‘Snoop Dogg is advertising Just Eat, but it is me that has to deliver it’: the courier leading the UK’s longest gig-economy strike
“Don’t do it, brother!” shouts Parirs Dixon as a Just Eat delivery driver approaches a branch of Greggs in Sheffield city centre with his bag open, ready to fill with pastries. “Did you not know about the strike?”
The driver looks confused. Dixon, who is chomping a slice of pizza in the bakery doorway, dispatches an Arabic speaker from the picket line to explain why the driver shouldn’t collect his order.
Every day since 6 December, bar a short festive break to recharge their batteries, Sheffield’s Just Eat couriers have downed their thermal backpacks for at least three hours a day in what is now the longest gig-economy strike in the UK. The strike has since spread organically to other cities, with couriers taking sustained industrial action in Chesterfield, Middlesbrough and Leicester, with more sporadic strikes in Blackpool, Huddersfield, Sunderland and beyond.
The Sheffield industrial action first targeted McDonald’s, but is now focused on four branches of Greggs. The aim is not to deter customers on foot, but to prevent drivers from crossing the picket, disrupting the flow of deliveries from one of Just Eat’s most important clients during the lunchtime peak.
Dixon, 25, leads the strike as chair of the Sheffield couriers and logistics branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), a union set up in 2012 to fight for fair pay in the zero-hours and low-paid economy. A charismatic former footballer and part-time fashion designer, Dixon has been a driver for four years, whizzing around Sheffield in his Audi.
The morning we meet, he apologises for being late. He had just dropped off a delivery on the way into town (more Greggs) and returned to his car to find someone had crashed into it and driven off. Dressed
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