Several Dutch news outlets, like local Amsterdam news channel AT5 and National news channel NOS, report on the terrible circumstances of Indian laborers in a so-called ‘dark kitchen’ in Weesp.
A dark kitchen – like a dark store – is a restaurant without visitors, serving only online orders and home deliveries. A recent insurrection by the Arbeidsinspectie (Labor inspection) revealed three Indian workers without a permit who had to work 6 days a week for a very low wage paid in cash, and had to sleep in the restaurant itself, with one person even staying in a cramped storage cupboard.
This form of modern slavery is yet another sad example of the downsides of the platform economy, fostering relentless race-to-the-bottom exploitation of human labor, urban culture and sociability, nature. One person’s ‘seamless’ or ‘frictionless’ convenience is another person’s sufferation.
