In July, when the Met Office issued its first ever ‘red alert’ for extreme heat in England – the highest level, signalling a national emergency – Shaf, a food courier, knew he’d be on his own.
Shaf is habitually plugged into multiple food delivery apps, but that day he avoided Deliveroo – a market leader – logging on only briefly to see if the company had lengthened its expected delivery times or raised its delivery fees, which incentivise couriers to complete journeys quickly to amass as many orders as possible. It hadn’t.
Instead, Deliveroo encouraged its riders to ‘keep hydrated’, offering free cold drinks at McDonald’s and KFC for couriers taking their orders. But Shaf avoids these restaurants due to the long wait times for orders, which are unpaid.
On the day the heatwave began, Shaf managed to force himself onto his bike, but was forced to cut short his usual 12-hour shift. “Only a courier knows how hot it actually got,” he recalled. “You’re wondering whether your tyres would melt.”
The food delivery apps, however, remained open for business. For Shaf, this was no surprise. He knows couriers are always at the mercy of extreme weather – he has endured long shifts in winds that have knocked him off his bike and icy evenings hovering in restaurant doorways.
“I’ve worked in the snow, in the rain, I’ve had accidents where I’ve slipped, I’ve had accidents where I’ve hit pedestrians who jumped out in front of me,” he said.
A Deliveroo spokesperson told openDemocracy: “The welfare of riders is incredibly important to everyone at Deliveroo and, during this summer’s heatwave in the UK, we followed the advice from the Met Office closely.”
They added that water had been made available at “Editions and Deliveroo HOP sites”, which are delivery-only kitchens and grocery stores.
Platforms like Deliveroo extol the perks of self employment, claiming couriers can be their own boss, choose their own hours. But scant salaries and slim delivery windows leave riders scrambling to get orders and deliver them quickly, and lock them into a cycle of 12-hour shifts – regardless of lockdowns or extreme weather conditions that lead others to stay at home.
Though the Deliveroo spokesperson said the company’s estimated delivery times are based on the “real-life delivery times of thousands of riders making comparable journeys”, Shaf says he is continually forced to disregard his safety in order to meet them.
“Deliveroo gives a delivery time, it’s based on ridiculous estimations,” he explained, “If I stop for a red light or someone crossing the road, that will affect me negatively, because I’ll be late for that delivery.”
This was echoed by a spokesperson for the couriers and logistics branch of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB). “The app sets tight delivery deadlines that create a pressure for couriers to drive unsafely on the roads, and this is exacerbated by the constant threat of unfair dismissal for any delays or detours taken,” they said.
They also claimed that deliveries which fall outside the given delivery window – which are deemed ‘late’ – can result in riders losing ‘delivery priority’, meaning they’d be less likely to receive an order in future, or could even have their account suspended. (Deliveroo did not respond to this allegation.) This is compounded by low delivery fees, which incentivise couriers to complete deliveries as quickly as possible to amass as many orders as possible in a shift.
The app sets tight delivery deadlines that create a pressure for couriers to drive unsafelyIndependent Workers’ Union of Great Britain spokesperson
Deliveroo’s spokesperson said: “Riders are always free to accept or reject an order that's offered to them and at no point are they given a negative rating or review by Deliveroo.” But Shaf said this flexibility is illusory – couriers must work when there is demand for food, usually in typical mealtimes.
“You have to leave the house at 6am to start work at 7,” he said, explaining that the breakfast shift lasts until around 10am. “Then you have lunch and then you have dinner. That's it. You have to work in those set hours to make money.”
Shaf’s lack of control over his working conditions stems from his status as an independent contractor. Deliveroo’s platform-based model means workers are treated as independent businesses rather than employees – a distinction that enables the company to evade employment protections.
This means that in the event of an external shock, such as the pandemic or extreme weather events, this army of precarious workers shoulders amplified personal risk while undertaking essential labour that keeps society running.
“These pressures are made worse by extreme weather conditions such as storms or heat waves, during which Deliveroo has repeatedly incentivised couriers to work despite obvious safety concerns. Together, these pressures create the perfect storm for road traffic incidents and injuries,” IWBG spokesperson’s person.
For Shaf, the risks he’s had to take to work have crystalised what he’d long suspected about being a courier. “We’re treated as disposable livestock, we’re cows that are fed and slaughtered to provide meat for them,” he said bluntly.
Joining the dots
Despite the increasingly stark implications of climate breakdown for workers, the links between environmental groups and the labour movement have been slow to coalesce. The more immediate demands of poverty pay and zero-hour contracts have kicked the seemingly intangible impacts of climate breakdown into the long grass.
Restrictive anti-union laws have also stymied coalition-building. The 1980 Employment Act outlawed solidarity strikes or action around issues external to industrial disputes.
“There have been disagreements” between environmental and labour rights activists, said Clara Paillard, a founding member of Extinction Rebellion Trade Unionists, a subgroup of Extinction Rebellion. During the wave of strikes this summer, the group appeared on picket lines in shows of solidarity.
“The climate movement has been about what we are against, not campaigning on the alternatives. [But] what do you do with fossil fuel workers, for example?” she said. “The trade union movement was concerned about their workers and jobs… poverty pay, zero-hour contracts – both sides didn’t link the dots.”
Finlay Asher, the co-founder of Safe Landing, a climate action group advocating for a just transition for aviation sector workers, is another activist attempting to bridge the void.
“We get a lot of emails from people every week saying… I’m so frustrated, I’m working in the industry and thought I was the only one that had these concerns,” Asher said. But the senders are mostly anonymous – job insecurity cows many workers into silence.
For Asher, the unwieldy structure of big unions is a stumbling block to Safe Landing’s work – spaces for debate at grassroots level are scarce.
This is why Safe Landing developed a model of ‘Workers’ Assemblies’. Borrowing from the concept of Citizens’ Assemblies, this is a process whereby workers can engage in open debate with their peers on a given issue.
The assemblies, Asher emphasised, could also function as a recruitment tool for unions to attract younger members.
“Despite the fact that younger people are in the most precarious jobs, [unions] struggle to recruit people in their twenties and early thirties. But these people care about the climate crisis greatly.”
An eco-precariat
During the COVID lockdowns, the prevalence of low-paid workers on the frontlines forced a reevaluation of their labour as ‘essential’. But in their aftermath, reliance on casualisation has accelerated. Porous labour protections stand to be further eroded.
In the context of a rapidly warming world and increasing extreme weather events, these workers will be compelled to shoulder further risk. They are the ‘eco-precariat’.
They are the prison inmates on a dollar a day battling the 2018 wildfires in California. The 195,000 volunteers on the frontlines of the 2019 fires in Australia. In Egypt, the Zabbaleen, an army of impoverished rubbish collectors responsible for recycling the city’s waste. In the UK, the volunteers driving relief efforts during flooding.
Under Liz Truss, misguided climate policy and anti-union laws will go hand in hand. As well as lifting the ban on fracking and the proposed removal of green levies from energy bills, Truss has pledged a slew of anti-union legislation.
Keir Starmer’s announcement of plans for a green, publicly owned renewable energy company and insulation for every British home promise a seismic shift in Labour’s environmental policy.
Despite the fact Labour has pledged to bolster protections for precarious workers, the presence of major gig platforms at the party’s conference this year – including an event run by Deliveroo, which sparked anger after failing to include any couriers – suggest that even if the party came to power, gig workers could continue to be left out in the cold.
The threads connecting labour and climate are woven tighter than ever – workers like Shaf know this well, and they know we cannot wait.
