10 ms·

Children working as riders for food delivery apps – BBC investigation

19 points by heidarb 3y ago

thfuran 3y ago
>It is the duty of the original account holder - not the app they work for - to check that their "substitute" meets the legal criteria to work. >The system appears open to abuse. No, the system appears designed for abuse.
- michaelt 3y ago
  A friend of mine worked for a high quality delivery company in my country. None of this pay-per-delivery, bring-your-own-car stuff; they have hourly paid drivers on stable predictable shifts, driving company vans with company insurance, overtime pay if a route ran long - and a biometric clocking-in system. It turns out a driver can pick up their delivery van, drive around the corner and hand it over to their buddy (an undocumented migrant, who can't get the job themselves), then go work another job, and meet up again at the end of the shift to return the van. Then they split the wages. Even without the 'independent contractor' stuff, it is extremely difficult for a delivery company to stop drivers from doing this. If there are requirements for replacement drivers that their substitute won't meet they can simply not report the substitution, instead sharing a login or sharing a phone.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    >It is extremely difficult for a delivery company to stop drivers from doing this. But it's extremely easy to not build in features explicitly to facilitate it.
trollied 3y ago
Similarly I've seen drivers that are registered as using a bicycle, but actually use a car. I imagine this is to swerve the insurance etc checks.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Yeah, it sounds like a kind of capitalist min-maxing, but the risk being on the drivers / employees. Same thing happened with Uber, where you drive your own car and pay your own maintenance / damages. Same thing happens everywhere, even local mail delivery where I live - which used to be a respectable, uniformed, full-time job - has turned into more of a gig economy, having become a part-time job where you're expected to use your own bike or van to do the deliveries. Imagine needing to invest tens of thousands in a van just to have a chance of an underpaid and unthankful package delivery job.
kasperni 3y ago
I don't think this is a major problem (currently). I've had > 500 deliveries via Deliveroo. And I haven't noticed one who looked underaged.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  For you. Your anecdote does not represent everyone's experience. This seems to be an issue a lot of people have, "well I haven't seen it myself so I'm sure this isn't actually an issue". Cynicism is fine, but it's better to pull up the numbers than go by personal experience and anecdotes, because that's n=1.
- throwaw33333434 3y ago
  my anecdata is that about 1% of the Uber drivers/delivery are different people that show up in the app.
petesergeant 3y ago
... so? I was working at Pizza Hut when I was 14, kids in the UK have paper-rounds, does it really matter if a 17-year-old is doing this? The account-lending scheme is weird though.
- benj111 3y ago
  Yes it's weird that a 17 year old now isn't allowed to work. Have they not been to any restaurants lately? The major problem is the same issue with things like prostitution or drugs. If you ban it, you lose oversight and make it less safe. I'd rather them allow kids to work, but put proper controls in place.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    There are some regulations [1], though I note one of the restrictions is against working after 7pm. [1] https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/restrictions-on-child-employment https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/restrictions-on-child-em...
    - benj111 3y ago
      Not for 16 (who've left school) and 17 years olds. They just need to be in education, doing an apprenticeship or training part time.
- enlyth 3y ago
  Yeah it doesn't seem too bad, if you're earning 100 - 200 a day as a teenager like they say in the article, probably not paying rent to your parents, do that for a year or two, stash that in a savings account and you've got a house deposit ready for later in life
- yial 3y ago
  As a disclaimer, I'm not in the UK. I was working mowing lawns, raking leaves, cutting shrubbery and more when I was 8, and mucking out stables when I was 10... Which decidedly is probably not legal here. However, I was interested by whether this would be legal or not. https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/restrictions-on-child-employment https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/restrictions-on-child-em... So there appears to be limits on when someone who is under 18 works, and what type of work. Additionally, it appears permits are needed for the employer, and the employee. I picked Kirklees at random for more specific council laws: https://www.kirklees.gov.uk/beta/employment-information/pdf/Work-Permit-Application-children-in-employment.pdf https://www.kirklees.gov.uk/beta/employment-information/pdf/... It appears that things not being done in this scheme: Sign off by the parent Sign off properly by the employer (in this case, the person renting the account) A risk assessment However, it appears "leaving school age" is 16, even though adulthood is 18? So I'm not sure any of it would apply to a 17 year old.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Ridiculous editorializing with the "This teenager was allowed to work and now he's dead" part. As if non-working teenagers don't also ride bikes on roads. Should just be made legal, at least they're trying to do something legal when drug dealing is always an option. Used to be completely normal for teenagers to work these sort of jobs.
- bambax 3y ago
  Agreed. > Children working as riders for food delivery apps > The family of a 17-year-old who died while working as a Deliveroo rider... A 17-year-old is not a child. He's a minor, yes, and it's possibly illegal to have him work some jobs (although not all jobs, not everywhere), but calling them "children" is disgraceful.
  - Jenk 3y ago
    Apprenticeships are open to 16 year-olds - in much more dangerous professions. Metalworking, construction, mining, etc. And of course if it is deemed too dangerous for them to join any of these professions, your local military recruitment center, acceptong applicants aged 16 and above, is right this way...
    - atlanticaccent 3y ago
