19-year-old meal delivery driver Sytze Ferwerda is strongly against Deliveroo's plan to only work with self-employed delivery drivers. Ferwerda wants to remain in paid employment and is now taking his employer to court.
Deliveroo wants to stop employing delivery drivers as of 1 February. From then on, bicycle couriers will have to work as self-employed workers for the meal delivery service. In doing so, Deliveroo meets with a lot of protest from deliverymen and unions, who believe that only Deliveroo itself benefits from the self-employed construction.
Crowdfunding campaign
"A self-employed person should be able to determine his own rates and also which assignments he does or does not take. That is not possible as a Deliveroo delivery driver," Ferwerda told the Parool. The delivery driver managed to raise over 7,000 euros for a lawsuit against Deliveroo through a crowdfunding campaign by the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA). Almost four hundred people contributed to the action.
Ferwerda hopes the lawsuit will still give him the securities of an employee, such as continued payment after a collision.
'The new crooks'
The PvdA argues to the Parool that companies like Deliveroo are "the new crooks". "They try to maximise profits on the backs of their deliverymen. All risks for the delivery driver, all profits for Deliveroo," MP Gijs van Dijk responded. The Labour Party MP hopes the lawsuit will send a signal to other companies with similar plans.
Deliveroo says it still believes in the freelance model. The meal delivery service does say it wants to look for a way to offer delivery drivers more collective security.
