“Do you know what torture is to be hungry while I bring food to your back?”
The driving force of the Paulo Roberto da Silva Lima delivery made this consultation in a video in March, asking for food delivery programs to leave staff unprotected in the pandemic. Da Silva, better known as “Galo” as a child, dreamed of having a Honda Sete Galo motorcycle, filmed it on his 31st birthday. He was behind on his house expenses on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. He received a deflated tire in a delivery and, after repairing it, opened the UberEats app.
“I had been blocked,” he recalls, because a puncture had a delayed delivery. “I sought to fight.”
Paulo Lima, known as Galo, prepares to leave space in the Jardim Esmeralda neighborhood, in the western domain of Sao Paulo. Galo has a national benchmark for dealers after positioning themselves online, minimal situations not easy to run and denouncing the injustice of corporations in the sector: “The very lucrative task of these programs is not delivery. It’s exploitation.”
The video went viral on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in Brazil, sparking a debate about running into the task economy.
Da Silva began organizing other workers, forming the Anti-Fascist Deliverors. He encouraged them to query execution situations in applications. “Just because you don’t see your boss doesn’t mean you don’t have a boss,” he told the other workers. “He’s hiding, counting cash. The money you make, you understand?
Galo has become the face of a hard-working movement in development of the structure’s staff in Latin America protesting against execution situations and salaries of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On July 1, thousands of Brazilian deliverymen went on strike with their counterparts from Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Ecuador. They target global giant UberEats and food delivery apps that have sought to grow in the region, adding Colombian-owned Rappi and Brazilian-owned iFood. The decentralized movement in development is putting pressure on corporations to improve operating situations and governments to regulate the industry.
Motorcyclists celebrate the participation of the first strike of application drivers in Brazil on Avenida Paulista de Sao Paulo.
The July 1 strike in Sao Paulo attracted thousands of employees and supporters. Motorcycle drivers and bike delivery drivers occupied the central thoroughside of Paulista Avenue and joined through students, unions and football fans. His colorful backpacks shone in the winter sun, and the staff were cheerful, feeling his collective strength after a daily painting in isolation. The smell of gas filled the air as they turned on the engines and pulled the wheels. The staff enjoyed a rare moment of street domination. Carrying a delivery backpack, which usually relegates them to the back entrances of restaurants, and stolen naps on park benches, is suddenly a source of pride.
Gerson Cunha, of the Sao Paulo motorcycle trade union, estimates that 5,000 motorcyclists have joined the demonstration. The large participation in Brazil has attracted the attention of the media, the public and galvanized the workers.
Gaul asks staff to see their non-unusual interests in seeking non-public gains. “I gave up the short-circuit concept to make me rich so I could replace the world,” he says. “The purpose is to live better, and that means we’re all together.”
Regardless of the company they work for, the court cases are the same: low wages, long hours, constant danger of accidents and, now, risk of coronavirus.
Tato Silva, 40, working on the delivery of scooters in the wealthy Pinheiros district, shows his source of income at the end of a day.
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When da Silva became a father in 2017, he devoted himself to casting paintings. This is their time as “motoboy”, as they are called in Brazil, but the industry had changed. Now all paints from the apps. They have signed up for iFood, Rappi and UberEats, which sell the concept of entrepreneurship and self-employment.
Da Silva says those who deliver on motorcycles are the worst. They live on the outskirts of Sao Paulo and are Afro-Afro-Colombian or Métis. He says they travel 15 miles to downtown, where demand is high. Sometimes the staff sleeps on a city bank at night, too tired to move home.
“Is entrepreneurship? Does that belong to you?” asks Da Silva. “Leave me alone.”
Da Silva says generation corporations face staff who oppose others. “When I have a challenge to solve, do you know who I have to solve it with? Telemarketing. Another precarious worker,” he says. “I keep cursing her and she continues to curse me. And the boss keeps counting the money.
Some motorcycle and bicycle delivery men, others have turned to food in the soup kitchen and settled for food distribution. Rest the 20-minute breaks that some applications allow 3 times a day, then reconnect so as not to be penalized for being disconnected.
Coming from the periphery, motorcycle dealers are subjected to a very difficult task with few guarantees. The pandemic has worsened its conditions, with more unemployed people joining applications, lowering wages and increasing fitness risks.
