International podcast importing ideas: How to make food delivery services fairer?

The working conditions in food delivery services are often precarious and the deliveries are hardly sustainable. How are other states trying to make this service fairer?

Amazon Fresh, Gorillas, Flink, Getir, Uber Eats, Bring, Grovy, Knuspr – there are now food delivery services in almost every major German city. They promise to be fast: in just a few minutes, the items ordered via the app will be at the customer’s front door. However, not a single one of these “online supermarkets” is currently making a profit.

A research by NDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” recently showed how highly competitive the market for food delivery services is. According to internal documents, gorillas lost 52 million euros in January alone and 57 million euros in February. The company pays extra for every delivery: an order of around 27 euros, for example, costs gorillas 32 euros.

Thousands of permanent jobs in Spain

The food delivery services save on the drivers. The so-called riders earn at the minimum wage limit and often work late into the night. Sometimes they are observed by the employer via an app, like with Lieferando, like that Bavarian Radio had researched. And most of the time, the riders are bogus self-employed, which means they have to follow the employer’s instructions like permanent employees, but they officially work on their own responsibility and for their own account.

For this reason, a so-called Riders Law has existed in Spain for a year, which is intended to improve the working conditions of drivers. According to the law, employers in the industry must employ all riders on a permanent basis. “For example, they get protection against dismissal, unemployment insurance, continued payment of wages in the event of illness – all the social benefits that permanent employees normally receive,” reports Correspondent Nicholas Buschschlueter from the ARD Studio Madrid in the idea import.

According to Buschschlueter, thousands of drivers have been hired in Spain since then. But some companies were looking for loopholes, such as the grocery delivery service Glovo. The Spanish government fined Glovo €79 million for continuing to employ its riders as self-employed. Glovo wants to take legal action against the penalty.

Rest in converted kiosks

In New York, too, new laws are intended to protect riders from poor working conditions. Three new laws were introduced this summer alone, reports say ARD correspondent Antje Passenheim. One prohibits companies from promising a delivery time of 15 minutes. “This puts the suppliers under so much pressure that far too much can happen, accidents for example,” says Passenheim.

The working conditions of the riders in New York are particularly tough, they are often mugged and there are often accidents, says Passenheim. But the riders were successful with their protests: For example, they fought for the right to have their tips paid out to them. The city also wants to convert empty kiosks into “rest and refueling oases” for the approximately 65,000 New York couriers.

Search for ideas in the tagesschau podcast

For many questions that arise again and again in everyday life, there are guaranteed to be good ideas, possible role models and solutions somewhere in the world: How better to deal with sharply rising energy prices? What to do to eat healthier? Why do people in other countries sometimes live longer?

The foreign podcast daily News searches and finds them – together with the correspondents in the 30 foreign studios of the ARD. idea import wants to look beyond the proverbial box and provide fresh ideas for new input in political and social debates.

idea import appears every second Friday. You can listen to the podcast anytime at home or on the go on your smartphone – every second Friday morning you will find a new episode on our website, in which ARD audio library and on numerous other podcast platforms.