The man behind a company accused of stripping workers of their rights and salaries insists his company played by the rules, claiming he urged the authorities to regulate the industry, only to lose business and many of his workers to law-breaking rival companies.

Former food couriers employed by RecruitGiant said the company took away their rights and decent working conditions, but CEO Tomas Mikalauskas hit back and said that to the contrary, his company has been the first and only one to urge authorities to regulate an industry rife with abuse.

Moreover, it was the first company to adopt the new regulations put forward by the Department of Industrial and Employment Relations (DIER) and that it “led the way in ensuring couriers are given the best possible employment conditions”.

However, he did not reply to specific questions about his company’s alleged practices.

Last Sunday, Times of Malta published a story revealing how RecruitGiant engaged food couriers with an attractive employment contract that they signed in their home country, only to make them sign a second contract with much less favourable conditions when they arrived in Malta.

Having already forked out an upward of €8,000 to relocate to Malta, the couriers signed the second contract, which ate away almost all their probation period, along with several decent working conditions.

The first contract promised employment on an indefinite basis with a six-month probation, a gross monthly salary of €1,000+ and up to 40 hours of work over a five-day week.

The second was a one-year definite contract with only one-month probation. And it demanded a minimum of 40 hours per week.

Whereas the salary in the first contract was based on 40 hours of work as per Maltese law, the second stipulated that ‘hours of work’ only meant the hours during which the courier was delivering orders. The courier would not be paid for the idle time they spent waiting outside restaurants between deliveries.

Consequently, couriers began to work exorbitant, 80-hour weeks and still not managing a minimum wage at the end of the month.

When, after two or three months, the workers resigned because they could not take it anymore, the company informed them they had to pay an extra €4,000 for quitting after the one-month probation period was over.

‘Oversimplification of a complex issue’

When clear guidelines how couriers should be employed were published, recruitGiant "acted promptly” to adopt them.

In his reaction, Mikalauskas said the story was a “gross oversimplification of a highly complex issue”, and that the issues “merit a serious debate”.

He stressed that his company was the first and only one to play by the rules, only to suffer a haemorrhage of workers and lose a lot of business.

However, he did not reply to questions about the questionable contracts or the specific working conditions.

Mikalauskas said his company “always carried out its operations in full consultation and transparency with all relevant authorities, including Identity Malta and DIER (the Department For Industrial and Employment Relations), and that it has “never made profit from the process of relocating any third- country nationals to Malta”.

“We make our money from the fees we earn from the businesses to which we supply employees,” he said.

The company has been operating in Malta for four years and recruits drivers, plumbers, electricians and waiters, among others.

“I believe that readers, who will undoubtedly have been left with a negative impression of RecruitGiant, deserve a more complete understanding of how this industry works,” he said, adding that there is no legislation or regulation that covers food couriers.

I believe that readers, who will undoubtedly have been left with a negative impression of RecruitGiant, deserve a more complete understanding of how this industry works- RecruitGiant CEO Tomas Mikalauskas

He insisted that his company was the only one that was trying to play by the rules in an industry rife with abuse.

“It is an issue we have been pushing to resolve for years,” he said, explaining that when DIER finally reacted to [our] concerns and published clear guidelines on how couriers should be employed, his company “acted promptly” to adopt the guidelines.

But the outcome was “a loss of business”, he said.

“As soon as we adopted the guidelines, drivers immediately began to resign. This is because other fleets continued, and continue to this day, to operate irregularly,” he explained.

“They do this by officially paying drivers a minimum wage but then topping this up through additional undeclared cash payments. The result is that drivers are happy to be employed irregularly and willing to accept other abusive conditions to earn that little extra cash which they can send home to their loved ones.”

Mikalauskas said that when this happened, his company tried to join forces with DIER “and platforms like Bolt” in an attempt to keep doing the right thing, but none of them cooperated and Bolt went as far as to terminate their contract.

Questions sent to the Department for Industrial and Employment Relations have so far remained unanswered.