Wolt CEO Miki Kuusi says that Wolt messengers are mostly satisfied with their work and, according to the company’s statistics, earn quite well.
The greater part of food delivery company Wolt’s consignments are satisfied with their work and miss the flexibility offered by Wolt – This is how Wolt’s CEO could sum it up Miki Kuunen a response to the criticism that has been made towards the company in relation to how it views the position of its messengers.
On Thursday, an influencer in economic life Anne Brunila wrote in X that he is ashamed when he sees Wolt’s food couriers pedaling on starvation wages without the basic security of an employment relationship.
A significant part of Wolt’s food shipments are from people who have moved to Finland from elsewhere. Dispatchers do their work without the basic security included in the employment relationship, such as statutory wages and working hours, annual holidays or paid sick leave.
“When these referrals don’t really have any basic security that is part of the employment relationship, from my point of view they are being exploited in a certain way, and it doesn’t look like a very ethical activity,” said Brunila In an interview with HS.
On Wolt has 200,000 couriers in 25 different countries. There are more than 10,000 active couriers in Finland, and 20,000 people registered as couriers are in the queue.
Kuusi emphasizes that, according to Wolt’s data, the vast majority of Wolt’s referrals are satisfied with their work and earnings. On average, Wolt’s couriers work 13 hours a week, and in autumn the couriers billed an average of 25.3 euros per hour for active delivery time, including VAT.
According to Kuusen, the general satisfaction of the couriers has also been at a fairly good level in the fall: 4.5/5.
During the past year, however, Wolt emissaries have organized demonstrations in various parts of Finland due to, among other things, weakened contract conditions. For example In the Turku region dissatisfaction has grown due to, among other things, degraded rewards.
“If you look at the average invoicing, then yes, this is work you can get by with and pay your own labor costs,” says Kuusi.
With an average weekly working time of 13 hours and an hourly wage of 25.3 euros, Wolt drivers would have earned an average of less than 330 euros per week.
It the senders’ dissatisfaction, which has also spread to Wolt, is related to the fact that there has not been enough transport available for the senders. This year in Finland, the problem has been the skewed relationship between customer demand and the number of couriers.
“This year we have had too many couriers compared to customer demand, which means that the quiet times have been quieter. There is also dissatisfaction with earnings,” says Kuusi.
In an interview with HS, Anne Brunila said that she experiences a personal conflict regarding the fact that a significant part of Wolt referrals are from foreign backgrounds, who are already in a weaker part of the labor market and would not necessarily be employed without Wolt.
“We have become a safety net for the labor market. People who cannot find another job also apply to be sent. We estimate that just under a third are such people. This group is understandably highlighted in the media when talking about referrals,” says Kuusi.
Spruce according to the vast majority of senders want to work as a sender precisely because of the flexibility it enables. You can do work when it suits you.
“It’s easy to tell a company like ours to employ people so that they have safety nets. It is often overlooked that the rules of the game in an employment relationship are very different and in return for a safety net, work has to be done at the times set by the employer, you cannot refuse the tasks offered and so on,” he says.
But some of Wolt’s referrals actually work in an employment relationship with Wolt.
Kuusi says that the company has “thousands” of employed messengers in Germany, who mostly work 30-40 hours a week. In Germany, Wolt also monitors the effectiveness of its messengers.
“We believe that if we pay an hourly fee for acting as messengers instead of gig compensation, then it must also be monitored that they are working.”
Why does such a model work in Germany, but not in Finland?
“Germany is our newer market and we wanted to test whether we can make it work at the technology level that the work is done in shifts,” says Kuusi.
“Yes, our earning model can handle the fact that a person can be in an employment relationship, it just means a terribly different job. However, one of the reasons for that flexibility and freedom is that we don’t have to have a huge amount of admin staff (administrative staff) who are watching to see if people are working hard enough.”
It is also financially more profitable for Wolt.
Discourse Kuusi thinks that the labor relations of companies in the platform economy is wider than Wolt. That’s why it’s good that the topic is discussed, although he doesn’t fully subscribe to the criticism directed at Wolt.
In many other matters, it has been accepted that the internet fundamentally changes the world and society must change along with it, says Kuusi.
“Then when we talk about work, it’s so easy for the conversation to be like, hey, we have this hundred-year-old framework called labor legislation,” he says.
“Of course, the change has to be reflected in that as well. This work genuinely brings something new, and that’s why it’s being discussed. We also understand that concern and want the work to be sustainable”.
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