GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

undercut. As a movement do we say to Uber, “Here is all this free space,

exploit Uber drivers if you want and we will undercut people who have been

earning a decent living driving a black cab”. We just need to be cautious on

that front. Our members who work in Hermes and Yodel, delivery drivers. 10

years ago every one of them would have been an employed driver with a

company vehicle, would have had a contract of employment and would have

had decent hours, decent holiday, decent terms and conditions. Now bogus

self-employment. They are now employed on a self-employed basis, have to

provide their own van, no guaranteed hours, no guaranteed work and are

delivering parcels that come to all of us for a few pence a pop, often working

long hours and earning less than a minimum age. So we have a problem in

that area.

Just one anecdote from trying to organise Hermes workers. GMB officers have

been doing great jobs around Hermes depots and have been trying to talk to

Hermes workers to encourage them into membership and we are also taking a

legal action against Hermes over bogus self-employment. What happens at

the Hermes site? A manager comes flying out of the site and starts saying,

“How dare you! How dare you try and talk to my workers”. They say, “Thank

you very much, you’ve just saved us a whole load of costs in legal action if

you’re confirming that they’re your workers and that they’re not self-employed!”

(Cheers) (Laughter) (Applause)

We could go on. Amazon workers who are routinely exploited. We all know

the situation and the conditions in Amazon factories. Again, people who are on

zero hours contracts, effectively gig workers, because they do not know from

one day to the next whether they are going to get work and when they do get

into work putting in a grievance against your line manager or your boss is a

guarantee to get sacked, so another example where the ‘gig’ economy is not

working for union members and for ordinary people.

On a personal level, a couple of friends who work at the BBC or, should I say,

used to work at the BBC, because they used to be employed as technicians at

the BBC, now being made redundant and are now working on a case by case,

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