Who are the 13 Uber and Deliveroo couriers killed on the road?
Their names were Jorge, Julien, Pablo, Maurizio, Luis, Alberto, José, Kuan, Su, Ramiro, Artky, Armando, Iderval and Pujan. All of them died working for Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Rappi, Globo, Yandex, Foodracers or Caviar, while out on a delivery. Often in an accident. Or from exhaustion, like Artyk Orozaliyev on 16 April 2019 in Saint Petersburg.
In France, the platforms explain that they are self-employed. That they are entrepreneurs. Business owners. That they are free.
The reality is that they are precarious workers, who have to cover all their own costs (from their bike to their healthcare) with no guaranteed income, and whose only reward will be the holy grail of a five-star rating.
The other reality, in France, is that most of them are Arab, and Black. That is no accident. This is gruelling work, and few people, even students, are willing to do it. So it attracts everyone shut out of the job market, sometimes with no qualifications, sometimes with no papers at all. Because even if the platforms deny it, many couriers sublet their app accounts, for a commission, to undocumented migrants who have no right to work in France.
For years, in France and elsewhere, many people have fought for these couriers to become employees. Because a salaried job is not just the grey prison described by the handful of LinkedIn clowns who claim to make €10K a month (by selling courses on how to make €10K a month). It is also protection for the most precarious, and for those who work in the toughest conditions.
For several months, I searched for information about them. I could have written about the heartbreaking accounts of those who had to stop working overnight. About Karim F., who lost a month’s income after an accident as a ride-hailing driver, while his car sat off the road waiting for an insurance assessor, and who had to rush back into a job at a fast-food restaurant. About Ali B., who broke his shinbone falling during a delivery one winter evening, and says he lay alone in the rain for nearly half an hour, his phone smashed, until a passer-by came to help. With no physiotherapy, he never got back on a bike. Or back to deliveries.
But I chose to write about those who will never get on a bike again, killed in the line of duty for a pizza or a burger.
I went through the press coverage going back to January 2019, and of the 16 couriers who died at work, I was able to trace 13, thanks to the police, prosecutors’ offices, lawyers and sometimes their families.
Thirteen lives that, for the most part, were reduced to a few lines in the local crime pages, usually without even giving their first name.
No investigation.
No revelations.
No in-depth interviews.
Just thirteen lives cut short on the tarmac of a big city, for a burger.