Guest Post: Malta’s Delivery App Couriers Are In Payment And Legal Limbo
Bolt & Wolt food couriers have been frequently in the news, and many employment agencies have been in long discussions with the Department of Industrial and Employment Relations (DIER) in order to find a way for third-country nationals, that form a large part of the courier delivery community, to be paid fairly for their work.
The Delivery and Courier networks are built upon the concept of the gig economy, allowing individual members to manage their own work. However, third-country nationals, as per local regulations, are not able to register as self-employed, hence the financial model upon which these systems are designed is inherently broken.
A recent strike by a number of Bolt couriers may have caused outrage in some households for the inability to get their food orders on time. However, couriers should be paid fairly and correctly for all their work.
In Maltese law, the only way that an employee can be recognised for their work is based on hours. In fact, LEGAL NOTICE 274 of 2018, which came into effect in January 2019, stipulated that a payslip, to be legal, needed to include a breakdown of the hours paid to said employee.
Furthermore, SUBSIDIARY LEGISLATION 452.87, which talks about working hours, stipulates that each employee should have a daily rest of at least 11 consecutive hours, as well as 24 consecutive hours of rest every 7 days. Where the average week shall also not exceed 48 hours.
These two legislations are at the very core of the challenge found when trying to apply gig-economy models to third-country nationals, or full-time employees for that matter.
These employees are being told, to work as much as they want, and they will be paid per delivery, a model which would be in line with what they are paid from the Delivery Apps, whereby they split the earnings between them.
This however purely shifts the risk element from the Agency, onto the employee. It is my belief, that it is the agency which has to understand and manage this risk, rather than passing it purely onto the employee.
Which Maltese employee would be happy to clock in for extremely long hours, with no guarantee of a minimum pay per hour? Especially if, you are contracted on minimum wage salaries, and potentially “overtime” to compensate for exceeding targets.
The Challenge for both the Agencies and DIER to ensure employees are paid fairly and correctly lies with how data is shared with the couriers and linked to the Payroll. In principle, employees that are idle, and waiting to be given work, that has clocked in for work, are to be paid.
If we break this principle, then the COVID-19 supplement would not have been required, as employees could have easily been told, that there is no work, and therefore no pay, or lower pay.
If one has to use the same standard, once a courier makes themselves available on Bolt and/or Wolt, technically they have clocked in for work.
The only caveat is if the agencies are able to clearly outline that the employee, has broken policies and made themselves available before they should have.
Like any other business, rounding of hours here might apply. Similarly, with overtime, one should be paid to complete any last delivery that they have started if any. Any further work beyond that should be pre-approved.
The only way to do this in an affordable way is by leveraging technology and API connections via the Delivery Apps, and the agency’s payroll solutions.
Without this, the overhead to monitor all of the above becomes essentially impossible. Hence why, we are ending up with employees claiming that they are earning below minimum wage for every hour worked, with rumours that the number goes below €3/hour.
In order to ensure fair pay for these couriers, who have become quite frankly a pillar in our local economy, we need to start by correctly measuring their work. Then understand how one can create a fair compensation plan, for the hours that each of them works.
This may entail, schedule creation by Delivery Apps or Agencies, disabling the apps based on hours the courier has been online, and maybe disallowing more couriers than absolutely necessary at any one point in time.
After all, those of us who order from Bolt and Wolt may want quicker delivery times. But little do we tend to care, that for delivery times to be extremely quick, the pie for each of the couriers is becoming smaller and smaller. The more couriers there are, the quicker we are served, and the less each of them is able to earn, particularly out of peak hours.
I’m keen to see how the Delivery Apps, agencies and the DIER can together find out an equitable solution without further penalising third-country nationals.
Jonathan Mifsud is Co-Founder & CTO at Buddy, an HR and Payroll Software. Buddy helps hundreds of employers pay thousands of employees accurately every month. They are also the most-integrated Payroll Software on the market, featuring integrations with Xero, Deputy and Workforce.com amongst others.
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What do you think should be done to address issues among food couriers?