This is good news, and long time coming:
the administrative court of Finland declares that food couriers are employers, not independent contractors.
This has been long time coming. In 2018, Foodora, one of the companies, unilaterally cut the pay and worsened the working conditions of its couriers. Foodora was able to do this, because the the bulk of the couriers worked as independent contractors. (A minority, like myself, did or had done the job as an employee…)
Foodora couriers in Turku were the first to protest, then couriers in Tampere contacted couriers in Helsinki, and the Justice4Couriers campaign was started. Justice4Couriers had two aims, immediate and systemic: first repeal the paycuts and other downgrades, and two, grant couriers employee status. The campaign consisted of couriers and grassroots union activists.
The campaign was active for about two years engaging both in direct action (demonstrations, calls to boycott, contacting restaurants, posting a ton of info posters), organizing events, contacting politicians, giving a testimony to a parliamentary committee, liaising with formal unions, cooperating with international courier unions and campaigns, and even at one point engaging in discussions with one of the companies.
The government led by social democrats had in its programme that they will review the use of sham entrepreneurship to circumvent employer responsibilities. I think this was largely because of the campaign.
As a result of the campaign, Wolt issued limited insurances to its couriers, but immediate demands were not met. Nor did the systemic ones: the regional administrative agency at one point issued that couriers should indeed be employees, while some individual couriers who took their status to court were deemed freelancers.
What the campaign achieved, I think, was a change in public discourse. After the campaign started, it was impossible to talk about food couriers and the platform economy without talking about working conditions.
After a few years, the campaign winded down. People get tired, the status of couriers was discussed in courts and so forth. And most importantly, new active couriers started organizing, staging wildcat strikes and finally, organizing into a formal union branch under the service sector union PAM.
This was important for many reasons. The majority of the actives of the 2018 campaign were mostly Finnish citizens and/or bike couriers even though couriers from immigrant backgrounds were active in it too. The newer organizing was done almost uniformly by couriers (using cars and mopeds) of immigrant background, who represent the vast majority of food couriers. I think their organizing and representing themselves has been absolutely crucial.
During the campaign, I was ambivalent about the demand for employee status. I personally think it is crucially important, because keeping the couriers as freelancers is a form of overexploitation, through which important costs of production, such as the maintenance of means of production and the workforce itself, has been shifted to the couriers, who maintain their own vehicles at their own expense, have not sick leaves, holidays, pay their own pensions etc.
Demanding employment status is, I think, important for the couriers and for labor issues at large. Overexploitation in the form of sham entrepreneurship is used in other branches, such as cleaning, too, and if it was permissible in the courier sector, it is likely to be adopted more widely. Such is the law of “coercive competition” in capitalism: when some individual capitals find a way to cut costs, others have to follow.
At the same time, for some (many?) couriers of immigrant background, the main struggle has not necessarily been to get the employment status, but get better pay, in order to get enough income to justify residence permits in Finland under increasingly strict and racist immigration regimes. For those whose residency permits are linked to income, the (over)exploitative courier work has maybe been absolutely crucial in eking out an income to avoid deportation—even if it has meant working for 12 hours straight each day. (Olivia Maury has conducted important research on these topics.)
So here we have a really vicious intersection of labor and immigration regimes that produce differences within labor, and literally racialize some sectors, like food courier work, which is done mainly by immigrants. So the struggle for more just work, just within the parameters of a capitalist work market, are not confined simply to formal working conditions, but need to take into account questions of gender, citizenship and the regimes that produce them.
It seems a bit silly to celebrate that some workers are now being recognized as “employees” as that should be a given, but here we are. When worker rights are being backtracked and reduced in Finland and globally, even repealing some of the excesses feels like a victory, which is kind of sad.
Such a small victory (recognizing some workers as employees) took 7 years to achieve, and needed the work of active couriers, activists, unions, researchers and bureaucrats. In some sense there is something hopeful and encouraging in this. Change takes a long time and improvements are often minimal and gradual at a time. So there’s not really much else to do than to just try to keep on and do what one can, even if it is a little.
Because all these victories, big and small, are always the result of individual small acts done collectively.