Working Conditions
The conditions of employment of bicycle messengers vary from country to country, city to city and even company to company. Contracts governing the relationship between individual courier and company are subject as much to customary practice, as local ordinance. In some places messengers are independent contractors paid on commission and do not receive benefits such as health insurance. In other places they will be regular employees of the courier company enjoying all the benefits thereof.
The employment status of the bicycle messengers of one of the UK's biggest same-day courier services, CitySprint, was challenged by the GMB trade union in December 2007. The challenge arose after the firm terminated the contract of one of its riders. The GMB sought to establish that more than 1,500 CitySprint operatives currently classified as self-employed sub-contractors should be re-classified as employees. Recent US legislation has sought to force companies to reclassify workers that they declare as independent contractors, as employees, with all the benefits thereof. Companies claim costs will rise as a direct result.
The job is poorly paid relative to the risk and effort required. In 2002, a Harvard Medical School study of injury rates amongst Boston bicycle messengers determined that the rate of injury requiring time off work amongst the sample group was more than 13 times the U.S. average, and more than three times higher than the next highest group, workers in the meat-packing industry. Bike messengers have been killed while working in the United States. Eight bicycle messengers are known to have been killed while working in London between 1989 and 2003. Because payment is made at piece rates, it is hard to get reliable figures for messenger income. A study published in 2006 stated that the average daily wage of London bicycle messengers was £65 a day, and that of bicycle messenger in Cardiff was £45. The UK legal minimum wage at that time was £5.52 an hour.
Read more about this topic: Bicycle Messenger
Famous quotes containing the words working and/or conditions:
“The ideal of men and women sharing equally in parenting and working is a vision still. What would it be like if women and men were less different from each other, if our worlds were not so foreign? A male friend who shares daily parenting told me that he knows at his very core what his wife’s loving for their daughter feels like, and that this knowing creates a stronger bond between them.”
—Anonymous Mother. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 6 (1978)
“The Supreme Court would have pleased me more if they had concerned themselves about enforcing the compulsory education provisions for Negroes in the South as is done for white children. The next ten years would be better spent in appointing truant officers and looking after conditions in the homes from which the children come. Use to the limit what we already have.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)