Previous episodes of this podcast have covered the worker-led campaigns to establish works councils or Betriebsrats at Gorillas, Getir, Flink, and Lieferando. For the "rider" activists, the Betriebsverfassungsgesetz was a device that could stabilise their lives. With the establishment of a Betriebsrat (works council), they hoped to get paid for their activism and for helping other workers and also be protected against retaliatory firings.    This episode contrasts that pursuit of stability with the notion of "flexibility" which, platform companies have argued, is beneficial for platform workers. The companies argue that they provide workers with the ability to work where they want and how they want. Indeed, for migrants into Germany, like Lieferando courier Mohammed Arif Khan, delivery work for platforms like Liferando is a convenient point of entry into the German job market.    On the other, what is being seen by the platform companies as flexibility has been seen by platform workers as a lack of predictability. When platform companies talk about flexibility, they highlight a worker’s control over working time but not how reducing labour costs during periods of low demand has been a route to profitability. In spite of him holding a "permanent" job contract, Lieferando terminated Mohammed Arif Khan's employment.    As we dive into the experience of worker complaints about shift planning, we also learn that perhaps working time is not actually flexible. To what extent for example, is the fact that one is a parent with childcare responsibilities, considered by a global algorithm in determining how working time is distributed among workers?   Rob and Mo campaigned in 2022 to establish Betriebsrats at Flink and Lieferando respectively but achieved different results. Flink continues to resist the establishment of a Works Council through quite "extraordinary" interpretations of the German labour law on employment protection for workers who participate in the process of establishing a Works Council. Mo and his colleagues, on the other hand, quite successfully established a Works Council through elections. This body was able to help Mohammed Arif Khan retain his employment at Lieferando and open negotiations with the company about the knotty issues of shift planning.

At 11 am on April 25, 2023, Duygu Kaya's appeal against a decision of Berlin’s labour court was to be heard by the Appellate Labour Court for Berlin and Brandenburg. An hour before that, outside the court building, Duygu addressed a group that included some from the media, some representatives of German unions, and several current and former platform delivery workers. Duygu, along with Fernando and Ronnie, had been colleagues at Gorillas when they were fired less than a week after the strikes at the company in Berlin during the first week of October 2021. Their legal challenge had now arrived before an appellate court.   Her address made it clear that this was not simply a matter of three workers who felt that they had been fired unjustly. The strikes at Gorillas were termed variously as wild strikes or wildcat strikes because they were conducted outside the framework of organising that is favoured in Germany’s system of industrial relations. Simply put, the strikes at Gorillas in early October of 2021 did not have the blessings of one of Germany’s mainstream unions. By asking why they were fired therefore, this litigation provoked an examination of those limits on the right to strike. Duygu wanted her individual case challenging her termination from Gorillas to have an impact on the freedom of German workers to strike. This litigation also asked us to consider whether those limits were appropriate at a workplace such as Gorillas, which was different from the types of work for which those limits had been developed.   In this episode, we peel back the layers of this litigation. The workers in these platform delivery companies are part of the 46% of employees in Germany who are not covered by collective bargaining agreements. We hear from Duygu about her campaign for a strike right that is unconnected with mainstream unions and collective bargaining processes. Diego Danemiller Batres remembers his discussions with some mainstream unions as part of the Gorillas Workers Collective. The constraints within which such workers’ collectives have organised are legal and institutional on the one hand, but also social. We learn more about work processes and labour control in platform work, from the scholarship of Tatiana Lopez and Sarrah Kassem.

Workers are represented in Germany by trade unions and by their elected representatives in works councils. The works council (or "Betriebsrat" in German) is a key institution under German labour law, of which mitbestimmung or co-determination at the level of the workplace, is a defining principle. In the Delivery Charge podcast, host Aju John explores how platform delivery workers are organising for fairer conditions of work in India where he is from, and in Germany, where he lives. In the first two episodes of this podcast, we learnt about delivery workers organising in Berlin at the platform delivery companies Gorillas, Flink, and Lieferando. One notable aspect of their organising activity were the sometimes parallel campaigns to establish Betriebsrats at these companies. After a campaign that lasted several months, and despite the legal hurdles placed in their way, the Gorillas Workers Collective conducted Berlin-wide elections in November 2021, at which some among them were elected to the Betriebsrat (or Works Council).  For some of the worker activists that we met on those episodes, Germany’s Works Constitution law or the Betriebsverfassungsgesetz, which is the law that provides for the establishment of works councils at workplaces, was an article of faith. For these workers, it promised the difficult process of organising workers, a measure of stability. Its provisions could protect some worker activists against retaliatory firings and also extend them financial resources. For them, the exercise of the space provided by the law in order to meet and make plans, was itself a form of worker resistance. But Ronnie's experience of this law as he worked at Getir, perhaps the world's largest quick commerce firm, was almost the polar opposite. Ronnie, an engineer from Kerala in India, moved to Berlin in 2019 for better economic opportunities. He was fired from Gorillas in 2021 and from Getir in 2022. In between these firings, he experienced Getir's attempt to install a works council at the company, and had to organise his colleagues to oppose it. The story of this eye-opening attempt to quell the spirit of the Betriebsverfassungsgesetz was also one about how a recent migrant from India learnt to fight a company valued at 20 billion dollars.   Also in this episode, our closer look at some parts of the law that governs labour relations at these companies, leads us to an examination of the position of such bodies as the Gorillas Workers Collective, in the context of a dual system of worker representation that recognises only trade unions and works councils. We look for answers in the campaign for a Betriebsrat at Flink and the contest at Lieferando's Betriebsrat elections between the Lieferando Workers Collective and a list put forward by the trade union NGG. Apart from Ronnie, you can also listen to Rob from the Flink Workers Collective, Mo from the Lieferando Workers Collective, Dr. Eva Kocher, a professor of law at Centre for Interdisciplinary Labour Law Studies at the European University in Frankfurt (Oder), and Dr. Oğuz Alyanak, a postdoctoral researcher with the Fairwork project.

