A Foodora courier is pictured as they pick up an order for delivery from a restaurant in Toronto on Feb. 27, 2020. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said Tuesday that 88.8 per cent of Foodora couriers and drivers in Toronto and Mississauga voted to unionize under its banner.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
The Ontario Labour Relations Board revealed Tuesday that couriers and drivers who delivered food through the Foodora app in Toronto and Mississauga voted to unionize last year, though that disclosure comes a month after the company pulled out of Canada.
The union certification vote took place in August, 2019, and the OLRB finally unsealed the results four months after a historic board decision in February granted Foodora’s “contractor gig delivery workers” the right to unionize. “In a very real sense, the couriers work for Foodora, and not themselves,” Matthew Wilson, the OLRB’s alternate chair, wrote in that decision, which argued the workers were not independent contractors, but “dependent” ones – very much like employees.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said Tuesday that 88.8 per cent of Foodora couriers and drivers in the two cities voted to unionize under its banner, and that the results show the “status quo” for gig workers isn’t good enough. The Foodora couriers and drivers sought better pay, benefits and physical protection amid often harsh weather and working conditions.
“We were the first app-based employees to chase down legal proof of what we knew,” Thomas McKechnie, one of the organizers of the couriers, said in an interview. “We were workers. We deserve respect.”
But in late April, the subsidiary of German company Delivery Hero SE said it would exit Canada in May, claiming that competition here made it difficult to earn a profit. The decision prompted speculation among couriers and industry observers that the departure was related to the unionization efforts.
“I suspect that Foodora made the decision because it feels that having a unionized work force doesn’t fit with its model,” said Sylvain Charlebois, who studies delivery services at the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, in late April.
Although the drivers and couriers no longer deliver for Foodora, they consider the vote to be historic. “There is a hunger among workers to have a voice and be able to change their working conditions,” Mr. McKechnie said.
Gig workers around the world have fought for better pay, benefits and protection as the companies they work for – not just delivery apps, but also ride-share companies such as Uber Technologies Inc. – have become multinational tech giants.
“These gig economy jobs, these ‘independent contractor’ jobs, are hyperexploitative positions and are on their way out,” Mr. McKechnie said. “People want something better, and our campaign has proved that we can get something better.”
Foodora did not respond to a request for comment.
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