FOOD delivery drivers in Berlin are accusing their employers of sabotaging their efforts to unionise following concerns over shift hours.

Workers at Flink, a delivery app that promises to get groceries to your door in under 10 minutes, planned to elect members to form a workers’ council, taking the first steps towards unionising. 

The Flink Workers’ Collective, which is organising the vote, has said the drivers have raised issues over unpredictable hours and a lack of shifts. Despite having permanent contracts, riders have no guaranteed number of hours and can be left with none at all. 

One of the organisers of the collective, Rob Snyder, alleged that arbitrary firings were common and workers could sometimes find themselves “ghosted” or “fake fired” — in which they are given no shifts without explanation.

“One person got injured while cycling and had to take time off sick,” he says. “She never got given a termination, but never got given shifts again. It’s their favourite tactic. They just stop responding to you.” 

Another rider, Viktor Csirke, said he moved from Hungary for the job and was promised a full-time role.

“When I received my contract, however, the number of hours were blank. I do not know German law so didn’t think to question it. Then after I moved over, I started to get less and less shifts and I never knew how many hours I would be working.” 

With the bulk of riders made up of foreign workers segregated across 22 warehouses, the workforce is particularly vulnerable.

“Flink is able to get away with a lot because people don’t know their rights. It’s a cornerstone of its business model — people don’t know how to ask about missing wages or lack of hours and then they save a lot of money,” Mr Snyder said.

To fight this, the Flink Workers’ Collective decided to hold a vote to elect a committee to address these issues on July 22.

But organisers said that they faced difficulties communicating the vote to the hundreds of other riders in warehouses across the city.

Three council invitees, legally immune to termination, managed to distribute a legal document across warehouses with the date of the vote.

However management told them that they could not give out accompanying materials containing the collective’s name, social media nor contact details to reach out to.

Mr Csirke, a non-invitee who helped distribute the document, said: “One of the shift leads asked me to write down my name.

“A couple of days later I received my termination notice. Since I was on probation, they didn’t have to give a reason to fire me,” he said. The former rider is currently taking the company to court. 

Flink had already introduced an “ops committee,” encouraging workers to speak to official “employee representatives” about “critical feedback.”

In the run-up to the vote, big posters of ops officials were put next to the workers’ council announcement. 

Mr Snyder accused the firm of doing this to deliberately jeopardise the vote: “[It] had their photos and phone numbers, saying these are your contacts for feedback. People were confusing them for the workers’ council.”

An official Q&A paper said that the council was a for-or-against vote, and told them that they could vote No. A similar tactic which could lead workers to understand it as a yes-no answer was recently employed at Hello Fresh. Doing so would deem the ballot invalid, since it was to elect names. 

Following confusion, the organisers decided to postpone the vote, with Mr Snyder saying that the collective “needed more time to reach people.”

He also said that the firm “wouldn’t provide us with a list of eligible people, which was a key legal requirement.”

New flyers were promptly distributed. Mr Snyder maintained that it was clear to management that the date had been postponed.

Afterwards, Flink reportedly communicated that the vote would take place on the original date.

The firm then filed a lawsuit with Berlin Labour Court to cancel the postponement and for it to take place on the original day. The collective had no idea until their lawyer was notified that it had been withdrawn.

“I think they withdrew it because there was no standing. We’re independent. Our lawyer was flabbergasted,” Mr Snyder said. 

Flink Workers Collective has now scheduled the vote for September 5.

A Flink spokesperson said: “We are fully aware that we make mistakes as a company but we clearly reject the accusation of systematic issues concerning our working conditions. One of the reasons people join Flink in functions such as Delivery Riders or Warehouse Picking, is our flexibility we offer to this staff.”

“We know that we are not perfect and if employees are bringing up mistakes in their payroll, we quickly fix those and compensate accordingly.” 

With regards to the council vote, they said: “It was not clear when the assembly would take place, so we asked the court for clarification, as we had made preparations for then and had told employees it would be on this date.”

“The court was not able to answer this in time for the vote. They said we could argue the case on Monday, which would of already been after the assembly date.”