Amazon UK cuts delivery driver pay by 20%

Amazon UK delivery drivers have complained that their rates have fallen since the pandemic, and this is making some of them struggle to make ends meet.

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, one said, “All of us are constantly terrified of never having enough money to survive,” he said. “It really is the most toxic industry.”

Amazon UK is the UK’s largest parcel delivery company, handling an estimated 15% of all parcels delivered in 2021. These are both direct from Amazon and from marketplace sellers across the globe.

Amazon does not directly employ its couriers, instead managing them through ‘delivery service partners’, agents who contract and pay the drivers on a self-employed basis.

The payments to couriers rose in 2021 after pandemic restrictions were lifted, leading to a labour shortage and the online giant needing to incentivise its staff to stay working with it. As the employment crisis has eased, so Amazon UK has apparently reduced those payments. Drivers report reduced amounts of shifts and significant drops in pay for the shifts they do. At the same time, fuel prices have risen significantly and this has impacted their bottom lines even further.

Amazon UK drivers say that they are getting an average of £2 an hour less (20%) than those they were getting in October and November last year, or around £14.60 an hour. At the same time, they are expected to deliver as many as 60 more parcels per shift.

Pavlina Draganova of campaign group Organise said, “We’re in quite a different world now than we were last summer, and even if the salary now is the same [per hour] as it was then, this is a real-terms pay cut in the face of soaring inflation and rising petrol prices, that is only likely to become more untenable in the coming months,” she said.

A petition calling for pay to go up again by Organise has attracted more than 39,000 signatures. “As delivery drivers we are exhausted, we’ve worked tirelessly through a pandemic only to come out of the other side and receive a kick in the teeth,” the petition says.

Share