App-based food-delivery giant Foodora is shuttering its Canadian operations, citing the “highly competitive and saturated Canadian environment” in an email sent to couriers Monday. It comes two months after a precedent-setting decision by the province’s labour relations board, which ruled the delivery service’s couriers had the right to unionize. In February, they scored a historic victory when the board made the first decision of its kind on the gig economy, ruling that Foodora couriers had been misclassified as independent contractors, a category of worker that cannot unionize. “We are immensely proud of what we built together over the last five years,” the company’s email to couriers said. The company’s couriers had long raised issues of low wages and safety risks — concerns that were amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: thestar April 27, 2020 19:26 UTC