Frankly... visual  On whose back

How can it be that a deliveryman should be fired for arriving just a few minutes late? And what’s so important about trade unions? In this month’s column, Susi Bumms zooms in on a fight for workers’ rights.

Staff at bicycle delivery services like Gorillas describe the lousy working conditions there: late or incorrect pay, unpaid overtime and such a high-pressure race against the clock that they sometimes don’t even have time to go to the loo. Their bikes are often defective or without racks, which means riders have to carry the heavy bags on their backs.

On whose back | Illustration: © Susi Bumms

Wildcat Strike

In June 2021, when a rider arrived just a few minutes late for his shift and was fired for that reason alone, his co-workers sympathized and went on a solidarity strike.

It’s a worker’s right to strike. However – and this is an important point – a strike is allowed by law only if called by a union, in which case employers are not allowed to sack any of the striking staff. Trade unions are independent organizations in which workers join forces for greater leverage in bargaining with employers to make demands and safeguard their interests.

But the deliverers at this new app-based service aren’t unionized yet, as is often the case at fast-growing start-ups that hire workers on temporary contracts.

So the strikes at Gorillas could probably be deemed “wildcat strikes”, which are not protected under labour law in Germany – unlike other countries. The management subsequently terminated more than three hundred of the strikers.


Drawing of a gorilla riding a bike with a huge bag on his back | Illustration: © Susi Bumms
The remaining employees began efforts to set up a works council (Betriebsrat), another tool for protecting workers’ interests, and got the sack as well. Unlike a union, a works council doesn’t represent a whole industry, but the workforce at a single company. There’s nothing new about employers’ firing workers who want to form a works council – as a matter of fact, there’s even a technical term for it: union busting.

Whether there will be more or fewer bicycle couriers on the streets of German cities in ten years’ time, whether this method of delivering groceries by bike will take off or not, the issue here and now is rights that workers have fought long and hard for, rights that also apply to new, precarious jobs at investor-financed start-ups.

Many such start-ups cultivate a hip, modern, metropolitan image. Their advertising is packed with references to pop culture and social media trends. Take the Gorillas slogan “Mutter, der Mann mit den Cokes ist da” (“Mother, the man with the Cokes is here”) for example: it’s an allusion to “Mutter, der Mann mit dem Koks ist da” (“Mother, the man with the coke is here”), a song by the Austrian pop singer Falco. But this hip communication strategy mustn’t blind us to the company’s exploitation of the “men with the Cokes”, most of whom are not native speakers of German and therefore denied access to many other (part-time) jobs.

Solidarity-based collective action | Illustration: © Susi Bumms

The fight goes on

The Berlin-Brandenburg Regional Labour Court ruled that Gorillas employees could go ahead and set up a works council. By the end of November, they’d elected 19 members to the newly created council. Gorillas’ management are now seeking to challenge the validity of the electoral process in court. In Cologne, where I live, want ads for new deliverers say things like: “We need the best bikers in Cologne to help us change the world!” But what’s really changing the world is the ongoing struggle of past and present workers to safeguard their rights.

So, congratulations on setting up a works council
 

December 2020