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“I make greater from janitorial work than I do from working as a meal courier rider,” notes Marina, a Brazilian woman who manages two jobs to support her adolescent daughters.

It’s a “bullshit, terrible job”, says Adam, from Sudan, who combines riding for a delivery platform with studying for a law degree. “On a good day I can earn £50 or £60, even though it’s really hard doing deliveries using a pushbike.”

“As humans we are invisible to the people we deliver to,” says Mohammed, a Syrian refugee who also works as a delivery rider. “People don’t consider our challenges and our dreams. I’ve heard people in this country talk about lower-tier citizens; delivery riders are actually third-class citizens.”

Marina, Adam and Mohammed are just a few of the countless food delivery riders in the UK, mainly working for the big three players. Most are migrants, according to the riders themselves.

The government has been cracking down on people working against the law in the food delivery industry, but those interviewed in London, Liverpool and Manchester say they are working legally in difficult, meagerly compensated conditions that many Britons would find unbearable.

“I have worked for every service over the past few years,” says Marina. “At different times one company has paid a bit more or a bit less than the others, but today in terms of earnings and job environment they’re all pretty much the same.”

Women Riders Encounter Further Risks

Men are the majority in this work but Marina is one of about 800 members of a UK WhatsApp group for lady riders from Brazil. Here they share advice on how to deal with risks such as exhaustion, poor earnings and incidents and wounds, as well as harassment from male customers.

“Sometimes men greet us to female riders without clothes or in their intimate apparel,” says Marina. “One man I delivered food to tried to force me into his house. Another hit me across the face in the street. Doing this job makes you feel that you are not a person, just a meal distribution mechanism.”

“Everyone presumes all riders are working without papers, which is not the case,” adds Rayan, from Pakistan. “We are susceptible to being targeted – I’ve been attacked twice by youths who were just doing it for amusement. We are overlooked and exposed at the same time.”

Digital Separation

None of the riders interviewed said they had ever met a manager from any of the platforms directly. All said their only contact was with the app, which presents them deliveries that are available and the fee they will be paid – sometimes only about £3.

“We are a very modern kind of slave,” says Mohammed. “The taskmaster is the app that sends us our orders.”

All the riders said that they hate delivery work, but have few alternatives if they want to earn money legally. Visa and residence conditions mean that many do not have the permission to do jobs defined as “expert” by the government.

When it’s really icy I have to warm up my legs with a hair dryer

Health Struggles

Warm days are the least profitable for delivery riders, as would-be customers are more likely to leave home and get their own food. Cycling along dimly illuminated streets, wet with rain and with limited visibility, increases the danger of accidents. But at least they will be making money.

Rayan, an English graduate who hopes of becoming a lecturer of English literature and writing novels, says the only way he can get by is by working for as many hours as he can bear without taking a break.

“Sometimes I am so freezing I want to go home and get warm. When it’s really cold I have to defrost my legs with a hair dryer. The chill of the wind and rain turns my skin white. The idea of going out on the road again after warming up is impossible to endure.”

Some days he works in multiple layers of socks, multiple layers of trousers and multiple coats.

“I still dream of becoming an English professor one day but things don’t always work out the way you want them to. I came here thinking I had a job lined up with a sponsor but I was misled. There was no sponsor, so I am doing deliveries, working extended days or for as long as I have the energy.”

Economic Burden

When he started to work as a delivery rider he used to take out books from the library to read while he was expecting orders to come through. “My preferred author is Dostoevsky, who I call the ‘wizard of writing’. I particularly love The Idiot, but I don’t read any more because I’m too fatigued. This work has just sapped everything out of me.”

Rayan says that riders on bikes can earn about £300 per week, while those on mopeds can earn about £450, but the second group have to pay coverage and fuel costs. “I don’t earn enough to maintain my wife and child, so I have had to secure a loan just to survive.”

The feeling among riders that they have been “removed” as humans from the operating system comes up repeatedly. They see themselves as simply a mechanism joining three dots – the delivery company, the outlets or eateries where they collect the orders, and the customers who receive the food.

“All we riders can concentrate on is money and how to persevere in order to earn enough to survive,” says Rayan.

Long-Term Workers

Bruno, from Brazil, characterizes himself as a “dinosaur” because he has been doing delivery work for six years.

“Many people can’t speak English, and this is a job they can do without requiring to speak the language,” he says. “I persist doing it because I have a son I need to deliver and retrieve from school, and I need work that has flexibility.”

A team of researchers at Birmingham University recently published research about the abuse of migrants doing delivery and domestic work.

Food delivery platforms have found a control that allows them to turn back the clock on workers’ rights

“The UK food delivery sector has become a ‘proving ground’ for a new model of migration governance,” the researcher says. This work is promoted as “versatile” and “empowering”, but in reality “it combines work computerization, electronic surveillance and residency enforcement.”

Working conditions have become harsher since March, he says, when migration checks increased as part of a campaign on illegal working.

“These changes have effectively embedded the unfriendly environment into platform work. This is a system where migrant workers are permitted only as long as they remain uncomplaining, flexible and unnoticed. It’s time for a policy reset that puts workers’ self-respect and entitlements at the centre.”

Legal Standing

While the highest court ruled in 2021 that certain delivery drivers were “staff” rather than self-employed, giving them to certain fundamental rights, the same court declared in 2023 that delivery riders are independent contractors due to a “stand-in option”, a legal provision allowing them to send someone else to work in their place.

Unions continue to campaign for more rights for this group of workers. There is a voluntary agreement with one major platform, for example, that is meant to ensure riders are paid at least the national minimum wage plus costs for the time they are on an order. However, if they are only sent one or two orders in an hour they are unlikely to earn the per hour national minimum wage.

“Food delivery platforms have found in the freelance market a dial that allows them to regress on workers’ rights,” says a union representative. “The result is a employees plagued with economic, health and emotional struggles. With such low pay, riders are forced to take risky risks on the road to cut delivery times. With no vacation compensation, they get no time to relax. And with no fixed pay they are kept in constant worry about whether or not they will be able to survive financially that week.”

Platform Reply

The delivery platforms reject this characterisation. “The great majority of riders tell us they are happy working with us,” a spokesperson for one platform says. “We are always looking at ways to raise the quality of freelance work. We were the first major delivery platform to endorse unionization and voluntarily partner with a union. Earlier this year we boosted riders’ base hourly earnings promise and have introduced many valuable protections, such as free insurance, sickness cover and economic support when riders become new parents.”

“The wellbeing and wellbeing of everyone who uses our platform is our primary focus,” says another platform, “and there are a number of {s