Just Eat cuts 373 Swiss courier jobs as Unia calls the model illegal

What Just Eat announced

Just Eat has completed the statutory consultation procedure and will cut 373 of roughly 700 courier positions in Switzerland, the company said on Monday, 9 November. The reductions hit 193 couriers it employs directly and 180 staff supplied by external staffing agencies, across Zurich, Winterthur, Bern, Biel, Fribourg and St. Gallen. The company says its shift model is no longer competitive with rivals and that it wants a more flexible delivery model to respond to swings in demand. Talks on a social plan are still under way. The reorganisation was first explained on 22 October, when the company pointed to changing customer habits, with orders spreading across the day and into the night.

Strike in Zurich and the Glatt Valley

Couriers at the Zurich and Glatt Valley sites walked out on Sunday, 8 November, from 11:00 to 22:00, on the busiest day of the week for orders. Syndicom said more than half of the lunchtime and evening shifts were cancelled, and staff at other delivery sites had signalled they were willing to join. The couriers decided on Thursday, 5 November, after an October protest had changed nothing, and the workforce says around 500 couriers face redundancy, higher than the company's 373. Demonstrators also gathered outside a McDonald's on Stauffacher in Zurich, one of Just Eat's largest partners. A Syndicom spokesperson explained the walkout in one line:

“We are striking because we want to negotiate.”

Directly employed couriers193

External agency staff180

Directly employed couriers

193 people

External agency staff

180 people

Data from the article text

The strikers want the cuts halted, permanent contracts kept and the consultation extended to 30 November.

Unions and the employment model

Unia and Syndicom say Just Eat left them out of the consultation. Unia calls the planned model an illegal business built on pseudo self-employed couriers and systematic undeclared work, and it wants the authorities to step in. Florian Kobler, an SP cantonal councillor who heads the Unia section for eastern Switzerland and Graubünden, has filed a motion in the St. Gallen cantonal parliament asking what sanctions authorities have when pseudo self-employment is suspected. The government's answers are still pending. At a demonstration in St. Gallen, where more than a dozen couriers held a banner reading 'Just Fired', he said:

“The work is supposed to carry on as before, but the security is gone.”

Company response and couriers' accounts

Just Eat has not answered union requests, and Syndicom said no one from the company had contacted it. Lukas Streich, the company's Switzerland chief, told Tages-Anzeiger that self-employed riders would be free to decide whether to accept a job at the offered price. Just Eat justifies the change by altered ordering patterns and heavy competition in the sector, saying the new model allows more flexibility in planning. A 26-year-old courier who studies philosophy and works about ten hours a week in the Glatt Valley said he earns roughly 1,000 to 1,050 francs a month and depends on it for rent and health insurance. He said he had previously delivered for Uber, where he had ten seconds to accept or decline a job, so he doubts the promised freedom.

What comes next

The consultation has closed, but social plan talks continue, so the final number of dismissals is still open. Unia will weigh further measures together with the couriers and approach the authorities. It is not yet clear whether the strike will spread to other sites in the coming days. Couriers in western Switzerland remain on permanent contracts because of a court ruling, while self-employed couriers are to be deployed in Zurich, Bern, Basel and Winterthur.