Shopee drivers protest over delayed salary

Delivery motorcycle riders expressed dismay at online seller Shopee and its contractors for alleged delayed salary, unpaid incentives and benefits and non-payment of accident insurance.

Around 600 delivery riders working for Placer8 Logistics Express and Shopee to deliver items ordered by online buyers complained of non-payment of salary and benefits since October 2020, according to Sakay Transport Cooperative. 

The riders were allegedly not provided with accident insurance policy. 

“We are gravely concerned over these mounting labor abuses on the growing delivery and ride-sharing gig industry workers. While there are no tailor-fit policies ensuring protection to these type of workers, we have to invoke, for now, existing labor laws for these abused riders,” said Neil Estrella, chairperson of Sakay Transport. 

The cooperative is an organization of delivery and ride-sharing riders and an associate member of the Associated Labor Unions.

The circulation of a video last month brought to light the plight of the delivery drivers.

The video in question, posted on Facebook by Estrang Vench Alvarez, showed numerous individuals who were said to be delivery riders for Shopee congregating outside Placer8 Logistics Express in Taguig and demanding their salaries and financial incentives be paid.

The footage of the alleged riders was shared over a thousand times. The post of Alvarez went on to allege that the riders were instructed by Placer8 to claim their payments from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. in Taguig. However, when the riders got to Taguig, they were told the payments would be handed out in Pasay instead.

Estrella said the number of delivery and ride-sharing motorcycle riders serving online passengers, bookers and buyers reached around 100,000 in Metro Manila alone, following the surge of contactless mobile-app transaction amid the quarantine restrictions. 

“Many of these riders were workers from the formal sector, unemployed by company shutdown and retrenchments resulting from the pandemic economic and health crisis,” he said.