Platform companies Uber Eats and Deliveroo provide undocumented meal deliverers with work in the Netherlands on a large scale. The bicycle couriers from countries such as Albania, Bangladesh and Brazil easily circumvent the digital controls of the platforms by paying legal, registered deliverers to work under their name. In addition, the deliverers make improper use of student visas.
This is apparent from research into the working conditions of independent meal deliverers in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Nijmegen. NRC spoke to regulators, academics and about sixty meal deliverers in recent weeks and asked them how they ended up in the Netherlands, how they work and what their relationship is with the platform companies. More than half of these deliverers could not explain whether and how they had a work permit, had little or no insurance and did not pay any tax.
Many deliverers that NRC spoke to on the street use a false identity. This is possible because Uber Eats and Deliveroo only have digital contact with deliverers and insufficiently check their identity. Undocumented migrants pay approximately 100 euros per week to intermediaries who have registered themselves or a family member as a legal courier. They don’t speak Dutch, some speak English.
The Labor Inspectorate confirms the findings. The inspectorate says in a response that it suspects that “a fair number of illegal immigrants work at the platforms”, without stating precise numbers. Illegal employment, according to the inspection, is mainly a problem at “the larger platforms”, where “accounts of delivery people are regularly loaned out”. According to the spokesperson, the platforms should “check better who works on an account, then the on-lending to illegal immigrants will also stop.”
Many delivery guys and people who lend their account have registered a sole proprietorship as a meal delivery person in recent years. Those numbers have exploded: from 173 ‘delivery companies’ in 2013 to 3,500 in mid-2022, according to figures from the Chamber of Commerce. This is only part of the total group. Deliveroo says it has 4,500 active accounts in the Netherlands, the larger Uber Eats does not want to lose any numbers. Thuisbezorgd, the originally Dutch competitor of Uber Eats and Deliveroo, works differently and does give deliverers an employment contract.
One route to work for the platforms without the proper paperwork is through a student visa. Immigration service IND previously informed NRC that in 2021 it received signals about students from Bangladesh, in particular, who dropped out of higher education early and “registered in relatively large numbers as self-employed with a sole proprietorship”. NRC spoke to a number of people on the street who had exchanged their studies for a life as a delivery person for Uber Eats and Deliveroo.
Many couriers with whom NRC had contact do not know that they, or the person whose account they rent, must pay tax and VAT. The Tax and Customs Administration confirms this in a response. The service says that “many meal deliverers stay out of the picture of the tax authorities”. This is “because they never file tax or VAT returns.” That is why it is ‘difficult for the Tax and Customs Administration to realize an unambiguous approach for meal deliverers’.
Due to persistent implementation problems in the legislation on (false) self-employed persons, the tax authorities are not allowed to check whether Uber Eats and Deliveroo are breaking the law by treating delivery drivers as entrepreneurs.
Deliveroo says it is “not aware” of illegal practices by deliverers and is closely monitoring for possible fraud. In a response, Uber says it has a “zero tolerance policy” regarding the misuse of accounts and is using new technologies to detect identity theft.
Also read the full research story: The ghost drivers of Deliveroo and Uber Eats
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of September 16, 2022