Credits: www.famigliacristiana.it
Whenever I walk around Milan, I always see the riders rushing through traffic and traffic lights, under the sun or in the rain, always on their bikes with food to deliver. I watch them and think: how much effort do they have to put in every day for deliveries, in the scorching summer heat or pouring rain, for just a few euros, only to satisfy someone who might be too lazy to leave the house.
And then comes the news that Glovo (a company similar to JustEat or Deliveroo), through its Italian branch Foodinho, has been placed under judicial administration for labor exploitation… but I would never have guessed there was worker exploitation underneath! The truth is, this comes as no surprise: it’s digital capitalism in its most cynical form. According to the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, thousands of workers receive wages below the poverty line, sometimes up to 76% less than the legal minimums, all while the company promises efficiency, speed, and convenience to users.
What stands out is the mechanism, not just the low wages. It’s the entire organizational model based on an algorithm and an app: it geolocates, assigns tasks, measures performance, and decides how much to pay the rider; in particular, it was noted that geolocation was used to call back riders who dared to take a short break to rest. Formally autonomous, without a regular contract, the riders are in fact subordinated to a system that exploits their need, turning their work into a performance that is always monitored and precarious, because if it doesn’t satisfy the company, the worker loses their job. It’s digital and Orwellian wage slavery.
Looking at some numbers, riders were paid at most €3.7 per delivery, more often only €2.5, with various excuses, while shifts could reach up to 12 hours per day; these are outrageous figures.
Let’s reread that data: 75% of delivery riders earn below the poverty line. It’s the embodiment of capitalism’s ability to normalize exploitation: everything becomes a data point, an algorithm, a metric, but behind it there are real, tired, underpaid lives. The news of judicial administration and the appointed administrator tasked with “remedying” the illegalities changes little; the model is not dismantled but maintained, with profit as the only evaluation parameter, so new Glovos will be ready to do exactly the same thing.
What I see, more than just the news of an investigation, is the reflection of a corrupt system that considers work only as a means to accumulate value for a few, exploiting human capital. Every click on the app, every order, every “delivery in progress” carries a logic of exploitation that is structural, not accidental.
Perhaps the only way to break this pattern is to start realizing that behind the digital comfort offered by these companies there is also a responsibility on all of us as customers, who continue to feed this system, and it’s time to demand a system in which the dignity of workers comes before the speed of delivery.
References: https://ilmanifesto.it/sfruttamento-e-caporalato-glovo-commissariata