Just Eat has announced it is to cut 1,700 delivery driver jobs as it shifts back towards a gig economy model.
Moving from its current hybrid system of employees and self-employed workers, the food delivery giant, will now only use self-employed drivers to deliver food in the UK.
Employed drivers have been given a six week notice with pay, with a further 170 head office staff also being made redundant as the firm attempts to cut costs.
It is understood head office employees will begin a process of redundancy and may be moved to other parts of the company.
According to reports, most of the head office roles affected are in the UK, where Scoober, Just Eat’s employment model operated.
A Just Eat spokesperson told InternetRetailing: “Just Eat UK is reorganising and simplifying its delivery operation as part of the ongoing goal of improving efficiency. As part of this process we have proposed to transition away from the worker model for couriers, which is a small part of our overall delivery operations – running in certain parts of six UK cities. There will be no impact to the service provided to partners and customers.
“Our top priority now is to support impacted employees and couriers. We are hugely grateful to our talented colleagues and couriers who have been part of the worker model in the UK.”
The move comes despite, Just Eat’s CEO Jitse Groen blasting the gig economy in February 2021, claiming that the model has ” led to precarious working conditions across Europe, the worst seen in a hundred years”.
“The gig economy comes at the expense of society and workers themselves,” he wrote in The Financial Times.
