Dubai Food-delivery drivers launched a scare strike over the weekend, producing a mass walkout that crippled one of the emirate’s leading delivery apps and revived concerns about working conditions.
The strike mainly started late on Saturday and ended early on Monday, when one of the London-based Deliveroo said yes in a letter to riders in order to restore workers’ pay to $2.79 per delivery rather than of the proposed rate of $2.38 that had kindled the work stoppage as the company tried to cut costs following surging fuel prices.
The Amazon-backed company also backtracked on its plan to raise working shifts to 14 hours a day.
According to one of the delivery boys, “It is clear that some of our original plans have not been clear, and we are hearing to riders. “For right now, we paused all the changes and will be going to work for our agency riders just to ensure we have a structure that works for everyone and has our agency riders’ best interest at heart.”
Strikes are illegal in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a federation of seven sheikhdoms that bans unions and criminalizes dissent.
However, the Dubai government did not give an instant response to a request for comment on the strike.
Dubai delivery workers are the mainstay in the financial hub as demand boomed during the pandemic and have few protections.
In order to reduce cost, companies like Deliveroo outsource bikes, logistics and responsibility to contracting agencies. This labour pipeline persists all over the Gulf Arab states and can lead to mistreatment. Many impoverished refugees are plunged into debt, paying their contractors exorbitant visa fees to secure their jobs.
The value of British food delivery is more than $8 billion.
One of the food delivery companies, Deliveroo, declared during an initial period of last week as the cost of fuel skyrocketed amid fallout from the war in Ukraine and continuing supply chain chokeholds were overwhelming for 30-year-old driver Mohammadou Labarang.
Already, he was the one who was paying for the UAE’s record fuel prices out of his pocket and hardly scraping by, he said, with a wife and 7-month-old son back in Cameroon to support.
According to footage widely shared on social media, dozens of drivers parked their bikes by various Deliveroo warehouses in protest. Some shut down their apps. Some rested in their accommodations and were denied to do work. Others went to restaurants and requested fellow couriers to stop mid-shift.
According to Labarang, “We saw food getting cold in restaurant countries all around Dubai.”
