Parcel carriers have it so tough
If you want the bonus, you have to pee in the bottle to save time: The new Sunday evening thriller from Cologne takes the precarious circumstances in the parcel industry to task. It's a topic that's tough on many levels.
Shivering and completely soaked, Natalie Förster (Tinka Fürst) stands at a Cologne parcel center at half past five in the morning. She is wearing a Santa Claus costume and is actually already completely done with the day. But this, her very first day as an undercover parcel carrier, hasn't even really started yet. What follows is the daily odyssey of tens of thousands of delivery drivers in Germany: loading and unloading parcels in all weathers - here in the pouring rain; up and down dozens of flights of stairs; being snapped at by recipients, bosses and other drivers; going home with a wage that is barely enough to live on.
"Des anderen Last" is not only a really good crime thriller, but above all a cracking social critique at prime time. The precarious circumstances and excesses of the parcel delivery industry have been known for a long time, but rarely have they been brought to the point as aptly and vividly as in this "Tatort". There's a messenger who pees in bottles so as not to waste time chasing his own delivery record (352 parcels in one day) and the bonus payment that goes with it. A former letter carrier who has to continue working as a messenger after his retirement and a former driver who lives on the street selling homeless magazines after his van was stolen.
There is a system to the situation
Because, and this becomes very clear in this thriller, the conditions in the industry are systematic. "The problem lies in the large number of opaque subcontractor chains in parcel delivery," according to a report commissioned by the Hugo Sinzheimer Institute for Labor and Social Law of the Hans Böckler Foundation. According to the report, almost every second parcel deliverer in Germany is employed by subcontractors. And the labor law regulations and comparatively good working conditions that apply to the postal service, for example, can be circumvented by hiring subcontractors - portrayed in the film by a rather unscrupulous company boss, who in turn is driven by the strict requirements of the larger clients.
And they perfected their system years ago: In 2016 alone, the number of parcel service providers registered with the Federal Network Agency doubled to 2016, and since then it has even risen to 72,000. According to the report, retail service providers, above all Amazon, are mainly responsible for the rapid increase - because the companies rely on independent parcel deliverers instead of the well-known parcel service providers such as DHL and Hermes.
And this could also be the biggest loophole in the new postal law currently being introduced by the German government. The amendment is actually intended to make clients, i.e. the postal service or other mail order companies, responsible for their subcontractors: Sanctions are threatened for violations of occupational health and safety standards. However, while Post and Hermes are considered postal service providers, Amazon, for example, operates in a different sector - and could therefore circumvent the new law. For the thousands and thousands of parcel carriers, this would still mean: stress, stress, stress. And precisely when everyone else is looking forward to the best times of the year.
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In the ARD's prime-time television series "Des anderen Last," a crime thriller set in the parcel delivery industry, the protagonist faces demanding conditions that are systemic, mirroring the findings of a report on the sector's reliance on opaque subcontractor chains. Despite the new postal law aimed at holding clients responsible for their subcontractors, loopholes could allow companies like Amazon to avoid accountability, continuing the struggles for parcel carriers.
On the edge of a crime scene, a tense detective from Cologne's popular crime thriller series scrutinizes the delivery records of a suspect, revealing a familiar pattern of reliance on subcontractors to handle the ever-growing volume of parcels—a shadowy system represented in a gripping crime thriller episode, mixing genre and social critique.
Source: www.ntv.de
