• Workers for Just Eat subcontractor Stuart Delivery have been threatened with severe pay cuts as their UK-wide battle for their rights continues.
• Takeaway delivery giant Just Eat was started by Welsh tax-slash enthusiast David Buttress in 2006 and handed over to billionaire Dutch CEO Jitse Groen in 2017.
• Courier subcontractors Stuart belong to parent company DPD, a firm lambasted for fining drivers attending hospital appointments.
By Mark Redfern
Details are emerging of pay cuts to subcontracted Just Eat couriers around Cardiff and other UK cities, but who are the magnates making millions off the backs of the drivers, riders and cyclists that criss-cross the city delivering food?
Workers for Stuart Delivery, a French firm which is contracted by Just Eat UK to carry out deliveries in a number of cities, including Cardiff and Swansea, have been on almost continuous strike since December 2021 in their fight against a 24% cut in baseline pay.
Just Eat UK, the multinational middleman megacorp that boasts Snoop Dogg as a spokesperson, makes their money as the go-between for restaurants and gig-economy couriers and was started back in 2000 in Denmark and launched a year later.
David Buttress won the 2015 prize for Welsh entrepreneur of the year for monopolising the takeaway delivery business with the UK branch of Just Eat in 2006 – and made a fortune doing it. The initial public offering when the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange was an astounding £1.5 billion.
The ex-Coca Cola executive told Forbes that he met one of the Danish founders and set about establishing Just Eat UK after he “fell in love with the business model.”
In May 2020 Buttress used the opportunity of being interviewed by Price to set out his vision for a Wales that could potentially lower corporation taxes.
“If we unhinged the limitations of being attached to Westminster I think you’d see Wales, within ten to twenty years, become a world leader in one or two areas if we differentiated in key economic policies… around corporation tax to attract world class companies” said Buttress.
In 2017 he cashed out £5 million of shares in Just Eat and retired at the young age of 40, but still holds a large chunk of shares in the business. Since then he’s continued to make money from the labour of Egyptian couriers and the UK firm has been led by billionaire Dutch CEO Jitse Groen.
Groen has attempted to prune a reputation of being an ethical businessman, in touch with the worries of workers. One short-lived twitter spat between Groen and Uber head honcho Dara Khosrowshahi involved the Just Eat CEO taking the high-ground and chastising Uber for their notorious gig economy practices.
After being given business tips from the Uber CEO, Groen tweeted: “Thank you for the advice, and then if I may .. Start paying taxes, minimum wage and social security premiums before giving a founder advice on how he should run his business.”
Groen has also said in another discussion on Twitter about workers rights: “Flexibility is a false argument given by large gig companies to avoid paying minimum wage, taxes and social security.”
These statements are strange reading for employees of Stuart, the delivery company subcontracted by Just Eat, during their struggle to achieve just basic rights of employment and against a 24% cut in pay.
Their union, the IWGB, says that the strike “has been going from strength to strength” after workers already forced bosses to pay £10 an hour for waiting times. They are still fighting against the cut in pay per delivery, however.
A campaign by the IWGB union pushed the proposals back but the company imposed the cut in early December, prompting what is believed to be the longest running gig economy strike in British history.
Whilst Stuart Delivery does operate on behalf of Just Eat in Cardiff, workers in the Welsh capital are not involved in the strike due to the union not having a significant presence there. However, these couriers will still be impacted by the pay cut, and will benefit from any gains made.
Groen, meanwhile, sits on a wealth valued at £1.1 billion.
Stuart Delivery was founded in 2015 by current-CEO Damien Bon in France, kicking off the start-up with £19 million investment from courier giant DPD which would later become its parent company in 2017.
DPD has had its own share of workers rights abuses on its way to its skyrocketing profits, which in 2020 reached an obscene £248 million.
However DPD couriers have faced horrific hardships on the roads. Courier Don Lane died at 53-years-old after the firm fined him £150 for attending a hospital appointment to control his diabetes, even after he had collapsed on the job several times.
DPD also pursued one courier through the courts for a fine that was refused in protest, causing the driver to struggle to get a mortgage. Stuart’s parent company sought to counteract the tragedy by scrapping missed work fines and upping driver pay but the fight continues for Don’s bereaved wife.
Alistair Mclearly has joined Don’s widow in a legal fight against DPD’s workplace abuses after he also suffered alleged abuse, developing severe PTSD from witnessing a bin lorry running over pedestrians in Glasgow city centre.
