Delivery company Wolt has announced that it is starting a trial to hire some of its couriers as employees.
Before this announcement, Wolt couriers have exclusively operated as independent entrepreneurs, rather than employees.
Wolt said it plans to hire around 100 couriers in the coming months.
The firm currently uses the services of around 10,000 couriers in Finland.
According to the company's operations chief in Northern Europe, Joel Järvinen, most couriers want to remain as entrepreneurs so they can decide when and how they work.
"At the same time, a small number of couriers would prefer to be employees," Järvinen said.
Initially, Wolt plans to limit the employment trial to the Helsinki metropolitan area.
Works either way for firm's bottom line
According to the firm's Nordic public relations chief, Olli Koski, the employee model is no worse for the company's bottom line than the entrepreneur arrangement.
According to Koski, Wolt's couriers actively work an average of 14 hours per week, resulting in an average monthly income of around 1,240 euros. However, their income levels can vary significantly, depending on the demand for deliveries, so the average income level only tells part of the story.
The term active work means the total time a courier spends on taking and delivering orders. This means that they are technically not working if there aren't any orders, or if the courier isn't accepting them.
According to Koski, the employee trial is a response to requests from its couriers.
"We've known that the majority of the couriers want to continue operating as entrepreneurs, however there is a small but significant minority who would prefer to be in an employment relationship," Koski said.
Md Afzal Hossain, who currently works as a Wolt entrepreneur-courier in Helsinki, told Yle that he would prefer working as an employee and that the entrepreneur arrangement does not work for him.
Hossain, who is also studying restaurant and catering management at a vocational school in Vantaa, said he has worked as a courier for Wolt on a varying basis — but when he does it's usually around seven or eight hours a day. He said he earns between 1,000 and 1,500 euros per month making the deliveries on his electric scooter.
No collective agreement yet
The company's courier employment trial is being launched quickly, and currently there is no collective agreement in the sector. This means that their operations will only be guided by personal employment contracts as well as minimum legal requirements
However, Wolt is in discussions with the service sector workers' union PAM about setting up a collective agreement.
PAM's chair, Annika Rönni-Sällinen, said in a press release that she thinks Wolt is "driving on two wheels".
"It is good that Wolt will hire couriers as employees and comply with a decision by the Supreme Administrative Court for these one hundred couriers. However, approximately 98 percent of the company's couriers are falling outside the protection of the employment relationship. The court's decision must be complied with for all Wolt couriers, otherwise the overall picture reeks of whitewashing and driving on two wheels," Rönni-Sällinen said in the release.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that food couriers are employees, not self-employed entrepreneurs.
According to her, the 100 couriers who become employees at the firm will be in a more secure and safer position than their entrepreneur courier peers.
In the entrepreneur model, couriers bill Wolt an average of 20–21 euros per hour for the time they make deliveries. However, the entrepreneurs are responsible for paying for their own pension contributions and other costs.
Wolt has continued efforts to overturn the Supreme Administrative Court's decision, although the company has diversified its operations.
Corrected on 8.10. at 11.43 to reflect that when Md Afzal Hossain makes deliveries for Wolt, he works 7-8 hours a day, not per week as previously stated.
