According to the organization that represents Just Eat delivery drivers, they have been sacked after being mislocated by the GPS system or diverting from unfeasible or unsafe routes. Stuart, a firm that supplies drivers to some of the largest restaurant and retail companies in the UK, told the Observer that they were fired through email.
As per The Guardian, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) says that hundreds of couriers for Stuart have lost their employment in places ranging from Exeter to Leeds. Those who talked to the Observer expressed their outrage at the treatment and their concern about their capacity to pay rent, bills, and basic needs as the cost of living continues to climb.
The incidents were ‘among the more egregious examples of a gig economy that is rapidly squeezing employees as much as possible and then just dismissing them without any responsibility, ‘said Alex Marshall, president of the IWGB. ‘Stuart’s choice to adopt this GPS device is to save money, but the implications for couriers are enormous,’ he stated.
According to evidence provided to the Observer, Stuart moved its GPS system in-house as a cost-cutting strategy and is aware of the issues. A Stuart senior manager can be heard advising a courier in a direct-message exchange on Twitter, which was shared with the Observer, ‘Stuart has an internally created directions service and it’s not fantastic. We used to get instructions from Google Maps, but they raised the charge up 10x’.
When the courier responds, ‘people are dismissed for supposedly diverting from routes and you just mentioned it is wrong,’ the manager admits, ‘it’s not ideal yeah [sic]’. Stuart notified Odawa in an email received by the Observer that four of his deliveries had been ‘marked for serious delays caused by excessive diversions,’ including three order numbers specified in the email.
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