      These are all highly regulated industries/professions. They also include legally required training. Apprenticeships are also not exclusively work - that's the entire point - a significant portion of an apprenticeship is spent in training and education. Do you seriously think it's acceptable to just hand a child tools that can easily get them hurt or killed, with zero supervision or training, and expect them to be fine? It is already a nightmare for commuter cyclists in metropolitan areas who prioritize safe routes and dedicated cycle paths. You think people this young have the ability to effectively manage the risks of working on the road whilst under time pressure?
      - altairTF 3y ago
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
Children used to work in coal mines. They can handle delivering curry to an apartment building by bicycle. Children were the original riders back when they delivered newspapers to homes, on bikes.
- dazc 3y ago
  Get in touch with your local school and ask if they can send a boy round, like they did in the good old days. See how you get on?
  - black_13 3y ago
    [dead]
  - say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
    People are coming to realize how many rights have been taken away from children after decades of progressive policy side effects. Schools have been complicit and aren't going to be solicited for their input. They're going to be changed as well.
    - soco 3y ago
      The right to injure yourself is a very costly right for the society - assuming you have a working health insurance system in place. So I expect the society having a say on it as well, in form of laws and regulations...
- atlanticaccent 3y ago
  Are you aware of why we stopped letting the children work in the mines? Like, where do you draw the line on the expendability of a child's life?
- watwut 3y ago
  Reality check is that those coal mines children had high mortality, suffered life long injuries and no future at all. You could have picked example of child employment that does not harm, but somehow you picked the one that had done significant damage to them.
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
lhnz 3y ago
Why don't they just allow children to work legitimately through the application, but add some safe-guarding controls and potentially notification to or authorisation by parents? This seems like a much better idea than to have a level of uncontrollable fraud that allows it through the backdoor and enriches rent-seekers.
- JCharante 3y ago
  An app that delivers children to your doorstep? Oh my
- threeseed 3y ago
  Children are more immature and prone to taking unnecessary risks. I understand the theory but the reality would just be more children dying on the road.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Yes, that's why I believe all children should be banned from anywhere within 50 feet of roadways or swimming pools. It's simply too dangerous. Won't someone please think of the children!?
lol768 3y ago
The BBC seems to be up in arms about substitution. But the workers are self-employed, independent contractors and they have every right to use a substitute to do their work for them in the UK. If they did not have this right, they'd be classed as workers and eligible for minimum wage, a pension and SSP. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548504/deliveroo-self-employed-uk-court-ruling-iwgb-union https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548504/deliveroo-self-e... Whoever owned the account and decided to engage a substitute worker without checking their right-to-work or complying with additional requirements that they agreed to when signing up for Deliveroo is at fault here.
- leoedin 3y ago
  This is the problem though. The delivery apps don't want employees (maybe fair enough) and so have to have self-employed contractors who have the right to substitution. Those contractors are not large corporations - there are thousands of them and they aren't very accountable. That means they can readily substitute people who don't have the right to work. The end situation is that these delivery apps are providing a back-door route to work for vast numbers of people without that right. It's very easy to say "it's the contractor who didn't do diligence at blame" - but when there's thousands of contractors and the barrier of entry to become a "contractor" is almost nothing, you have a systemic problem.
  - lol768 3y ago
    > when there's thousands of contractors and the barrier of entry to become a "contractor" is almost nothing, you have a systemic problem Yes, and it's a systemic problem that govt should be handling. It's already illegal to give/pay someone who you know has no right-to-work (or you should've reasonably known / didn't do your due diligence on) a piece of work, it needs to be investigated and enforced properly.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sixthDot 3y ago
  > The BBC seems to be up in arms about substitution They are not. They inform the reader that this system exists. Then little cherry on the cake, this system eventually leads to child labor. Plus chocolate toping, eventually someone died.
jansan 3y ago
[flagged]
- watwut 3y ago
  I remember 30 years old criminal defendants being called and treated like kids by media. But no, I do not remember 12 years old being called young men, ever, except by cutesy scout leaders.
  - jansan 3y ago
    In Germany the official body for vaccine safety issued a safety update to all doctors, mentioning a higher risk of myocarditis and pericarditis predominantly in "younger men" which meant children from 12 but they were afraid to actually say that. Source in German: https://www.pei.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/newsroom/veroeffentlichungen-arzneimittel/rhb/21-07-19-covid-19-comirnaty-und-spikevax.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=5 https://www.pei.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/newsroom/veroeffe...
richliss 3y ago
I’d never have been able to buy my Amiga A500 which really got me into coding with a paper round in my early teens. It also spurred me on to study harder in school because I realised delivery jobs were not a great career. I think if we had more kids with menial jobs they might end up less entitled.
nunez 3y ago
There are so many children working under the table everywhere. Here in the US, I've been to a bunch of hole in the wall restaurants where kids were taking or running orders. Usually they are family, but not always. If the children are going to school and have decent social lives, I'm not sure what the harm is, especially if they _want_ to work so that they can buy their own things. FWIW I started (legally) working after-school shifts when I turned 13. One manager tried to convince me to skip a final exam so I could provide shift coverage. That manager was an idiot.

