Radical Riders Newsletter March!

Where to start, where to start! So much going on at the mean time. This newsletter intends to give you an overview of issues and developments.

Groningen leads the way in rider organizing momentarily. They’ve formed a branch at a meeting with 20 people and got cracking right away. Currently they are campaigning to educate riders on their rights regarding sick pay. A lot of riders are being cheated regarding sickness and pay during that. They’ll push for the companies to respect this basic right. There’s also now an explainer online on your basic rights and duties when sick.

Our solidaritycampaign with Mustapha, who is in bad financial trouble after a workaccident, has thus far generated €750. This takes a bit of the most acute pressure of his chest, thank you all so much. We still need Gorillas to acknowledge their responsibility though. Read more about Mustapha here. Unfortunately, we’ve heard even more stories of riders crashing and getting into trouble, including a member of ours. So we continue to push for a professional protocol to cover financial losses to riders when crashing!

We’ve had a meeting with the Gorillas NL top management. It was a very thorough talk, and we decided to continue the conversation on a monthly basis. We manage to raise a wide range of issues that we’ve collected from our members and colleagues. We will publish a Gorillas’ grievances article where we outline what we think is currently wrong at Gorillas, which you’ll find in due time here.

The riders in Turkey have asked us to show our solidarity with their protests. We ask you to draw a protest sign supporting the protests and make a photo of yourselves with it. Please join in, it’s a small effort but it will be greatly appreciated. Please see the article on the Turkish protests here. We will also try to organize a physical solidarity action.

Further on the website:
“Small” conflicts, quick wins with a big impact. How the ‘small’ wins that are happening all around can be used by us all to change the way colleagues think about rights, action and organizing. We’re all ambassadors of the union.
March 2022, the dual shock. Dealing with massive personnel changes & the credit crunch. The industry is changing rapidly and a lot of people are transition out / in of riding at the moment. How do we deal with that? How do we future proof our solidarity for job-changes?