delivery fee is too high, and marketing cannot easily be reduced either. By this model, a lot of delivery apps are not even profitable, since consumers do not actually pay the whole cost of remunerating the delivery driv...

Literature Aguilera, Anne, Laetitia Dablanc, and Alain Rallet. “L’envers et l’endroit des plateformes de livraison instantanée: Enquête sur les livreurs micro-entrepreneurs à Paris.” Réseaux n° 212, no. 6 (2018): 23. https://doi.org/10.3917/res.212.0023 . Lebas, Chloé. “Carrière d’auto-entrepreneur et rapports (critiques) au travail   : comment les coursiers à vélo font émerger des contestations.” La Revue de l’Ires n°99, no. 3 (2019): 37. https://doi.org/10.3917/rdli.099.0037 . “Schmidt - Digital Labour Markets in the Platform Economy.Pdf,” n.d. Schmidt, Florian A. “Digital Labour Markets in the Platform Economy,” n.d., 32. Images  Sanders meme: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fimgflip.com%2Ftag%2Fpostmates%3Fsort%3Dtop-2020-02&psig=AOvVaw3JSnKys4s1NGuIFGZbxK-f&ust=1604843201911000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCLDk7fnI8OwCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD Doge meme: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FTheIndep...