After Gojek’s merger, are Indonesian delivery riders getting a worse deal?
- Riders from Gojek’s same-day parcel delivery recently waged a strike to protest its plan to slash incentive fees at a time its new parent firm is mulling a public listing
- Observers say while e-delivery riders and tech platforms are technically ‘partners’, their positions have never been equal
Hot on the heels of a multibillion-dollar merger between Indonesia’s tech behemoths Gojek and Tokopedia is not the much-anticipated public listing by their parent, GoTo Group, but a strike from drivers of Gojek’s same-day parcel delivery service.
Their three-day strike came after Gojek said it planned to dramatically slash incentives for GoSend Same Day, which promises instant delivery to e-commerce customers in the Greater Jakarta area and the city of Bandung in West Java.
Before, a driver could earn a bonus of 100,000 rupiah (US$7) for 15 deliveries, but that would drop to only 37,500 rupiah (US$2.65) in the new scheme.
The drivers’ representative, Yulianto Wibowo, told tech publication KrAsia that about 1,000 drivers claimed to have turned off their Gojek driver-partner app and refused to deliver orders from June 8 to 10.
The drivers also sent funeral flower bouquets to Gojek’s office in south Jakarta to express their outrage.
According to a social media post, one of the bouquets said: “Your conscience is dead. Cutting our incentives during a pandemic.”
Gojek, which is now part of the GoTo Group after it merged with Tokopedia last month, said the strike did not interfere with all of its services, including GoSend.