Generally, the enforcement of legal labour standards such as the maximum limits on working time, the minimum limits on wages, and the minimum health and safety conditions at the workplace, is the job of the state. Systems of labour inspection and labour courts in their turn however, rely on the vigilance and courage of workers.   In the Delivery Charge podcast, host Aju John explores how platform delivery workers are organising for fairer conditions of work in India where he is from, and in Germany, where he lives. In the first episode, we learnt about Gorillas, a startup company that promised to deliver groceries quicker that it would take someone to visit the supermarket for the same purchases. It became the fastest European company to become a unicorn, but was accused of doing so at the cost of disrespecting German labour law and the rights of its workers, most of whom were recent migrants to Berlin. Some of them, dissatisfied with their conditions of work, organised themselves into the Gorillas Workers Collective. After a campaign that lasted several months, and despite the legal hurdles placed in their way, this group conducted Berlin-wide elections in November 2021, at which some among them were elected to the Betriebsrat (or Works Council).   The story did not end with the election of a Gorillas Betriebsrat for Berlin. The company restructured and separated its German subsidiary into multiple entities. In response, the members of the Betriebsrat that was elected in November 2021 decided that in the company’s new segmented structure, it was important to establish works councils at the level of individual warehouses. A year after the first election, workers in the warehouses at the Friedenau and Treptow districts of Berlin elected their respective works councils. Among those elected from Friedenau were Maria Coelho and Jose Silva. Listen to their stories on this episode.   In between the Gorillas elections of November 2021 and December 2021, Betriebsrat elections also took place at Flink and Lieferando. The former, like Gorillas, is an "instant delivery" business that operates through a network of warehouses in city neighbourhoods. The latter delivers cooked food from restaurants and so-called dark kitchens. Both these companies have also been accused of pursuing extraordinary growth even as they are unable to meet basic labour standards. On this episode of the Delivery Charge podcast, you can also listen to Rob and Mo, who were pivotal in the campaigns to establish the Betriebsrats at these companies. In doing so, we will learn a bit more about the institution of the Betriebsrat in German labour law, with some help from Dr. Eva Kocher, a professor of law at Centre for Interdisciplinary Labour Law Studies at the European University in Frankfurt (Oder).

The works council (also known as the Betriebsrat) is a key institution under German labour law and illustrates the aspect of mitbestimmung or co-determination at the level of the workplace. Broadly speaking, workers, through this body directly elected by and composed of those working in the company, have rights to participate in the management of the companies they work for.  In the Delivery Charge podcast, host Aju John explores how platform delivery workers are organising for fairer conditions of work in India where he is from, and in Germany, where he lives. In 2021, the delivery workers of Gorillas, many of whom were recent migrants to Germany, navigated several intimidating procedures, to campaign for, conduct elections to, and establish a betriebsrat for the company in Berlin. This episode contains the story of the Gorillas Workers Collective. Gorillas was established in Berlin in May 2020, not long after the city had imposed its pandemic containment measures. The company’s services rapidly spread to several other cities in Europe and attracted large amounts of capital investment. In the process, it became the fastest European company to become a unicorn. The company’s key attraction was its promise to deliver groceries quicker that it would take someone to visit the supermarket for the same purchases. The company’s growth at breakneck speed and its aggressive strategies to acquire customers during the pandemic, may have come at a great cost to its workers.  Some riders and warehouse workers began their resistance through stoppages at some warehouses in the city during a snowstorm in February, 2021 that was supported by a campaign on social media under the name Gorillas Workers Collective. This perhaps set in motion a cycle of retaliatory firings and wildcat strikes. In April of 2021, the Gorillas Workers Collective began the legal process to establish a betriebsrat for Berlin. By the time the elections were concluded and a betriebsrat established in November, the company had altered it operational structure and there were doubts about whether the betriebsrat could discharge its duties in these changed circumstances.  Listen to experiences of organising of Ahmad Hadeda, Avik Majumder, Jakob Pomeranzev, and Camilo Alvarez, who were all part of the Gorillas Workers Collective in 2021, and Maria Coelho, who was elected to the Betriebsrat for the Friedenau warehouse in 2022.

Does the experience of platform delivery workers mobilising to establish works councils at their companies in Germany give us a new way of looking at how unions are working among the platform delivery workers in India? Does the role of strikes and work stoppages by delivery workers in India give us a new way of looking at how delivery workers are organising in Germany? Apart from featuring interviews with delivery worker activists and trade union activists in India and in Germany, and the stories of their activism during the Covid years of 2020, 2021 and 2022, the Delivery Charge podcast explores themes such as the role of the works council under Germany's labour law, resistance to algorithmic management, the impact of the pandemic on delivery work, and forms of control in location-based platform work. You can listen to Eva Kocher, Uma Rani, Balaji Parthasarathy, Noopur Raval, Sarrah Kassem, Antonio Aloisi, Tatiana Lopez, Oguz Alyanak, Denis Neumann and other scholars of platform work and labour relations in the platform economy. The Delivery Charge podcast is supported by the M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’ (ICAS:MP), which is an Indo-German research collaboration funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). It is hosted by Aju John, a lawyer and organiser and the founder of Nagrik Open Civic Learning. It will be available on all podcast platforms, including Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts. Just search for Delivery Charge on any of these apps and you should find this podcast feed. Subscribe to the feed so that you are notified when the first episode releases.