Apologies for getting serious but theres an interesting article in the FT today about the appalling way delivery drivers are paid a pittance to get your shopping to you. This is exactly why we dont use any of the cheap couriers like My Hermes, Yodel or the now collapsed Citylink. We all like to have a moan about Royal Mail and Parcelforce, and yes they do lose or damage things from time to time, but they pay their staff a proper wage and working conditions. Rant over. :) Online delivery model relies on low-paid drivers Before its failure, City Link sought to cut costs by using subcontractors to deliver online parcels, now standard practice throughout the industry. Its 1,000 self-employed drivers — a quarter of its workforce — hired vans, bought their branded uniforms from the company and were paid a piece rate per delivery. The RMT union said that City Link had been shifting towards the subcontracted model “because they’ve got no liabilities in terms of holiday pay, no liabilities in terms of sick pay, no liabilities in terms of contractual commitments. It’s like a super-zero-hours contract.” City Link’s website for prospective “Service Delivery Partners” — the company’s term for self-employed drivers — claimed they could earn about £43,000 a year before costs and tax. However, a sample “profit and loss sheet” assumed drivers worked every week of the year and made 103 deliveries per day at a rate of £1.65 per drop. City Link even offered a training module called “Getting to 100 drops”. But a footnote on the website warned there was “no guarantee that there will be parcels for delivery and/or collection on any day” and that City Link had no obligation to “provide a minimum amount of work, or any work.” “What the City Link story has done is blown the lid off the way that whole industry is organising itself,” the RMT said. City Link’s owner Better Capital declined to comment. City Link drivers could lease a van at a cost of about £6,240 a year, plus a deposit paid in monthly instalments. Or they could use their own vans if they met certain specifications — but only if they painted them with the City Link livery. The uniform cost £88, and drivers also had to pay for fuel and insurance. An employee at a rival courier firm said that this model could be highly risky for drivers. “One driver was left £1,000 in debt after two weeks’ work because he couldn’t make back the van rental. I’ve had people in my face saying your company are a bunch of criminals, which is extremely distressing,” he said. City Link paid its drivers per drop, but some other courier companies pay per mile. Those rates can be as low as 50 pence and only apply when a parcel is on board. “A van driver could get a job from London to Croydon which could take 90 minutes in traffic,” the employee said. “Assuming he doesn’t get another job on the way back, that’s three hours work for about £8 — well below the minimum wage. Plus, he will have to cover his petrol, insurance and van hire out of that.” Billy Hayes, the CWU general secretary, said the pressure on City Link had “built from the crowded arena parcel companies operate in.” “While the parcel market has grown quickly, so too has the number of operators at an even faster rate,” he said, noting the “downward pressure” on pay and reductions in pay and conditions as encouraging “a race to the bottom for workers.”
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 21:32:38 +0000
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