Delivery workers in Phnom Penh on October 29, 2020. (Hy Chhay/VOD)

Mech Dara and Ananth Baliga
29th October, 2020

Bun Sambath says he left Foodpanda a few months ago, after the company decided in June to slash delivery prices from around 5,000 riel a trip to 1,600 riel for the same trip. Sambath says he earned $500 a month from February to April, but his earnings dropped to $100 in June.

A group of 12 men wearing turquoise shirts are furiously tapping away at their smartphone screens on a shady sidewalk along the Toul Tom Poung school. While some are attentively looking at their phones, others are chatting, but the tapping never stops.

The men work for a popular delivery service, Nham24, and are hoping to beat their colleagues to the next delivery. They say the application does not pick a single driver but instead they have to quickly accept any orders deployed in the vicinity.

They used to work at a local brewery but had to find a new job after workers were laid off due to the pandemic-induced economic downturn. He says the job at Nham24 is more relaxed than his previous work but also competitive because drivers have to almost battle — with their phones — for orders.

He says the company went on a hiring spree for drivers, estimating that there are maybe 700 to 1,000 drivers employed by the delivery service. The increased recruitment — which came as the garment and tourism sectors shed tens of thousands of jobs — gave him an opportunity, but as business slows down many workers are now finding it hard to get by.

“We have protested outside the company two times. There is no response,” Sambath says. “We don’t know why they dropped [the price].”

The company continued to hire drivers, though down from around 40 to 30 a day at its peak to around 10 a day, he says.

But life after Foodpanda hasn’t been any easier. Sambath says he is struggling to find work, resorting to pawning his motorcycle and family jewelry to make ends meet. The Cambodian economy continues to reel from the effects of the pandemic, following mass layoffs in the garment and tourism sectors.

The issues facing the sector have not gone unnoticed by unions and federations. Ou Tepphalin, president of the Cambodian Food and Service Workers, says there is opacity in the workings of the sector, such as the number of workers employed by delivery service providers.

Critics say companies, including Uber, Amazon and GrubHub, misclassify their workers as “independent contractors” to deny workers health care, employee benefits and collective bargaining rights.

full.https://vodenglish.news/slashed-pay-int ... very-boom/

These guys are in effect being paid like sub contractors. A retainer + commission per job. Flood the work force with labour and cut the prices... reminds me of my time, many years ago, when I worked as a sub-contract pvc window installer.
A company called Radway windows, based in the south Birmingham area, we’re doing MoD work. Basically they were refitting military bases and removing all the old metal Crittal windows in all their buildings and replacing them with pvc.
An aw some job at the start.. we had a few years at £100 a frame. Doing 10 frames a day (or a house that had from 8 to 10 in it). Yeah.. was fcking great days. Anyway after a few years and a huge audit where it was discovered a guy was running 3 teams of 2.. paying them £300 a week cash in hand and booking their work as his. I ran into him at RAF Cottesmore and didn’t think too much of it till 1 day the order came down from way on high to stop work and go to company HQ for a meeting that afternoon.
Apparently this 3 team guy had earned more than the CEO lol.... all contracts were paused and the next phase saw the price per frame drop to £75 and then over the next year or so it dropped a bit more each time a new contract started.
In the end we worked locally for £50 a frame.

These delivery guys are no different.... they should’ve made hay while the sun shone as the good jobs never last. They can go join the ranks of disgruntled ride hailing drivers tbh.

My sympathy for these lads is zero. They are not misclassified; they are independent contractors.

Tuk tuk drivers receive more compassion, lol.