There are only seven of them fighting the battle, but their situation speaks volumes about the reality of working in the delivery sector in France. And it also highlights the conditions of workers carrying out deliveries on behalf of Amazon.
The seven former delivery staff, all migrants without the correct paperwork, worked from October 2021 to February 2022 for a company at Rouen in northern France that was operating as a subcontractor delivering parcels for the giant American group. They were abruptly laid off in February and are now taking their case to an industrial tribunal over the way they were treated, and in particular over their excessive hours and low pay.
The seven, who are all originally from Africa, were recruited by the company Lumina Services while already working as delivery staff in the Paris region. They all had the same experience: several months of intense work, well above the 35 hours a week set out in their contracts, irregular pay that was less than they were due, and unkept promises about helping them regularise their work status as migrants. When contacted by Mediapart, Fatoumata Sow, the director of Lumina Services, declined to comment.
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The delivery staff also all insist that Amazon knew about their situation. The American group strongly denies this, and told Mediapart that respect for workplace legislation and standards was an important criterion in their relationship with the subcontractors they use.
The laid-off workers have taken to the streets to show their unhappiness over the way they were treated. With the support of the CGT trade union they took it in turns to stage a protest on the approach to the Amazon warehouse at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen between April 28th and May 10th. On May 1st they walked at the head of the annual Labour Day march organised by trade unions in Rouen.
Then, on May 11th, they had a meeting at the local prefecture where their situation – which has been covered in local media and L’Humanité newspaper – was discussed in the presence of health and safety inspectors. Meanwhile their cases will be the subject of an urgent preliminary hearing at an industrial tribunal in Rouen on June 7th.
“I was contacted by an acquaintance, who told me that a company was looking for good delivery people to go and work in Rouen,” explained 'Adama' – he asked that his real first name not be used – who is originally from the Ivory Coast and who came to France in 2019 via Italy. “The boss promised us a permanent contract, accommodation and the necessary official form to ask for our situation to be regularised,” he said.
Since a government circular in 2012, a worker in France without the right documents can ask for their situation to be regularised via an official form - or 'Cerfa' - if they have an offer of work or a statement from their employer and providing they have been in the country long enough. “But once she had finished using us, the boss got rid of us,” said Adama.
He described how twelve of them had lived in three-room accommodation at Canteleu near Rouen, and the long shifts that sometimes stretched to 15 hours a day, and all this for a pitiful salary. Patrick, who is from Cameroon, had the same experience. “We put up with it so that this woman could keep the contract with Amazon, we wanted to help her - but she didn't help us,” he said.
The working hours were well over the legal limits, going from “7am or 8am to 10pm or 11pm every evening,” said Patrick. Nor were there any days off in the first months. “We worked from Monday to Monday with no day off from October to December while we trained other delivery people. We were given someone else's badge so that we could go beyond the number of authorised days,” he said. On paper the delivery staff were supposed to work eight hours and 45 minutes every day, four days a week.
The wages were poor, too. “The boss had promised us 1,685 euros net for 15 days of work each month,” said Adama. But the delivery staff ended up getting much less, around 1,000 euros a month. “She told us it was difficult, because the business had just started and that she was going to sort things out. We said we understood. But it was the same thing in the second month, the same thing in the third month, the same thing in the fourth month...”
Health and safety inspectors looking at the case
“Though they were recruited on permanent contracts they were working 70 to 80 hours a week, paid for 35, and even then the payment was irregular. One of them only got 700 euros for a full month's work,” said Fabien Lesueur of the CGT FATP, the postal and telecommunications section of the CGT trade union.
Nor were payslips always handed out. “The director told me it was Amazon who did the payslips but I knew that was false because I had already been working for an Amazon subcontractor in Paris,” said Adama.
In February this year the director made a brief announcement in which she stated that she was no longer able to employ them, because Amazon had noticed that their official documents were not in order. All they had was a residency permit issued in Italy, which did not give them permission to work, and a driving licence issued in Italy and which was valid across Europe.
“But we suspect that it was a pretext to stop paying us,” said Adama, who explained that Fatoumata Sow had told them earlier that their administrative documents had been approved by Amazon back in October. They also all had to undergo two days of distance learning carried out by Amazon before being able to start work in Rouen. “Out of everyone doing this work you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who had a French residency permit that was in order,” said Patrick.
“The health and safety inspectors haven't hidden the fact that they have other firms with similar practices in their sights,” said the CGT's Fabien Lesueur. “From the autumn to the end of January is a busy period for deliveries: there's the return after the summer holidays, Black Friday, Christmas, then the sales … afterwards there's a major drop in activity and it's common for companies to take advantage of this to get rid of delivery staff, not always in a legitimate way...” he added. The trade union official said he is confident that the prefecture will look on the delivery workers' case sympathetically. “The company behaved in such a blatant way that the authorities were in fact obliged to intervene,” he said.
Excessive working hours with Amazon's full knowledge?
Amazon issued a statement defending its position. “The delivery firms with whom Amazon works hire and manage their own teams. We are uncompromising when it comes to them respecting current legislation, as well as the Amazon suppliers' code of conduct,” it said. Having carried out a quick investigation the company said it was going to dispense with the services of this subcontractor.
Nonetheless, there are still questions over Amazon's own responsibility. The delivery staff – some of whom haven't worked again since February - insist that Amazon knew about their lack of documentation. But they also claim that the company cannot have been unaware of their work schedule.
It is true that the app the delivery staff use for their job shuts down automatically after eight hours and 45 minutes of work, and also imposes a 30-minute break during the day. But Adama and Patrick said it was easy for them to get around this obstacle and that doing so was not a very discreet process.
“When the app is not working you have to use [map app] Waze or Google Maps to find the delivery addresses then ask the dispatcher for the client's telephone number to contact them,” said Adama. “Once the parcel is delivered you send a photo to the dispatcher who then indicates to Amazon the status of the delivered parcel: directly handed over, left in a letter box, etc.”
“Amazon were aware,” said Patrick. It would have been easy, he said, to piece together the clues about how staff were arranging their extra hours: the dispatcher was an employee of Lumina Services, and worked in an office set up at the Amazon warehouse at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray.
“And the dispatcher did not leave the office until the last delivery person from Lumina Services had finished their deliveries,” said Patrick. “They were in the office until very late in the evening, Amazon cannot have been unaware of that.” Amazon insists that the rules governing subcontractors were very clear and that they had to respect the law.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter