Delivery Company Offers Workers Rights – But Only With a Pay Cut

A delivery company is presenting workers with a “false choice” by offering them their full legal rights only if they take a pay cut, a trade union has said.

On 30 October, 65 eCourier drivers overwhelmingly voted for strike action, over demands for the company to recognise them as workers, not as independent contractors, as well concerns over pay and conditions. The industrial action is the latest flare-up at eCourier – a same-day delivery company owned by Royal Mail – in a long-running dispute about misclassification.

After the strike ballot opened on 8 October, the company began calling couriers to its headquarters for mandatory one-to-one meetings with CEO Malcolm Fullick, where they were offered worker status in exchange for a 15% pay-cut.

Drivers, the majority of whom are migrants and do not have English as their first language, report being told that they would only be shown a full copy of the contract after they’ve signed it, that they could not take photos of their contracts, and could not remove copies of the contract from the room. Some workers report being told to leave their phones outside of the room, and others report being asked to sign the contract on the spot.

An eCourier spokesperson denied any suggestion of coercion, saying the claims are “false and misconstrued”.

“These are private meetings between individuals and the company, reminding them of the options to be worker-status or independent contractors,” they said.

One contract, seen by Novara Media, said: “In the event that you do not wish to change your contractual arrangements, then you may continue with your current Independent Contractor terms.”

The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) say that the company is presenting workers with a “false choice” by making them choose between rights and pay. The union says that it is not up to the CEO to determine worker status, but that it was dictated by the realities of the employment relationship.

Under the current pay scheme, most medical couriers driving mopeds are paid £16 an hour before costs. If they accept the new worker status contract, their pay will be cut to £13.45 or £13.26 an hour. However, the new contract has not been offered to the whole workforce, many of whom are paid job by job, and often make below minimum wage after costs.

Ane Lima, a 44-year-old Brazilian delivery driver, said that eCourier was “making us pay for our legal right by taking a pay cut.” Most workers have rejected the contract offer, Novara Media understands.

The IWGB argues that eCourier is engaging in “box ticking,” by offering couriers contracts on terms that they can’t accept, so that the company can tell clients that it is the union and not the workers demanding worker status.

Lima said that eCourier would use couriers rejecting the offer “as an excuse to say that eCourier workers don’t want worker status, but that is not true.”

Alex Marshall, president of the IWGB, said: “eCourier CEO Malcolm Fullick clearly thinks he is above the law, and it is at his discretion to select which members of his workforce are granted their legal right to holiday pay and which are denied this, despite these workers being fully integrated into the company and sharing the exact same terms of engagement.

“Instead of realising that it’s time to abide by the law and give his workers the rights he has denied them for so long, he has chosen to pull workers into individual meetings and give them the false choice between rights or pay cuts.

“This approach, which flagrantly disregards employment law, can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate the already mistreated workforce and deter them from taking strike action, sadly an all-too-common tactic in an industry where rogue employers often go unchallenged.”

An eCourier spokesperson said: “eCourier offers new couriers the choice of being engaged either as workers (with entitlement to rights such as holiday pay and pension contributions) or as self-employed independent contractors. Most couriers have preferred to engage via the self-employed independent contractor arrangement. Drivers are given time to make a decision with all of the relevant information to ensure they make an informed choice.”

“We haven’t had any complaints or claims from individual drivers that support their position or the allegations made. If any of our drivers do have a concern about how they are engaged, or indeed any other issue, then this should be raised directly with the company so that it can be appropriately addressed.”

This is not the first time eCourier has been at the centre of a controversy over the classification of its workers.

In 2017, eCourier admitted that it had wrongly misclassified driver Demille Flanore as an independent contractor, thereby incorrectly denying him the right to national minimum wage and holiday pay. The then CEO Ian Oliver promised to conduct an immediate review into the worker status of the hundreds of other delivery riders engaged by the firm on the same terms as Flanore.

However, no review was conducted. In 2019 eCourier drivers launched an employment tribunal over their misclassification, but five years on, the tribunal has yet to schedule a preliminary hearing date.