Union wants short-term parking spaces for B.C. food app delivery drivers

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) —  Andrew Sicard has been holding on to his two parking tickets from the City of Vancouver for the past couple of months – and he refuses to pay them. The driver, who works for Door Dash, received one last December, and one last month.

So, when he was told by CityNews Vancouver that the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1518 had written to the province and several mayors asking them to consider short-term parking spaces, he was thrilled.

“I haven’t contacted the City yet because I was waiting for something like this to come out. I understand that the City needs to make money off of parking tickets, everywhere does it. We’re simply asking to be treated like a normal delivery driver,” he tells CityNews, noting that drivers like him have played an integral role in getting food to hungry customers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In times like this, everything is locked down. The government is actually asking people to stay inside; order Door Dash, order Skip the Dishes, and order from Uber Eats. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t try to make it as easy on the drivers as possible because we’re the ones out during a pandemic delivering this food to people, putting ourselves at risk,” he says.

Sicard says trying to find parking can delay delivery, which causes problems for drivers that the company isn’t particularly sympathetic to.

“We’re on a time limit to go and pick up the order, we’re on a time limit for how long we have to be there, and in a lot of cases if the restaurant has forgotten to place the order or if it’s taking long we have to actually communicate back to Door Dash, like, ‘This is why it’s taking so long,’ so they can increase that. But what they don’t increase is our time for things like, ‘Oh, I’m having trouble finding parking.'”

He says he also gets no sympathy from bylaw officers.

“If I’m driving in an unmarked car while I’m delivering, of course they can’t know, but there’s been two instances where I’ve actually caught them in the midst of issuing me a ticket. I’ve came out, I’ve explained, I’ve said, ‘Hey, I was just running in to grab an order, I’m leaving right now.’ They don’t care. They just hand me the ticket and walk away,” he says.

“I’ve explained to a lot of them too, in the amount of time it takes me to run to the meter, take my phone out, pay by phone, do all the information, it actually takes me less time to run in to grab an order, so it just isn’t making a lot of sense to me as to why we have to pay for parking. You see a lot of delivery drivers from around town, from all different kinds [of companies] but because they’re in marked cars, they get completely left alone.”

Sicard says it doesn’t necessarily have to be a parking space: it could even be something to signify that he is working as a driver for a food delivery app.

“Creating some sort of system where we can sign up, you know, when we go through Door Dash, we have to give them all our information, we have to give them our Driver’s Licence number, our insurance, all that stuff, so we could do the same thing with the City, you know? We could say, ‘here’s my proof, I’m a driver, all this, send me a little sticker to put on my dash.'”

‘A price of a parking ticket can really negate a whole evening of work’

Patrick Johnson is the Secretary-Treasurer of UFCW Local 1518 and says it’s been talking with food delivery workers for the last couple of years about this issue, but the pandemic has really heightened the urgency.

“We’ve called on some of the major municipalities that have more on-street parking to explore ways that they can ensure parking is available; free parking available for gig-food delivery workers,” he tells CityNews.

Johnson says the stories are endless, from paying for parking for a couple of minutes and the workers losing time, to getting slapped with a ticket like Sicard.

“The workers themselves can tell you almost nightly experiences of that. One of the big examples is where you run in for a minute, thinking you’re just running in to pick up the food, and for whatever reason there’s a delay, and your minute turns into ten minutes. That’s where you often see the parking ticket. I know the price of parking ticket can really negate an evening of work for some of these workers,” he explains.

A second concern includes spending time looking for free parking, or having to park and walk to the restaurant to pick up the food. This is an issue as both customers and companies will rate performance based on how fast a driver responds.

“What we’ve heard from workers is that a parking pass or decal would work really well. A decal that would allow them to park while they’re working at any meter, and so they could run in and [pick the food] up. If not that, it might work in some cases where you’d have loading zones, but it really does depend on the municipality,” he says.

“We’re not parking planners, so we haven’t really ventured into what that would look like as much as we know we’ve heard from workers that there’s a need for it.”

The letter, written by UFCW 1518 President Kim Novak, has been sent to the mayors of Vancouver, Victoria, New Westminster, Burnaby, and Kelowna, along with the Minister of Municipal Affairs, Minister of Transportation, Minister of Labour and the Parliamentary Secretary for the New Economy.

Johnson says government should be acting on these concerns as they will provide some much-needed relief to drivers.

“Without going in and dining [during the pandemic], these workers that were once almost like, ‘it’s a treat to order-in food’ have really turned into essential front-line workers that are not only ensuring that customers can get food, but it’d really help businesses ensure that they can get product out when in-restaurant restrictions have been in place.”

In B.C., there is currently no union representing workers of companies like Door Dash, Skip the Dishes and Uber Eats.

NEWS 1130 has reached out to those named in the letter for a response.