Azerbaijan: Authorities smash unionization efforts for gig workers

Authorities in Azerbaijan are cracking down on labor organizers amid recent efforts to improve working conditions and unionize food delivery workers in Baku. Three young Azerbaijani labor rights activists have been arrested so far in August and a fourth has opted to renounce his unionizing activity.

Those detained are all affiliated with the Workers’ Table Unions Confederation, an umbrella group of labor organizations. Workers’ Table was formed in March 2022 to help defend the rights of gig-economy workers; the Couriers Union is the confederation’s largest constituent member comprising 50 founders and 2,500 food-delivery workers. 

Since its emergence, Workers’ Table has worked to improve workers’ legal protections and engaged in unionizing workers in a growing variety of fields. Not surprisingly given Azerbaijan’s tightly controlled political environment, the confederation’s board members have often been the targets of official legal proceedings and other forms of harassment. The government, it seems, isn’t differentiating between independent labor and political organization activity: both are seen as serious threats to the established order.

The latest trouble for Workers’ Table began after officials introduced new regulations that food-delivery workers, most of whom use scooters and motorbikes, complained were onerous. The government required any vehicle capable of traveling at speeds greater than 50 kph (about 31 mph) to obtain a license plate. The delivery workers themselves were also required to be properly licensed to drive their vehicles.

While seemingly reasonable on a basic level, the new requirements created a compliance quandary for gig-workers, Workers’ Table complained. “Motorcycle drivers need a customs declaration to get a registration plate. However, places where motorcycles are sold do not provide relevant documents. … That’s because motorcycles are brought to the country as spare parts in order to avoid taxes. [Thus,] sales points refuse to present this document,” read a statement issued by the group. “Corruption in the country shows itself in this area as well. Now the couriers who are suffering from unemployment and trying to provide for themselves and their families are suffering [because] of tax evasion and illegal profit making by the companies that import the motorcycles.”

Workers’ Table’s efforts to spotlight flaws in the new system brought a fast response. On August 2, the confederation’s chair, Afiaddin Mammadov, was detained for a month on charges of petty hooliganism and disobedience of a police order. A few days later, two other union activists/gig workers were taken into custody and placed in pre-trial detention for four months on suspicion of “drug possession in large amounts for sales purposes.”

A fourth activist, Orkhan Zeynalov, went into hiding on August 12. In a social media post two days later, Zeynalov announced that he was ending his activism and union organizing, tacitly citing the danger of arrest and harassment. “In order not to be persecuted, so that my life and my family would not be in danger, I will stop meeting with the members [of Workers’ Table] and stay away from the processes. This is the last statement I write,” he wrote. 

On August 14, authorities began targeting gig workers themselves, revoking the license for Wolt, a global food delivery company many couriers worked for, to operate in Azerbaijan. The country’s Food Safety Agency cited violations of food safety standards in Wolt Azerbaijan LLC’s delivery services as the reason for the decision. 

“Food is transported in violation of the temperature regime,” according to an August 14 statement issued by the agency. “Disinfection work is not carried out on [delivery] vehicles; it was determined that the persons who participated in delivering food do not undergo a medical examination.”

Opposition activists assert that the action against Wolt was politically motivated, underscoring authorities’ aversion to sharing economic or political power. Some predicted the government would soon try to create its own food delivery company, thus monopolizing the field and overseeing the workforce. 

“This is how the regime solves the couriers’ problems,” Ali Karimli, chair of opposition Popular Front Party, wrote in a social media post. “Thousands of young couriers have become jobless. Thousands are deprived of earning a living.”