4.4 Around the world, platform food couriers are mobilising for basic workers’ rights As the pandemic puts the unfair working conditions of gig workers under the spotlight, a recent study has uncovered a growing number of protests undertaken by food delivery platform workers worldwide. By Marina Watson Peláez 1 As Covid-19 forces citizens around the world into lockdown and food delivery workers go into overdrive to provide relief to customers, a new report has shone a light on the poor working conditions faced by food couriers globally, as well as some of the steps that workers are taking to challenge the status quo. The recent FES study Global labour unrest on platforms – The case of food delivery workers by Vera Trappmann, Ioulia Bessa, Simon Joyce, Denis Neumann, Mark Stuart and Charles Umney looks at six global food delivery brands operating in more than two global regions – Uber Eats, Just Eat, Deliveroo, Foodora, Zomato, and Glovo – in addi­tion to a further 12 companies that operate regionally. Between them, these 18 companies deliver cooked and prepared food to cus­tomers in 95 countries. The research, which was based on the Leeds Index – a unique dataset logging platform labour unrest around the world – found that there had been 527 incidents of labour unrest from 1 January 2017 to 20 1 Marina Watson Peláez is a freelance journalist and documentary film­maker based in Lisbon, Portugal. 62 Riders on the Storm