Until politicians are paid by the hour, the gig economy will be a full-time stress

When I first saw a Milkrun poster advertising grocery deliveries in just 10 minutes, it sounded as impossible as perpetual motion, or a constructive debate about the Voice. I couldn’t see how they could do it, unless Milkrun had built a teleporter, or tapped the energy of pre-schoolers high on Easter Show chocolate.

It was impossible, which is why Milkrun runs no more. But for a while, they managed through dozens of private inner-city convenience stores, and a flotilla of hipsters aboard electric bikes. I loved Milkrun and its competitors Voly and Send for sourcing RATs during lockdown, and urgent nappy deliveries for our newborn – that is, whenever I was happy paying extra not to leave the house. They were perfect for price-insensitive hermits.

The deliveries often ran late, but they compensated with generous discount codes. I felt good about ordering from the little guy, too, even though Milkrun was partially funded by the decidedly non-little Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar from Atlassian.

There were just a few other tiny problems – well, fatal problems. Milkrun was chronically understocked, and the more common an item was – like, erm, milk – the more likely it was to be “back soon”. Then there was competition like Woolies’ Metro60, offering deliveries within an hour from a much wider range.

Oh, and Milkrun lost money, a reported $10 an order on average as of June, and while CEO Dany Milham claimed an improvement since the early days (when it was $40 per order) it wasn’t exactly viable. It sounds like their most efficient deliveries were of investor cash – they burnt $86 million of it.

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As sad as I am that the founders of Atlassian no longer subsidise our nappies, the main reason to mourn Milkrun is that unlike other app-based delivery services, they paid their staff properly.

Also, they hired them as staff, rather than independent contractors who didn’t have to be paid if there was a lull. Too often, the convenience of delivery services is built on massive job insecurity for the deliverers. That’s why apps nag us to tip them, and why precariously-employed riders so often swerve through equally precarious gaps in the traffic, increasing their chances of making a decent living, if not remaining alive. And there are a lot of them – a recent UWA study found UberEats had more employees (59,000) than WA’s Education Department.

In 2017, most of Australia’s workforce (56 per cent) were in insecure work – that is, jobs that weren’t full-time, and without basic entitlements like sick and holiday pay. So those Milkrun riders, getting full-time employment, holiday pay and super, were exceptions to the rule. Perhaps if the company had been stingier, it might have survived? The TWU reckons so.