19 points by heidarb 3y ago

>It is the duty of the original account holder - not the app they work for - to check that their "substitute" meets the legal criteria to work. >The system appears open to abuse. No, the system appears designed for abuse.

michaelt 3y ago
A friend of mine worked for a high quality delivery company in my country. None of this pay-per-delivery, bring-your-own-car stuff; they have hourly paid drivers on stable predictable shifts, driving company vans with company insurance, overtime pay if a route ran long - and a biometric clocking-in system. It turns out a driver can pick up their delivery van, drive around the corner and hand it over to their buddy (an undocumented migrant, who can't get the job themselves), then go work another job, and meet up again at the end of the shift to return the van. Then they split the wages. Even without the 'independent contractor' stuff, it is extremely difficult for a delivery company to stop drivers from doing this. If there are requirements for replacement drivers that their substitute won't meet they can simply not report the substitution, instead sharing a login or sharing a phone.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >It is extremely difficult for a delivery company to stop drivers from doing this. But it's extremely easy to not build in features explicitly to facilitate it.

trollied 3y ago

Similarly I've seen drivers that are registered as using a bicycle, but actually use a car. I imagine this is to swerve the insurance etc checks.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Yeah, it sounds like a kind of capitalist min-maxing, but the risk being on the drivers / employees. Same thing happened with Uber, where you drive your own car and pay your own maintenance / damages. Same thing happens everywhere, even local mail delivery where I live - which used to be a respectable, uniformed, full-time job - has turned into more of a gig economy, having become a part-time job where you're expected to use your own bike or van to do the deliveries. Imagine needing to invest tens of thousands in a van just to have a chance of an underpaid and unthankful package delivery job.

kasperni 3y ago

I don't think this is a major problem (currently). I've had > 500 deliveries via Deliveroo. And I haven't noticed one who looked underaged.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
For you. Your anecdote does not represent everyone's experience. This seems to be an issue a lot of people have, "well I haven't seen it myself so I'm sure this isn't actually an issue". Cynicism is fine, but it's better to pull up the numbers than go by personal experience and anecdotes, because that's n=1.
throwaw33333434 3y ago
my anecdata is that about 1% of the Uber drivers/delivery are different people that show up in the app.