AMABR, Brazil’s Autonomous and Applied Motorcycle Riders Association, says delivery drivers earn an average of R$6 to R$10 consistent with the hour ($1.15 to $1.91) and paints of 10 to 12 hours a day. Motorboys call themselves “cloud people”: connected, waiting for pictures, traveling through the city.
“The pandemic has tripled the number of dealers,” says Da Silva. “[Companies] have no duty to the worker, they can have as many as they want. It’s a paradise for them.
Food delivery was already booming in Latin America and only gained popularity with the pandemic. AMABR estimates that there are between 50,000 and 70,000 delivery drivers in Sao Paulo, a city of 12 million inhabitants. A study in Mexico found that orders through Rappi increased by 79.67% in April 2020 compared to April 2019 and 31.69% for Uber Eats in the same period.
But if the demand for childbirth increases the pandemic, so do the risks. Brazil and Mexico are only behind the United States in the number of Covid-19 deaths. More than 100,000 other people died from Covid-19 in Brazil and about 50,000 died in Mexico. As Latin America continues to fight the pandemic, delivery drivers still have no option to continue working.
Alexandro dos Santos Souza ran for the Zé Delivery App, a Brazilian alcoholic beverage delivery company, on April 21, when another motorcyclist ran him over on a road in Sao Paulo.
Alexandro dos Santos at home after a fortuitous birth that resulted in the amputation of his left leg. So far, Alexandro has not had any help for the Zé Delivery app, for which he was running at the time of the twist of the destination, nor the related beverage deposit, “You can’t complain, because if you don’t do this job, someone else will. With this maximum demand, we can leave the delivery company, comes one hundred new delivery drivers. If it wasn’t for my family, I’d be depressed, I’d die.”
Dos Santos, 45, called his friends and an ambulance arrived. “I went to the hospital and they tried to do four surgeries,” he says. “I didn’t paint and I had to have my leg amputated.
Dos Santos did not get any of Ze Delivery. “Even before the pandemic, I worked all day as a delivery man,” he says. “I’d go out at 6 a.m. and come back at midnight, which cost 1,000 reais a week .119.
“You make cash but you don’t live,” he says.
According to Infosiga’s knowledge, the formula of control of destination turn data in the state of Sao Paulo, 39 motorcyclists died in traffic incidents in the city of Sao Paulo in March 2020, compared to 21 in March 2019. In May 2020, 40 died, compared to May 29, 2019.
The city does not track how many worked for delivery applications. But the motorcycle union in Sao Paulo said it was basically heading to motorcyclists on the road through the pandemic. Therefore, chances are that a large proportion of those who died were running applications.
A study through the Network for monitoring labor reform through several public universities in Brazil surveyed 298 employees, and concluded that 59% reported a decrease in revenue since the start of the pandemic. Researchers found that before the pandemic, just over a portion of staff earned more than 520 reais per week ($98.33). During the pandemic, 27.2% reported this income point.
Da Silva says that after paying for the fuel and maintenance of the bicycle, he intends to bring home at least 1800 reais per month ($340). “It’s not a smart wage,” he says, “but it’s enough to live life.”
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As Da Silva and other level staff organized in Brazil, similar protests spread throughout Latin America. On 22 April, the first strike was called between staff in Argentina, Ecuador and Peru. A moment of strike occurred on 29 May.
In Mexico, staff say they are joining the protests because road hazards have increased. “In more than a hundred days of pandemic, five delivery men have died,” says Saúl Gómez of the bus Ni un Repartidor Menos (Not a murdered dealer) in Mexico City. A few days later, the collective recorded a sixth death, from an UberEats employee who crashed on a bridge on July 24.
On July 1, not one less delivery man held two protests, postponing the delivery backpacks painted white at the sites of two fatal accidents. The action echoes the white “ghost bikes” hung in many villages to commemorate the deaths of cyclists.
Bicycle delivery drivers travel up to 30 km from their homes on the outskirts of thriving neighborhoods to work. Exhausted breaks for lunch and dinner, they look for places and public spaces to rest while they wait for the next shift. Many use their bags to protect themselves from the sun.
Mexican staff say corporations have not done enough with the staff that hired Covid-19. Applications such as Rappi have proposed compensating staff for medical casualties. But Gomez says documentation needs are heavy, especially in Mexico, where Covid-19 verification rates are the lowest in the region.
Like their Brazilian counterparts, delivery drivers in Mexico City also report a decline in their income. Paola Angel Segura, 24, says that when she started running for Rappi in September 2017, she may earn about 1,000 pesos ($44.87) in 4 or five days of work. But in the months leading up to the pandemic, he ran six days a week to bring in the same amount.
