‘A courier is not a sheep.’ Drivers at Finnish food delivery company Wolt are protesting over pay cuts | iRADIO
“Our wages are being reduced by thirty percent. After paying, we can slowly not even be able to afford gas for the cars we use to deliver the food,” describes one of the couriers, who is not satisfied with the changes in the pricing of orders. Strikes took place not only in Prague, but also in Brno and Copenhagen. According to Wolt spokesperson Jana Jarošová, the situation is distorted. “Of course, we are ready to help and continue to communicate with all couriers,” she told the iROZHLAS.cz server.
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Protest by couriers of the Finnish company WOLT | Photo: Anna Košlerová | Source: Czech Radio
“We used to earn 300 kroner an hour, now it’s 200 kroner or less,” describes Ali, one of the roughly hundreds of delivery couriers from a Finnish delivery company who gathered on Wenceslas Square on Wednesday to oppose the pay cut.
Wolt was founded in 2014. Now its services are available in 250 cities and 23 countries around the world. It has been operating on the Czech market since 2018. More than two thousand operations are connected to the WOLT network.
“Our wages are being reduced by thirty percent. After paying, we can slowly not even be able to afford gas for the cars we use to deliver the food,” says Ali.
He has lived in the Czech Republic for two years, does not speak Czech, and working for Wolt is his only source of income.
He did not know in advance that his rewards would be reduced. “Wolt wrote to us that they were going to make some changes, but they didn’t say what. I certainly didn’t think that we would get away with it at a time of record inflation,” says Ali angrily.
He started working for WOLT because he was attracted by freedom. “If something doesn’t change, I’ll have to change jobs,“ Ali now points out.
The courier Navi, who comes from India, also came to Wenceslas Square. He used to work in IT, but like Ali, he was attracted by the freedom of working at Wolt.
He strongly doubts whether he will stick with the food distribution. “You know, Wolt stands on couriers. Without them, the service would not exist. We create it, not them,” says Navi.
On Monday, the Wolt company sent couriers a form where they can comment on new changes in the food delivery system.
However, both men contacted by the iROZHLAS.cz server are not satisfied with the communications from the company. “They didn’t tell us much about it, they should react or they will lose the couriers,” says Ali.
Wolt spokesperson Jana Jarošová states that the new model does not reduce couriers’ remuneration. “The situation was distorted,” she wrote to the server iROZHLAS.cz.
“Of course, we are ready to help and continue to communicate with all the couriers, of which there are approximately seven in the Czech Republic, as well as with the thousand who are protesting,” she pointed out.
According to the company, the new compensation model should better reflect the effort expended to deliver orders. “Couriers are thus accurately evaluated according to the real distance and the difficulty of the order. They see the reward ahead of time, so they can decide whether to accept the order,” Wolt representatives wrote in a press release.
According to them, based on data from the system, earnings without tips will be on average between 250 and 300 crowns per hour in Prague and Brno, and the company wants to target similar things in the regions as well.
Courier strikes took place both in Prague and in other cities such as Brno or the Danish capital Copenhagen.
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