It seems like the job of the decade is strongly related to delivery. Since the COVID-19 pandemic started over 114 million people lost their jobs and an important part of them had and they still have to reorient to a new job domain. Most of them chose to work in delivery companies or maybe start their own delivery startups.

Modern times require modern methods, new time results new problems. But maybe they seem to be the same old issues but with new aspects.

The delivery domain has a lot of upsides and downsides. Most of the upsides are that people are getting paid good and they can socialize with work colleagues or customers. Talking about the downsides, this fast-growing domain involves a lot of discrimination. Usually, we have heard about delivery riders working full-time without getting a lunch break or maybe even just a rest break of a few minutes.

Slavery was horrible, a lot of people died because of it, they were murdered, a lot of suicidal cased were discovered and a lot of them died because of exhaustion. According to Katherine Steiner-Dicks, slavery is the greatest evil of mankind, but it has penetrated into our daily lives.

The modern work places generated new methods of slavery, which we call them nowadays: Modern Slavery.

According to International Labour Organization Modern slavery is a general term that describes many practices of forced labor, such as indentured labor, debt bondage, forced labor, slavery, and human trafficking.

(source: Dragos-Stefan Tintareanu)

How can we avoid modern slavery?

The NGO’s from Netherlands have an extraordinary initiative against modern slavery, by creating an online portal where a person can report if he was involved or maybe he noticed that someone that was involved in a slavery action.

Very regularly we believe that Slavery is an “out there” thing that doesn’t influence or effect our rural areas. In all actuality where a weak populace exists, slavery do as well and illegal exploitation. One of the most significant keys to finishing servitude is for we who are allowed to instruct ourselves, promoter, and follow up in the interest of those in slavery.

Konstantin Karamanolis, 25 years old, the Human Resources Manager and City Supervisor of Utrecht Gorillas, stated that Modern Slavery is something familiar to him, because he knows about so many cases of it, especially from the United Arabic Emirates: “Like, for instance, the way Dubai is built with the Pakistanis and the Indian people coming to Dubai in the hopes of getting money. But then their passport is taken from them and they don’t receive any pay for the work they’re doing. So in that sense, it’s still ongoing also because of the fact that the government knows about it, but they’re not acting upon it”

Konstantin explained some of the ways that the Gorillas Warehouses must use in order to avoid Modern Slavery:  “every rider and also the Warehouse staff receives a 30 minute break. If the shift is longer than five hours and below five hours, we’re actually not obliged to give them breaks, but we do give them breaks of 20 minutes”.

He stated that the key of a good working environment without any modern aspect of slavery is communication: “So it’s always open communication. We are open for it and we are open for them to voice their concerns that we will deal with it”.

Payment is a real issue nowadays, because we live a world crisis, people need more resources in order to stay home or protect themselves from the deadly virus from outside. Konstantinos stated: “there are many students and many people complained that they would rather have zero contracts so that they get paid for the hours they worked actually, and not the standard amount of money every month. So we’re looking into that”.

Being able to buy a house nowadays is something important and mediatized by everyone: “also a good thing that we give them a one year contract because, for instance, if someone wants to buy a house or something and they have to have proof of their income”.

The Gorillas startup unicorn is still managing to maintain a healthy and legal working environment for people that are coming around the world.