Antonio, as we will call him, is 37 years old and has experienced many hard things. He left his country, in South America, in search of a better future. He worked in Peru as a bricklayer carrying 25 kilo bags of cement until he raised the money to travel to Spain in 2019 and request asylum. Graduated in marketing and sales professional, he collapsed almost to the point of fainting among bricks, before changing continents and leaving his family behind...
“None of that is comparable to working as a food deliveryman: this is the hardest thing in my life,” he says. We have contacted him thanks to the Federation of Workers' Commissions Services of Catalonia. Four years after his arrival in Spain, he makes deliveries on a Glovo motorcycle, but he started with a borrowed mechanical bicycle. When he was able to save some money he bought an electric bike that cost him 900 euros.
With assisted pedaling he doubled the 50 kilometers he traveled a day until then (“add to that the door-to-door delivery in properties without an elevator”). He could earn between 70 and 90 euros a day. Of course, with luck and if he had remained “bolted to the saddle for about ten hours.” He arrived at the room that he had rented “depressed, stressed, not wanting to do anything and with muscle pain that added to those of other days.”
Burgers, pizzas and chicken are the holy trinity of riders, closely followed by sushi, but our man has found himself with unusual orders. “Once they asked me to bring a hundred gram bag of peanuts. On another occasion, a simple chocolate bar. ‘Are there really people so busy that they can’t go down to the corner to buy treats like that?’ I asked myself.”
And then there are those who do make the purchase, "but they ask Glovo or other applications for the water bottles, the heaviest thing in the basket, so that they can carry them up to their floor if they don't have an elevator or if it is broken." The rain, the cold, the heat. The storms, the hail, the wind. “Paradoxically, when you start, those days are the best because of the bonuses and bonuses that allow you to earn in a few hours what you earn in the entire day, but…”
But not only do you end up exhausted, stressed, without desire for anything and with accumulated pain. “Also soaked to the bone.” The alternative is clear: either this or nothing. Many migrants in an irregular situation or applicants for international protection who in theory cannot work, like Antonio before obtaining asylum, are grasping at straws. That nail is the handlebar of a scooter, a bike or a motorcycle.
How can they work without papers? It is an open secret. It happened before and it continues to happen now. People in a regular situation open an account at Glovo and subcontract it or rent it to other newcomers, in exchange for 30% of the profits. It was the case of Antonio. “You have just landed in another country, you don't know the city and, wow, let's wander around. Blessed GPS! Imagine without it, and even more so for those who do not master the language.”
“Until I arrived in Barcelona, I thought that bikes were not governed by the highway code. Can you believe it? I had only been working for a few days when I ran a traffic light on Torrent de l'Olla street, in Gràcia. The Urban Police stopped me and fined me 200 euros. They asked me for my papers and saw that the photo on my asylum application and my passport did not match the photo on my Glovo card, which belonged to someone else.”
Situations like this occur every day, although the agents look the other way: “What are they going to do? Sanction us twice? Expel us? Because? We don't commit crimes! We leave our health doing what few Spaniards do," says Antonio, who has met untrained colleagues at Glovo, but also liberal and university professionals ("even a prosecutor from Caracas!"), "all united by necessity. ”.
“The easiest and quickest thing for an undocumented person is to go to ghost accounts, although it is a very risky activity: if you have an accident, you don't have any type of network. And so we learn, by dint of falls. You don't know anything about your new city, but you quickly discover that, no matter how needy you are, it's better not to go to certain places at certain times: it hasn't happened to me, but many delivery drivers have been robbed."
Phantom accounts are not the only problem at Glovo, where false self-employed workers continue to be a clamor, despite the so-called rider law, approved in 2021 to try to “guarantee the labor rights of people dedicated to delivery in the field of digital platforms”. Glovo is not the only company that looks for subterfuges to delay the application of the law or fail to comply with it, but it is the most renowned.
A sample like the one we will explain below has no scientific value, but it can be significant. The reporter has asked 20 Glovo delivery drivers stationed in the vicinity of three McDonald's, two in Barcelona and one in Sant Adrià de Besòs. Twelve refused to respond. Of the eight who did, six admitted that they were falsely self-employed and the other two gave an ambiguous answer.
The Supreme Court has established jurisprudence, with numerous rulings that establish the employment relationship between Glovo and its delivery drivers. Not all companies act the same. Just Eat, for example, got ahead of the law and created its own network of contracted delivery drivers, which is why it considers that those who do not act the same incur unfair competition, saving on contributions and other labor regulations and protections.
According to CC.OO. and UGT, only a minimal part of Glovo's staff is hired. And hiring is not a trivial matter, says a staff worker who is in charge of delivering products from Glovo supermarkets (“the online supermarket open 24 hours a day and where you will receive anything you order within 30 minutes.” , says the advertisement). This source, who requests anonymity, speaks of “absorbing days, non-stop.”
Antonio, our delivery man, begins to see the light at the end of the tunnel. He has achieved family reunification and brought his wife, his six-year-old son and his mother to Catalonia. “My wife works and we are not in such a hurry anymore. That took away some of my anxiety. Before she said yes to everything, even when it was raining or the weather was very bad. Glovo only deactivates the application in very extreme cases, such as in the worst of the DANA in Madrid.”
He is 37 years old and has experienced very hard things, but he would like to change. She sees herself in this job for one or two more years, “until we pay off all our debts and manage to stabilize our economic situation.” His dream is to get a job related to marketing or sales. She wants her son to see a father when he comes home at night, and not someone “depressed, stressed and not wanting anything.”
