IMMEDIATE RELEASE - ADCU stages rally to highlight Deliveroo worker rights and occupational safety failures in aftermath of the collapse of Deliveroo rider in East London

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• ‍Rally today at Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel Road, East London
• Speakers to include Jeremy Corbyn MP, Apsana Begum MP, Tower Hamlets Deputy Mayor Maium Talukdar and others
• Collapse of Deliveroo worker in Tower Hamlets highlights the problem of precarious work, inequality and tax evasion which impoverishes not only the worker but the whole community

With 5 million views, the tweet stream documenting the collapse at work of a Deliveroo rider in East London last week has struck a nerve with the British public.

At around 10:30pm on February 23^rd, Mohamed collapsed outside the exclusive Meranti House on Alie Street where he was attempting to make a delivery for Deliveroo. He was denied access to the lobby of the building but was instead left outside in the cold where he had to wait for an hour for an ambulance. In the meantime, Deliveroo’s customers came out of the building to retrieve their food from the unconscious driver and then went back into the building to eat their food while Mohammed waited in the cold for an ambulance.

The incident highlighted the, once again some, of the most pressing problems in Britain today:

• Precarious employment and a lack of respect for worker rights by gig economy employers
• Gentrification in the East of London, the housing crisis for others and a decline in community cohesion
• Poor ambulance response times due to chronic underfunding of the NHS, in part because of tax evasion arising from misclassification of employment status by platforms like Deliveroo.
• Deliveroo’s poor response to the incident illustrates a greater problem of a reliance on technology and automation to obfuscate moral duty. Having reported the incident to Deliveroo, the ADCU received a chatbot non response followed 12 hours later by another automated response asking the union to rate how well Deliveroo had handled the incident. It was not until 18 hours after the incident that a human being was put in the loop by Deliveroo. On the evening in question, Deliveroo’s customers retrieved their food from an unconscious worker before retreating into their luxury building leaving him unconscious outside. This too reflects the alienating effect of Deliveroo's technology and business practices.

Mohammed remains seriously ill in hospital and his family have asked for privacy as they focus on his recovery.

At 2pm on Friday March 3^rd , the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) will convene a public rally in support of Mohammed and all gig workers in Tower Hamlets. Speakers will include:

• Apsana Begum MP
• Jeremy Corbyn MP
• Maium Talukdar, Deputy Mayor of Tower Hamlets
• James Farrar, ADCU
• Ellen Grogan, Royal College of Nursing
• Onay Kasab, Unite the Union
• Shabbir Lakha, People’s Assembly
• Unjum Mirza, ASLEF

James Farrar ADCU General Secretary said:

The story of Deliveroo’s disastrous handling of the collapse of one of their workers last week illustrates the tragic consequences of a morally bankrupt gig economy business model and a negligent government. Companies like Deliveroo hide behind a veneer of technology to avoid their statutory and moral duty to their workforce and the communities they live in. The alienating effect of technology blinds customers to the true cost of a service made possible by tax evasion, low pay, insecure work and racial discrimination. The upshot is a society nobody wants where you can have a pizza delivered in 15 minutes but in an emergency, you must wait an hour for an ambulance because of chronic NHS underfunding. Today, Tower Hamlets is fighting back to demand accountability from the government and from gig economy platforms who extract massive profits from the local community but seek to put nothing back.

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