Freelance workers on platforms like Uber have not all been in the same boat in recent months. While VTC drivers went to the minimum rate of 7.65 euros (7.30 euros for taxis), bicycle couriers were still having to endure the harsh law of the market and the commercial battle of the platform against the competition. Everything changes thanks to an agreement signed Thursday, April 20 between the representative bodies of independent two-wheeler deliverers and meal delivery platforms.
Those who still do not hire their workers in France should at least guarantee them more security and this is now done. Unlike drivers, the amount of the minimum income is backed by an hourly volume and not by the race; it will be 11.75 euros per hour. A kind of minimum wage therefore, which will allow them to no longer undergo stress at the idea of not being able to make their activity profitable. Note that for 20% of deliverers, this will represent “immediate gain”while the latter are below the threshold of 11.75 euros per hour worked.
“This is a branch agreement that applies to all platforms in the existing or future home delivery sector. It will therefore no longer be possible in the future, even if a new platform arrives on the market with a desire to cut prices, for a delivery person to earn less than €11.75 per hour of effective work, added Grégoire Leclercq, president of the National Federation of Autoentrepreneurs and Microentrepreneurs (FNAE).
The State had to intervene and supervise. In previous years, the delivery men had difficulty in mounting collective actions as they were poorly organized in the union and they were not employed in the company like Uber or Deliveroo. In 2019, a decision by the Deliveroo platform to lower the price of short-distance races had hurt the couriers, who then decided to protest. The fixed price for the races then went from 4.8 euros to less than 3 euros, with losses for the income of the deliverers ranging from 20 to 30%, and up to 50% for some.
Unilateral platform decisions will hopefully be a thing of the past.
The right to speak, in the face of customer abuse
This is not the only advance in the agreement signed on April 20. At the same time, self-employed workers and platforms have advanced on the right to deactivation on the part of delivery people. Behind this term, a whole problem in the past of the right of commercial rupture of the deliverymen with their platform. The terms are moving in their favor and in the new agreement, couriers will be able to more easily decide to no longer work with a platform or in the same way contest a deactivation initiated by the platform against it.
The text provides that the couriers can also, for their part, report incidents, which can occur in particular with customers unhappy with a delay which would in no case be due to the deliverer but to the restaurant, or quite simply a customer who would like to obtain a refund of his order even if the delivery and the order present no problem. In the event of a dispute over the deactivation of a delivery person, the agreement requires that the moderation not be taken over by the algorithm but by a natural person.
In the hope of no longer facing impasses in future years, which would make the deliverers of these platforms all the more precarious, the agreements also intend to strengthen social dialogue in a sustainable way. In addition to revenue and deactivation framework, “a method agreement to strengthen the resources of representatives and the quality of social dialogue” was signed. In 2021, an ordinance launched the work by creating the Employment Platforms Social Relations Authority (ARPE), a new public establishment responsible for regulating social dialogue between platforms and self-employed workers.
In the future, the representative bodies of drivers and deliverers wish to work on new branch agreements. The next steps, indicated the FNAE, will be to set up bonus systems and continue to improve the working conditions of delivery people and the recognition of their sector.
