Michael Moynihan: Opportunity for Cork City to deliver change for ‘gig workers’

The use of delivery services has a range of consequences

In tribute to Tim Crowley, who ran The Corner Shop in Blarney for 37 years, children from the local school, Scoil Chroí Íosa, tied hand-drawn pictures of sweets and lollipops to the shop wall.

A couple of weeks back you probably read here about the passing of Tim Crowley, who ran The Corner Shop in Blarney for 37 years.

He retired from the shop last summer and it had been closed for a while, but that didn’t mean his impact on the community was forgotten. Many people in Blarney recalled his influence on the town, and children from the local school, Scoil Chroí Íosa, tied hand-drawn pictures of sweets and lollipops to the wall of his shop in tribute.

It was a beautiful gesture that illustrated, among other things, just how strong the bonds in a community can be — and how bereft a community can be when one of the vital cogs is lost. Not every community has a corner shop, and quite a few lack any form of retail outlet. A local facility like Tim Crowley’s shop is something that’s deeply appreciated by those who depend on it.

What’s noticeable to anyone who’s been around Cork City in recent months is that there isn’t just a shortage of such local shops, but that the basic interface of customer and shopkeeper, or retail worker, is also vanishing. This was brought home to yours truly on a morning visit to the city in the last few days, when cyclists in the light blue livery of a well-known delivery business were about the only company to be found on the streets. As you head out from the city centre these folks are to be encountered biking in all directions, laden with goods destined for every corner of the city.

Before we go any further, an acknowledgment of the realities: the spread of Omicron means all of us need to limit our social interactions and having food and groceries delivered is necessary, not optional, for many. If people in your household are unwell or very young, the last thing you need to do is take the risk of spreading the virus among them.

However, that doesn’t cover everybody. The explosion in delivery services can’t be explained by fear of infection alone. The appeal of convenience is hard to overcome, for one thing, and I speak as someone with a pathological dislike of inconvenience myself.

The use of delivery services has consequences, however. That frictionless, near-instant gratification isn’t cost-neutral.

There are environmental consequences: while you may be happy to point out that you’re not increasing your carbon footprint by remaining at home, your virtue-signalling is undone by the obvious fact that someone else is doing the travelling for you, pottering out to your house on their e-bike.

There are safety and traffic consequences. It was interesting to read last weekend in one of the Sunday papers about the impact on Amsterdam of such delivery services.

“Beholden to the promise of a ten-minute delivery,” wrote Adam Smith, “riders are in a perpetual hurry.

“They mostly go about their business on electric bicycles, which sounds great but makes them much faster (than regular cyclists) ... these bikes are silent as they whizz up behind to overtake. The result, according to the Dutch cyclists’ union, is a drastic rise in the number of accidents.” 

Tim Crowley, who ran The Corner Shop in Blarney for 37 years.

There are wider consequences for the fabric of the city, too.

If you’re living in one of Cork’s suburbs but you’re inclined to get your food delivered rather than going into the city centre, then the vicious circle starts to turn. Fewer people going into the city has an impact on the city’s commercial life, which in time hollows out the urban landscape; this means fewer people want to go into the city, and the dreary sequence of events continues.

Then there are the delivery drivers themselves, who are the very embodiment of the gig economy.

This is the system of employment which you can see described sometimes, with a straight face, as offering workers the freedom to select their working hours, though the reality more closely resembles naked exploitation.

If the gig economy were the worker’s nirvana it’s claimed to be, we wouldn’t see situations such as the ongoing strike in Sheffield, where drivers employed by a courier company which is a sub-contractor for JustEat are striking over a reported 25% cut on delivery fees on most orders.

Indeed, if the gig economy served its workers so well, why did New York approve a raft of legislative measures last September specifically to protect delivery drivers?

The proposals stop “food delivery apps and courier services from charging workers fees to receive their pay; makes the apps disclose their gratuity policies; prohibits the apps from charging delivery workers for insulated food bags, which can cost up to $50; and requires restaurant owners to make bathrooms available to delivery workers”, according to The New York Times.

The legislation would also allow delivery workers to “set parameters on the trips they take without fear of retribution”, a welcome development given the number of workers attacked and robbed of either their money, their e-bikes, or both.

And this is where we land back on Irish shores. The safety of delivery workers became a live issue in Dublin in the last 12 months — so much so that there were reports earlier this year that Deliveroo drivers were refusing to deliver to certain parts of the city for fear of being robbed.

This is the background, then, to the smooth transaction that gets the delivery to your door with so little fuss — the variety of different questions that engaging in the service makes you ask yourself.

Ironically, one of the more pressing of those questions is one of the easier ones to remedy.

A British think tank, Autonomy, recently released a report suggesting that all-night city rest centres, with staff rooms, canteens, and toilets, would provide food delivery drivers, sex workers, cleaners, and others who work through the night with “dignity” and shelter from bad weather.

The Guardian reported: “Autonomy called on employers to work with local authorities to fund safe spaces for workers to visit at night between shifts and during quiet periods.

“The rapid rise of the gig economy has left many workers without easy access to staff rooms, toilets, and opportunities to meet each other. With an increasing reliance on home deliveries due to pandemic restrictions, there are particular concerns over the treatment of drivers, who are often foreign nationals of colour working zero-hour contracts.” 

One of the key elements mentioned in the report, the lack of opportunities for workers to meet each other, is more significant than it first appears. ‘Meeting’ is a gentle euphemism for ‘organising’, which is, of course, unnecessary in the paradise that is the gig economy.

Regardless, here’s an opportunity for Cork City Council. There are any number of derelict properties in the city which could be repurposed easily and swiftly to provide exactly this kind of all-night rest centre.

It would be a hugely valuable investment in the city’s greatest resource, the people who live here and keep it going. If only it could be delivered.