Zapp riders, now is the time for action

Demo at Haarlemmerweg 331
this Friday 16:00

Working for Zapp hasn’t been fun, or even ok, for a while now. Since November our working conditions have been steadily ground down.

They have cut surge bonuses. They’ve added an extra unpaid half hour to our shifts. They’ve been doing security searches on riders, treating us like criminals. Many of us have problems with contracts and back pay, that Zapp has failed to address properly or at all. They took away our store discount, which is in our contract, and have failed to set up a system to replace it. All of these things have wreaked havoc on our motivation, but we’ve kept going. We kept riding. When Zapp decided we could do without a lead rider to look after our bikes and check the orders, we made do with the manpower we had. We sat down with management for a polite meeting. This was not pointless: they have made some concessions, but mainly on things that don’t really cost them anything. But their overall response to the problems the riders face, is that there are ‘communication issues’. This is what’s really going on:

Zapp is haemorrhaging money, and they’re using our pay to plug the holes.

Since this nice, cordial meeting, three more dark stores have closed. It’s been chaos. Riders from the closed down hubs were not consulted or even informed beforehand; some of us showed up for work to find it was no longer there. It has been completely down to us to make sure we can work our hours somewhere else, and not everyone managed to get reassigned to a different hub.

Meanwhile, the areas covered by each of the surviving hubs have extended massively. Riders who used to do four to six deliveries in an hour are now averaging two, because they have to go all the way across town. We get a €1 drop bonus for each completed order, so the result for everyone is less money at the end of the month. And after all this, what does Zapp do?

As of July, Zapp is cutting the €1 drop bonus.

This is it for us. We are taking back what’s ours.

The drop bonus is part of our pay. If they can just cut our pay like this, there is no telling what they’ll do next. We should not accept this. We will not accept this.

We need to come together now and show this company that they can’t mess with our rights. If they continue down this path, they’ll have to do it without riders. We may feel powerless at times: when HR doesn’t respond to our complaints, when we have to ride on a compromised bike because there’s no one there to fix it, when our shift is starting but we don’t know where we’re even supposed to go. That’s how they want us to feel. Small, isolated, insignificant. Powerless.

But when we stand together, we have power. Together, we can take back what is ours. We can demand the fair compensation our work deserves, and the kind of conditions that allow us to do that work safely and proudly.

Now is the time to take action. We are kicking off a campaign that will show Zapp they can’t mess with us.

Addition: after the ‘zoom meeting’ charade

Sjerp and I met this afternoon to discuss the blatant and callous attitude from Zapp when it comes to effectively communicating with us over our grievances. I’m sure you can all agree that for the last ten days we’ve been taken as fools and our most simple and basic demands for proper and cordial negotiations have been played with. It is for that reason that we came to the consensus that the only way for Zapp to finally listen to us is direct action through the form of a protest.

I doubt that this comes as a shock to any of you, and I’m confident that together as a solidarity movement we can pull this off with success. I will be posting the timeline and program of the protest as well as calling each of you individually to count on your attendance and discuss any feedback that you may have in regards to performing this action effectively.

(updated for the new actionplan)
We will protest outside the Zapp HQ at Haarlemmerweg 331. We will stand outside in a legal and non-disruptive manner and try engage with the local press and air our grievances. We’ll bring a blue cake for Zapp’s bosses to remind them who this company is build on. As for protest material including banners and stickers, we will be able to provide them. All I ask is that you bring your Zapp uniforms, I want to see a sea of nice Zapp blue!

We’ve had enough and now is the time to speak! We’ve consistently reached out to Zapp for communication and have instead been made to wait, well guess what? No more waiting! STOP MET ONS GELD SPELEN

See also: Zapp: word from our lawyer