Organise: The platform uniting Primark, Amazon and Co-op workers to demand better conditions during coronavirus

The technology combines the viral nature of digital petitions with conventional union-led campaigning, writes Hazel Sheffield

Bex Hay and Nat Whalley from Organise (Organise)

The canteen at the Co-op Regional Distribution Centre in St Helen’s had always been a sociable place for the delivery drivers to wait out their shifts once they had finished their rounds for the day. But when the coronavirus hit in March, sitting in cramped conditions with hundreds of other staff suddenly felt less safe.

Once Jason, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, had finished his deliveries, he would return to find as many as 200 staff in the canteen, some of them drivers waiting for up to three hours before they could leave. All because their employer did not have a policy of “job and knock”, a benefit associated with some delivery jobs where the driver can go home once they have done their rounds.

In March, the unions requested “job and knock” from Wincanton, the third party logistics company that the Co-op uses to employ Jason and the drivers, but they were unsuccessful. One night Jason was at home when he came across Organise, a platform that allows workers to start campaigns on employment rights for free. That night, on his phone, Jason wrote a petition calling for the chief executive of Wincanton and the Co-op to allow drivers the temporary right to job and knock, “to reduce the risk of illness to drivers and colleagues allowing us to avoid mass gatherings in the busy canteen”.

Organise was co-founded in 2017 by Nat Whalley, chief executive, as a platform combining the viral nature of digital petitions with conventional union-led campaigning. In July, Organise announced that it had raised £570,000 in seed funding in a round led by Ada Ventures, a tech-for-good funder, alongside other investors including Form Ventures, RLC Ventures and Ascension Ventures, to develop the network overseas.

The funding round comes after a staggering few months of growth in the UK, in which Organise has gone from fewer than 100,000 members before March to half a million workers using the platform to unite and support one another. So far, Organise has helped workers mount successful campaigns for better conditions at McDonald’s, Amazon, Uber and Deliveroo. Around 5 per cent of these users pay a subscription of £1 or £2 a week for extra support with campaigns, which pays for the infrastructure and the five-strong team.

During coronavirus, Amazon workers used Organise to demand “hazard pay”, a bonus paid to logistics workers for continuing their jobs in difficult conditions. Over 40,000 people signed the petition after staff found out the hazard pay was being cut in June, forcing Amazon to reinstate the payment as a £500 monthly bonus.

In July, workers at Primark are using the platform to demand greater security at stores as they reopen. Thousands of people have signed in support of better safety measures, including tannoy announcements about social distancing, greater staff presence on the shop floor and properly enforced one-way systems – as well as limits on customer numbers.

Two main things have caused the huge uptick in user numbers on Organise, according to Bex Hay, co-founder: “The impact of coronavirus and the lockdown has put everything into perspective,” she says. “Millions of people’s working lives have been turned upside down, whether you’ve been put on furlough for the first time ever or you’ve lost your job. And people didn’t have anywhere to go for support.”

In addition, Organise offers workers a way to have an impact – quickly. “The demand for the network has been higher, but also the potential to make huge changes in a short amount of time,” Hay says.

Using Organise, 12,000 self-employed people submitted evidence to the Treasury Select Committee on the economic impact of coronavirus. The team at Organise translated the government’s questions into a survey tool, encouraging people to submit personal stories about what had happened to them. They disseminated the survey through Facebook groups and Whatsapp where it was widely shared. “The reason I think it worked for so many people is that it basically translates some of the government's questions,” Hay says. “Because often you look at a government consultation and the words are completely incomprehensible, not designed for the public at all.”

Amid the submissions, self-employed people asked for the Treasury to tax tech companies more fairly, increase child benefit and supply a universal basic income to help people pay their bills. The submissions have helped workers to highlight gaps in the self-employed income support scheme, which excludes the newly self-employed and those who are paid through company dividends. More than 70,000 people have since responded to a petition calling on Rishi Sunak to provide universal basic income to cover the basic cost of living so that no one has to struggle to survive during pandemic.

“There is a huge network of self-employed people using the Organise tools to essentially represent themselves to the government,” Hay says. “The fundraising allows us to achieve scale in a way that we couldn’t have done before. The dream is take this to the US and further afield.”

When he launched the petition about the Co-op depot canteen, Jason pointed out that the workers were just trying to do their jobs. “Drivers want to work!” he wrote. “To be able do our part for the public, but we need as much protection from the virus as possible.” But he didn’t want to get in trouble with his bosses, so rather than distributing it directly to colleagues, he sent the link to a few friends and family and asked if they would sign.

Within days, the petition had started doing the rounds at work. After Usman Mohammed, one of the people behind Organise, contacted Jason to see if he could help promote the petition through their mailing lists, it went viral. “I went to bed, and when I woke up and there were almost another 1000 signatures,” Jason remembers. But nothing could prepare Jason for winning the campaign when the petition hit 1,300 signatures from drivers, family members and union reps.

“It meant an awful lot,” he says. "It meant, for a start, we all felt more valued. We’re all doing a lot extra, we’re clearing the wagons before we use them, wiping them down afterwards and wearing gloves all day.”

Since the policy was changed, Jason says the depot is breaking all records. “Everything is getting delivered on time and they are getting the wagons back earlier so they can load them up and send them out again,” he says. “It’s made the workplace better. It’s win-win.”