Inlägg

2019-02-14

Foodora and vulnerable bodies

Foodora workers or as the company tend to call them “riders”, work in constant stage of stress, humiliation from their “captains” and with minimum salary.

Foodora is a food delivery company which have contracts with a wide range of restaurants, fast foods and super markets.

The whole system is dependent on “riders”: workers who deliver food from restaurants to the customers, with their bikes.

These riders are comprised of new-comers, international students and native citizens.

Although a great deal of these riders have academic and work backgrounds, they become attracted to this company because of ever-closing circle of ‘job market’ in Sweden and some other European countries.

Precisely because these workers insecurely feel that they have no other option, this company exploits them as much as possible.

As a rider, you work with a mobile application which tracks all your activities: your speed, your location, delays etc. In a nutshell, you work alone but the presence of big capitalist brother is always with you.

Your job contract starts with one month and then becomes extended three months and so on. However, if you are not able to satisfy the demands of the big capitalist brother: high speed, no resting time, no delays..; you will receive negative points which finally will lead to your purge.

In a conversation with a rider, he told me that he works more than 40 hours per week to pay the university tuition fee of his wife. He added: “in the end, there would be no money left for me. I don’t know what to do if they don’t give me more shifts.”

These types of situations lead to a total dependence of a person to this unstable job and a total mental and physical stage of pressure, stress and fear. In addition, the aforementioned situation leaves no space for resistance and collective bargaining.

Most of the riders adopt themselves to this hellish situation and big capitalist brother is totally aware of this fact.

To sum up, foodora and similar companies are violently exploiting the unstable, vulnerable and insecure ‘bodies’ that are one of the consequences of neoliberal reforms in the industrialized capitalist countries such as Sweden.

Hamidreza Sadeghi

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