petesergeant 3y ago

... so? I was working at Pizza Hut when I was 14, kids in the UK have paper-rounds, does it really matter if a 17-year-old is doing this? The account-lending scheme is weird though.

benj111 3y ago
Yes it's weird that a 17 year old now isn't allowed to work. Have they not been to any restaurants lately? The major problem is the same issue with things like prostitution or drugs. If you ban it, you lose oversight and make it less safe. I'd rather them allow kids to work, but put proper controls in place.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  There are some regulations [1], though I note one of the restrictions is against working after 7pm. [1] https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/restrictions-on-child-employment https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/restrictions-on-child-em...
  - benj111 3y ago
    Not for 16 (who've left school) and 17 years olds. They just need to be in education, doing an apprenticeship or training part time.
enlyth 3y ago
Yeah it doesn't seem too bad, if you're earning 100 - 200 a day as a teenager like they say in the article, probably not paying rent to your parents, do that for a year or two, stash that in a savings account and you've got a house deposit ready for later in life
yial 3y ago
As a disclaimer, I'm not in the UK. I was working mowing lawns, raking leaves, cutting shrubbery and more when I was 8, and mucking out stables when I was 10... Which decidedly is probably not legal here. However, I was interested by whether this would be legal or not. https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/restrictions-on-child-employment https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/restrictions-on-child-em... So there appears to be limits on when someone who is under 18 works, and what type of work. Additionally, it appears permits are needed for the employer, and the employee. I picked Kirklees at random for more specific council laws: https://www.kirklees.gov.uk/beta/employment-information/pdf/Work-Permit-Application-children-in-employment.pdf https://www.kirklees.gov.uk/beta/employment-information/pdf/... It appears that things not being done in this scheme: Sign off by the parent Sign off properly by the employer (in this case, the person renting the account) A risk assessment However, it appears "leaving school age" is 16, even though adulthood is 18? So I'm not sure any of it would apply to a 17 year old.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

Ridiculous editorializing with the "This teenager was allowed to work and now he's dead" part. As if non-working teenagers don't also ride bikes on roads. Should just be made legal, at least they're trying to do something legal when drug dealing is always an option. Used to be completely normal for teenagers to work these sort of jobs.

bambax 3y ago
Agreed. > Children working as riders for food delivery apps > The family of a 17-year-old who died while working as a Deliveroo rider... A 17-year-old is not a child. He's a minor, yes, and it's possibly illegal to have him work some jobs (although not all jobs, not everywhere), but calling them "children" is disgraceful.
- Jenk 3y ago
  Apprenticeships are open to 16 year-olds - in much more dangerous professions. Metalworking, construction, mining, etc. And of course if it is deemed too dangerous for them to join any of these professions, your local military recruitment center, acceptong applicants aged 16 and above, is right this way...
  - atlanticaccent 3y ago
    These are all highly regulated industries/professions. They also include legally required training. Apprenticeships are also not exclusively work - that's the entire point - a significant portion of an apprenticeship is spent in training and education. Do you seriously think it's acceptable to just hand a child tools that can easily get them hurt or killed, with zero supervision or training, and expect them to be fine? It is already a nightmare for commuter cyclists in metropolitan areas who prioritize safe routes and dedicated cycle paths. You think people this young have the ability to effectively manage the risks of working on the road whilst under time pressure?
    - altairTF 3y ago

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

Children used to work in coal mines. They can handle delivering curry to an apartment building by bicycle. Children were the original riders back when they delivered newspapers to homes, on bikes.

dazc 3y ago
Get in touch with your local school and ask if they can send a boy round, like they did in the good old days. See how you get on?
- black_13 3y ago
  [dead]
- say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
  People are coming to realize how many rights have been taken away from children after decades of progressive policy side effects. Schools have been complicit and aren't going to be solicited for their input. They're going to be changed as well.
  - soco 3y ago
    The right to injure yourself is a very costly right for the society - assuming you have a working health insurance system in place. So I expect the society having a say on it as well, in form of laws and regulations...
atlanticaccent 3y ago
Are you aware of why we stopped letting the children work in the mines? Like, where do you draw the line on the expendability of a child's life?
watwut 3y ago
Reality check is that those coal mines children had high mortality, suffered life long injuries and no future at all. You could have picked example of child employment that does not harm, but somehow you picked the one that had done significant damage to them.