These situations motivated Segura and the rest of the staff to enroll in Ni a less dealer.
Diego Alberto dos Santos Jesús, 24, lives in a homeless profession in the eastern domain of Sao Paulo. His one-bedroom wooden cabin has small furniture, adding a disconnected oven and the Rappi bag, which he uses to buy food. Diego has been a production assistant, logistics advisor or general assistant, gardener and construction assistant. He currently works part-time with a motorcycle that a friend lent him, earning an average of 20 to 30 reais per day. Your food is guaranteed through the kitchen of the network, which receives donations.
Because of the threat of contagion, Segura has noticed his 6-year-old son, who has been living with his paternal grandparents, for more than two months. “I feel bad, ” he said. “I miss him very much.”
“Apps want to pay attention to us because they have us,” he says. “They’re nothing of us.”
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The measures have managed to draw attention to execution situations and put corporations on the defensive. Rafael Grohmann, a professor at UNISINOS in Porto Alegre, Brazil, said that platform corporations have increased their advertising and lobbying in reaction to the measures. “The media has shown much more the view of corporations, saying that everything is fine, the voices of the workers,” he says. “Companies must appropriate public debate.”
Although geographically dispersed, delivery forces have discovered tactics to unite and organize. “Workers are organized using all the equipment they have,” says Callum Cant of Riding for Deliveroo and an old delivery driving force in the UK.
In the case of dealers, they are their motorcycles and motorcycles, allowing them to gather and burn quickly. They also take advantage of smartphones, messaging apps and social networks. The square delivery backpack has your business card. Brazilian staff pile up their backpacks to create street barricades, Mexican staff paint them white to commemorate their murdered colleagues.
“The existing scenario is intensifying in the dealers’ own struggles,” Cant says. “These are situations where labor movements have developed.”
Giovani Adorno, 23, and Anderson Rodrigues da Silva, 39, have dinner after a daunting day. They were connected overnight in the iFood app and had 4 deliveries. The couple is a neighbor and lives in Embu das Artes, a town in the metropolitan domain of Sao Paulo, 30 km from the centre of the capital.
Collectives cross national borders, organize YouTube panels, percentage of content on social networks, and hold online meetings. Outside of Mexico and Brazil, the teams come with the Delivery Workers’ Agarupacion and the Personal Associate Platforms in Argentina, which featured six delivery men who died from the pandemic, joined through Glovers Ecuador and Rider Unidos Already in Chile.
Workers around the world face harmful situations and volatile income as a result of the pandemic. The Fairwork Project, part of the Oxford Internet Institute, published a study in April on the effect of Covid-19 on staff of small business economics. The study found no evidence that companies detected staff demands or participated in self-employed associations. Instead, they discovered examples of platforms that sought to suppress staff efforts to organize.
“The next step is to perceive how the platform’s responses will replace as the effects of the pandemic diminish,” says Funda Ustek-Spilda, postdoctoral researcher and assignment leader at Fairwork. “Will the policies they have implemented for people with health problems or other benefits be eliminated? Will they stay?
iFood, Uber Eats and Zé Delivery said they take employee protection seriously. “IFood unconditionally respects democratic rights to protest and freedom of expression. The company is already responding to motions requests by mail and is lately operating with a minimum delivery rate of five reais, regardless of the distance travelled,” an iFood spokesman said. Uber Eats said it was running “continuously to improve the quality and protection of self-employment while retaining the flexibility that delivery partners so appreciate. And Zé Delivery said he doesn’t have his own delivery staff… however, Zé Delivery maintains an active communication with its partners, advising on the most productive measures to be taken on a case-by-case basis and on the protective apparatus advised for production deliveries.
Legislation submitted to the Brazilian Congress, which would provide an hourly wage for platform workers, would require social security contributions and unemployment insurance.
In Brazil, several cooperative distribution companies are already in operation and others are in preparation. Rafael Grohmann is supporting the anti-fascist delivery men in Rio de Janeiro to establish a cooperative platform. “This has to be done step by step, without accelerating,” he says. “The structure of platform cooperatives is based on technological solvency, but on the organization of workers.”
Da Silva that employee control is the next step. “The challenge is not with technology, it’s who uses technology,” he says.
“The secret is cooperatives, creating a delivery app,” says da Silva. “We can secure more rights if we want to, and we don’t want the state. We can set the agenda.”