A perfect storm: how app-based food delivery workers navigate climate-related occupational hazards

Although urban bicycle delivery has been presented as a green alternative to automobiles, this transport mode involves risks of debilitating injury or death for app-based delivery workers. In Global North cities, these couriers are often racialised recent migrants, international students, or domestic residents seeking an economic buffer against a rising cost of living. As extreme weather becomes increasingly common with climate change, couriers will face heightened exposure to risks from ice, heat, and rain. App-based bicycle couriers minimise collective risks of localised air pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, customers and platform companies are offloading individualised environmental health risks onto precarious workers. Yet little is understood about workers’ sense of agency in the face of both precarity and environmental risks. How do app-based food delivery couriers navigate weather-related occupational hazards? To what extent do they perceive themselves as having agency in the face of environmental risks on the job? This paper draws on 50 in-depth interviews with app-based food delivery couriers across several Canadian cities, which offer insight into underexplored cold-related climate justice hazards. We introduce a three-part categorisation to analyse how riders navigate weather-related occupational hazards: The Daredevil, Wishful Thinker, and Wary Withdrawer. Our study shows that workers’ attempts to generate a subjective sense of workplace joy, dignity and control can, paradoxically, expose them to greater environmental risks.