Delivery app workers have scheduled another national strike on July 25th. The action defending better conditions at work will be the continuity of a movement that has come to be known as “Break the Apps”, which took to the streets for the first time on July 1st, and gathered thousands of workers in the country’s main cities.
Among their main demands are fairer wages, which would be established on the basis of raising their minimum fare rates, as well as standard pay throughout different platforms for each kilometer traversed.
Another one of their principal demands is the immediate end to unjustified worker suspensions, which according to the ‘motoboys’ (delivery workers mainly riding motorcycles), is frequently done by companies like UberEats, Rappi, Ifood and Loggi.
Differently than the first strike, which took place on a weekday, the next one will happen on a Saturday. Beyond the aforementioned issues, the laborers are also demanding an end to the rating system, which lowers the grades of those who refuse deliveries and do other things such as continually replenishing masks and hand sanitizer.
High demand for informality
Amid the socioeconomic crisis that has deepened due to the coronavirus, many informal workers turned to delivering items through apps as a means to guarantee some income. The service was considered an essential activity during the pandemic.
According to information sent to our newsroom from Rappi, the platform has around 200,000 ed delivery people in Latin America. The number has increased 11% since the start of the pandemic. Ifood on the other hand, says that it has received more than 175 thousand applications in March of this year. In February, that figure was 85,000.
Despite the noticeable increase in the workforce available to them, the delivery companies have not altered their pay rates, directly influencing delivery workers’ wages.
