The human condition brings us to the table: it is self-evident that everybody must eat. Some forage for subsistence while others feast comfortably in the lap of luxury. Meals can be ordered to one’s home or office via a smartphone application and quickly a courier is dispatched to collect the food from a local restaurant. This work is not for the faint of heart. Bicycle couriers in Paris now have a response to their dangerous and isolating work. The Maison des Coursiers opened its doors in 2021 and has since helped hundreds of the city’s vulnerable deliverers land on their feet.
Wrestling Precarity
The Maison des Coursiers offers a wide array of services to couriers from basic to more specific. There is, firstly, shelter to retreat from the elements along with water, coffee, washrooms, microwaves, couches, and a place to recharge cellphones. There are also rudimentary bicycle tools at their disposal to fix repairs. A nurse is on site to diagnose and cure health issues. They offer French language classes and there are referrals to housing organizations, legal clinics, help with income tax, food banks, and access to labour unions. It is a one-stop shop for couriers to help overcome whatever roadblock might obstruct them.
While the target audience workforce is diverse, it is primarily comprised of young male migrant workers. This clientele often poses unique challenges to the staff at the Maison des Coursiers. Precarious migration status and working without the right to legally work can discourage some couriers to come forward and ask for help. Migrant workers may run the risk of becoming victims of scams. Many must rent a profile from another deliverer on an app to login to work and earn money. This can further diminish already low earnings and exacerbate their precariousness because a percentage of their income is dedicated to simply paying the costs related to working. This clandestine act also further jeopardizes the goal for many of them of earning regularization of European immigration status because this practice could lead to deportation measures.
Stomach rumble in the urban jungle
The Maison des Coursiers is indeed an innovative idea with few precursors and has a laudable raison d’être of helping the vulnerable, but it comes with a pricetag. Financing of the centre is made possible with generous support from the City of Paris. City-dwellers are connected to Michelin-ranked bistros (and other services like pharmacies and grocery stores) by way of the delivery platforms that triangulate between them and deliverers who receive the orders. The city’s former pro-bike mayor, Anne Hidalgo, wanted restaurants to thrive and for the economy to hum, so she decided that the Maison des Coursiers was a worthwhile investment. The city’s streets are narrow and congested, to be specific, the average street speed in nearby London is the same as it was in the horse and cart era a century ago: 7 miles per hour. One of the most efficient methods to curry a small parcel is onboard a small vehicle, like a bike. The mayor’s office recognized the importance of these overlooked cogs in the machinery of logistics chains and acted by making the project a reality.
The Main Event: David v. Goliath
The Maison des Coursiers strives to protect the dignity of workers throughout France. They offer a practical toolkit to help recreate their model in other cities and iterations of the centre have sprung up in Bordeaux and Nantes along with one planned for Lille. Community workers adapt their strategy to respond to local realities of the newfangled global phenomenon of the uberization of work, a trend knowing few limits.
The Maison des Coursiers has chosen a path of resilience in the face of the challenge of globalized corporations running roughshod over worker’s rights. Most couriers are considered independent contractors and as such are not accorded the same protections as typical full-fledged salaried employees. Things like parental leave, statutory holidays, sick days, vacation time, a pension plan and the right to form a union all fall outside the rights given to this new class of micro-entrepreneurs.
These are rights worker groups lobbied for over the last century labour struggle, all dissolving with a splashy IPO or at the swipe of a fingertip. The delivery platform’s business ethos to ‘move fast and break things’ has come to a breaking point in the French capital. The Maison des Coursiers proves that social justice advocates won’t stand in idle while labour rights that workers take for granted slowly erode underfoot of malfeasance (like invasive data collection, tax evasion, offshore capital flight, reliance on ghost kitchens, use of psychological nudges, inter alia) by shapeshifting corporate actors with clever marketing campaigns.
Global Reach?
Resourceful Parisians have created an institution to assist the uberized workforce who deliver the daily bread to make their professional occupation painless as opposed to penniless. This model works in the land of ‘Liberté, Fraternité, Égalité’ but could it work elsewhere? How ready are Montréal and Toronto to forge this style of service centre geared specifically to deliverers? It could be a while yet, perhaps longer than the seemingly interminable wait for your Aspirin, apple cider vinegar or smoked-meat poutine that are all stuck in gridlock. It would be delightful to see this bright idea shine forward like a ray of hope beaming from France’s City of Light, in order to lighten the load on this precarious class of workers.
Born in Saskatoon, Michael Thomas Kowalsky worked as a bicycle messenger for a decade. He is pursuing an LL.M. at Université de Montréal where he studies work conditions of couriers.