Wild West of Labour Practices

Many Toronto bike courriers unionize for fair wages and benefits

By Samantha Edwards

It’s 10 a.m. and Ted Webb weaves through traffic in downtown Toronto. He jumps the green light, hugging the curb as he makes a tight right hand turn. A slow cyclist putters along in the bike lane. He quickly passes them. Webb has five minutes to deliver a bulky envelope to Bay and Queen Street, if late; he has an angry client and dispatcher to worry about. He races down University Avenue, overtaking taxis and family sedans.

Now on Queen Street, he brushes shoulders with a moving streetcar, nearly knocking him off his bicycle. Aware of perilous parked cars, Webb dodges a car door that flings open in front of him. With a minute to spare, he delivers the package to the receptionist.

All of this for $3.

As a bike courier, Webb’s weekly pay cheques would amount to around $200 for 50 hours worked. He lived on these wages for an entire year before he quit in October 2008.

Due to floundering delivery rates, more and more couriers are working below minimum wage. According to Mark Hayward of the Toronto Bike Messenger Association, this is one reason he and the TBMA want to unionize the industry.

“The best way to describe the courier industry in Toronto is a sweatshop on wheels.” said Hayward.
Bike couriers are paid by commission, which means they earn a percentage of each delivery, not an hourly rate. For instance, Hayward explains, if a courier earns 60 per cent of a delivery, with the average rate of $5, the courier will receive $3. Courier companies are also undercutting each other’s rates and over hiring to create more coverage.

“It doesn’t matter if one guy does the work or a 100 do it, the company will make the same amount of money…so they over hire to create more coverage, which means the couriers will make less money.”
As a result, Hayward said on average, couriers have been earning around $100 a day working 50 hours a week, for the past 20 years.

“When I started, this wasn’t a minimum wage job. In 1998, I made $100 a day and 11 years later, the rate is still $100. Apparently, 20 years ago it was still $100 per day too.”

Of course, $100 per day is only an average. Wages and rates vary wildly.

Laura Jaworski, an 19-year-old student at Ryerson University, worked as a bike courier this past summer and made between $250 and $400 each week. Another courier, Chris Jones, makes around $100 a day but unlike most messengers, is guaranteed a flat rate of $90 per day.

“You can compare it to people taking advantage of the labour in the third world. Courier companies don’t have to pay holidays or vacation pay… they even try avoiding paying their WSIB,” said Hayward.
Because Ontario labour law recognizes couriers as independent contractors, they do not fall under the protection of the Ontario Employment Standards legislation.

According to Sam Vrankulj, a labour relations professor at McMaster University, independent contractors have no control over wages, vacation entitlement, maximum hours of work or severance.

The Toronto Bike Messenger Association of Toronto in a partnership with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, are currently leading a movement to unionize each individual courier company, which would allow couriers basic worker’s rights.

Hayward imagines a union contract including vacation pay, paid holidays and better job security. Most importantly, to combat rate undercutting, it would ensure couriers be paid a fair wage even if rates drop. Concurrently though, if rates rise, couriers would be paid according to the higher price.

Though historically, bike couriers have been viewed as a notoriously skeptical subculture of anarchists and anti-establishment types, Hayward remains confident unionizing the industry is possible.

However, Jones, a Toronto bike courier for the past two years, remains skeptical that a union will actually form and prosper.

“I think it would be nice, but I don’t think it’ll happen considering the type of people the industry attracts – people who don’t have much money and who may not have a lot going for them…[courier companies] don’t have to give them benefits because they’re desperate for work.”

So far only one courier firm in Toronto, Dynamex, has been unionized. Led by the Teamsters, Dynamex couriers’ incomes are similar to those at other Toronto firms but they get benefits such as employment insurance, dental care and worker’s compensation.

Although some couriers say the future of a unionized Toronto is grim, there has been progress made in the labour movement. The Toronto Hoof and Cycle Courier Coalition, the founding messenger association before it was reconstructed as the TBMA, won a 15-year battle with Revenue Canada to make the extra food couriers require as fuel, tax deductible. For once, lunch is tax-free as couriers can deduct $17.55 a day for food and drink.

Despite technological advancements such as the fax machine and e-mail and current economic factors, both causing a decline in the courier business, Hayward said the need for better rights for couriers remains unchanged.

“People blame the fax machine and people blame the Internet, but even if there is less work to do, why does that correlate to getting paid less for each individual delivery?…It’s the wild west of labour practices.”