AniseAbyss 3y ago

[dead]

lhnz 3y ago

Why don't they just allow children to work legitimately through the application, but add some safe-guarding controls and potentially notification to or authorisation by parents? This seems like a much better idea than to have a level of uncontrollable fraud that allows it through the backdoor and enriches rent-seekers.

JCharante 3y ago
An app that delivers children to your doorstep? Oh my
threeseed 3y ago
Children are more immature and prone to taking unnecessary risks. I understand the theory but the reality would just be more children dying on the road.
- thfuran 3y ago
  Yes, that's why I believe all children should be banned from anywhere within 50 feet of roadways or swimming pools. It's simply too dangerous. Won't someone please think of the children!?

lol768 3y ago

The BBC seems to be up in arms about substitution. But the workers are self-employed, independent contractors and they have every right to use a substitute to do their work for them in the UK. If they did not have this right, they'd be classed as workers and eligible for minimum wage, a pension and SSP. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548504/deliveroo-self-employed-uk-court-ruling-iwgb-union https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548504/deliveroo-self-e... Whoever owned the account and decided to engage a substitute worker without checking their right-to-work or complying with additional requirements that they agreed to when signing up for Deliveroo is at fault here.

leoedin 3y ago
This is the problem though. The delivery apps don't want employees (maybe fair enough) and so have to have self-employed contractors who have the right to substitution. Those contractors are not large corporations - there are thousands of them and they aren't very accountable. That means they can readily substitute people who don't have the right to work. The end situation is that these delivery apps are providing a back-door route to work for vast numbers of people without that right. It's very easy to say "it's the contractor who didn't do diligence at blame" - but when there's thousands of contractors and the barrier of entry to become a "contractor" is almost nothing, you have a systemic problem.
- lol768 3y ago
  > when there's thousands of contractors and the barrier of entry to become a "contractor" is almost nothing, you have a systemic problem Yes, and it's a systemic problem that govt should be handling. It's already illegal to give/pay someone who you know has no right-to-work (or you should've reasonably known / didn't do your due diligence on) a piece of work, it needs to be investigated and enforced properly.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sixthDot 3y ago
> The BBC seems to be up in arms about substitution They are not. They inform the reader that this system exists. Then little cherry on the cake, this system eventually leads to child labor. Plus chocolate toping, eventually someone died.

jansan 3y ago

[flagged]

watwut 3y ago
I remember 30 years old criminal defendants being called and treated like kids by media. But no, I do not remember 12 years old being called young men, ever, except by cutesy scout leaders.
- jansan 3y ago
  In Germany the official body for vaccine safety issued a safety update to all doctors, mentioning a higher risk of myocarditis and pericarditis predominantly in "younger men" which meant children from 12 but they were afraid to actually say that. Source in German: https://www.pei.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/newsroom/veroeffentlichungen-arzneimittel/rhb/21-07-19-covid-19-comirnaty-und-spikevax.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=5 https://www.pei.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/newsroom/veroeffe...

richliss 3y ago

I’d never have been able to buy my Amiga A500 which really got me into coding with a paper round in my early teens. It also spurred me on to study harder in school because I realised delivery jobs were not a great career. I think if we had more kids with menial jobs they might end up less entitled.

nunez 3y ago

There are so many children working under the table everywhere. Here in the US, I've been to a bunch of hole in the wall restaurants where kids were taking or running orders. Usually they are family, but not always. If the children are going to school and have decent social lives, I'm not sure what the harm is, especially if they _want_ to work so that they can buy their own things. FWIW I started (legally) working after-school shifts when I turned 13. One manager tried to convince me to skip a final exam so I could provide shift coverage. That manager was an idiot.