In July 2019, the research team on the Heat in the Streets project, funded by a City of Sydney innovation grant, made a submission to the Victorian Government’s inquiry into the on-demand workforce.
We reported some early analysis of the experience of food and document delivery riders in Sydney, who we interviewed and surveyed about heat stress on the job.
There is a well-established nexus between outside temperature/humidity and work effort in producing heat stress. Because on-demand workers cannot easily vary the timing and (often) the pace of their work, they experience particular risks in regards to heat stress. As we state in the report:
The capacity to minimise exertion during the hotter times of the day, and allocate work requiring more effort to the cooler days/times can be critical. Heat stress is thus linked to employment arrangements — and in part a product of the category of employment.
The surveillance of on-demand workers through tracking algorithms and apps is another level of risk for these workers, as how long they take to make deliveries is tracked and used to determine future allocations of work. One worker we spoke to told us about an incident, that demonstrated how this can play out on the job:
I remember [one rider], he was going up the hill and I was going down, and he is sweating his head off, and then he gave up, he literally collapsed, I turn around and said what’s wrong, he said I can’t do it, I can’t do this anymore but I’ve gotta finish this gig. And I said well, just have a rest. Five minutes.
In an era of climate change, with rising temperatures and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, on-demand workers face particular challenges and pressures. You can read more about our project in our report, available open access on the UTS website.