The workplace. They operate by the seat of their bikes. Bike messengers work in a rough office - the streets of the Twin Cities.
by Allam Hannah
Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 6 1997
Bike messenger Amber Elandt ignored the "Hey, baby, can you give me a ride?" comment as she pedaled past a group of leering men on her mint-green Bianchi road bike. After a solid year of that kind of abuse and much worse, she's used to it.
Elandt, 21, doesn't report sexual harassment to her human resources department for a very simple reason - no such department exists. Her job offers no health or dental plan, frequent injury and most likely the lowest commission in town. For nearly 20 years, bike messengers in the Twin Cities have faced the same workplace issues as Elandt. The 35 to 40 metro-area messengers said they toy with the idea of unionizing but don't have enough clout to make it work and worry about losing their job's biggest draw - independence.
These urban antiheroes come complete with tattoos, body piercings and a story for every chipped tooth. They also organize community service projects and act as a family, providing food, shelter and bike parts to needy messengers.
Behind "Jesus Hates You" T-shirts and countless traffic violations lives a unique kinship circle.
"If you wear a business suit to work, you can go ahead and assume I don't want anything to do with you. Until and unless you demonstrate that I should."
That passage is from The Multiplier, a local magazine for "couriers, freaks, combinations thereof." The skinny red pamphlet is one of the many forces that unite the always-evolving bike-messenger community in its scorn for "stiffs in suits."
As the story goes, bike messengers arrived on the local scene not quite 20 years ago, a speedier mutation of walking couriers. Somewhere along the way, they became a family, although some would argue "counter culture" better describes them.
"They're definitely a breed of their own," said Dave Maddaus, general manager of Express Messenger Systems, who has seen a motley crew of couriers come and go over the years. Some have green hair, others dye theirs to resemble leopard spots. Some couriers refuse to deliver to fur companies because they worry about cruelty to animals.
"We had a satellite office downtown where we could leave packages for the messengers, but it was shut down about a year ago because it became a kind of hangout for the bikers, even ones from other companies," Maddaus said.
The shutdown didn't faze the closely knit courier community. They now hang out in a downtown apartment they call "The Space," a pit stop for tired messengers that contains old furniture, a refrigerator, stereo, spare bike locks and messenger 'zines from around the world. They won't give The Space's exact location, although they say it wouldn't be hard to find because there are usually dozens of bikes outside.
"It's like a co-op or a lounge," said bike messenger Chris (Crispy Corpse) Darsow. "You can sleep there on a slow day or use the spare bike if yours messes up."
The Space is leased by Ellis (Eli) Wangelin, although all the messengers chip in for food, rent money and furnishings. Wangelin strays from the typical twenty-something, college-dropout image of the bike messenger. He's 36 and holds a degree in criminal justice. For years he donned a suit and worked 9-to-5 at the federal Justice Department, but a car accident about a year ago forced him to give up his desk job because he can't sit for long periods of time. He hasn't looked back since.
"I make enough to live on and enough to travel," said Wangelin, who now heads the Minneapolis Bike Messenger Association (MBMA) and sports a mohawk "because he can."
"Money doesn't motivate me in this job," he said. "This is just a way of life that makes us happy."
Sharing is a central theme in the bike messenger community, Wangelin said.
"Outlaws, drinkers, smokers, sign-runners," said Wangelin, rattling off some messenger stereotypes he wants to dispel. "You never hear about the bread, books and bikes we've donated."
Wangelin said the MBMA has helped charities such as Sharing and Caring Hands, the Prisoner's Literature Project and The Bridge.
Bike messengers are not saints, Wangelin admitted, but they aren't the curbside cowboys that their often tattooed and multi-pierced bodies might suggest.
Life in fast lane
Darsow, a self-described "walking scar," is quick to flash a chipped-tooth grin. Scabs and bruises peek out from the ripped sleeves of a red T-shirt and the bottoms of his baggy cutoffs. He knows it's a good week when secretaries at the offices on his delivery route look him over and say "Hmmm, no new injuries."
Like Elandt and most other messengers, Darsow can't afford health insurance. Sure, they all know couriers who have collapsed from hypothermia or who have suffered from broken bones but, they said, they're young and life is full of risks.
Elandt is one of the four female bike messengers in the metro area. Her hair is styled in a blonde pixie cut; her face is makeup-free, and her body, dressed in cycling wear, is as toned as a professional athlete's from biking 25 or more miles a day, five days a week.
Like most Twin Cities bike messengers, Elandt calls herself an independent contractor. That translates into no insurance, no overtime pay, no salary. Instead, independent couriers get a commission that ranges from 45 to 65 percent. An additional $40 a month comes out of their checks for pager and radio service. On average, they earn about $300 a week.
"We don't get paid what we deserve," Elandt said. "I work a full-time job. Why shouldn't I get benefits for that?"
Bike messengers complain that lines get blurry when discussing whether they should be called employees or independent contractors. The state Department of Labor and Industry lists five criteria establishing who is an independent contractor - specifically the right to control when, where and how work is done. Most bike messengers in the Twin Cities work scheduled hours, and some are required to wear uniforms. Those rules directly violate a messenger's status as an independent contractor.
Deric Peterson, systems manager at Street Fleet Bicycle Express, said the 11 couriers he supervises wear uniforms voluntarily as part of their individual contracts. Although he doesn't set schedules, Peterson said Bicycle Express has "hours of operation and the messengers work shifts during those times."
Bike messengers become invaluable to their clients with their skill to maneuver through downtown in less than 15 minutes, delivering documents seconds before a court hearing or transporting an artist's prized portfolio unscathed. But of the seven courier services that employ the metro area's bike messengers, only two, Metro Legal Services and Quicksilver Express Courier, offer workers' compensation and other benefits.
Metro Legal eliminates the gray areas by treating all bicycle messengers as employees. Taxes are taken directly out of their paychecks, they receive health and dental coverage, work specific hours and are required to wear uniforms and helmets. With regular pay of $6 an hour plus commission, Metro Legal's messengers earn about $10 an hour total.
Their system benefits both employer and employee, said Metro Legal dispatcher Troy Lockwood. In a company where nearly all the clients are located in upscale legal offices, complaints about messengers' scraggly appearance led Metro Legal to start requiring uniforms about three years ago, he said. If the messengers were independent contractors, that wouldn't have been possible.
The other companies that use bike messengers don't worry about talk of the couriers forming a union to demand better wages and benefits. The tactic has been tried in New York City and San Francisco with mixed results. In the Twin Cities, bike messengers are too worried about losing their jobs to focus on that kind of concerted effort.
"If they were to attempt something like {unionizing}, I have around 60 applications waiting in my desk from people who want their job," said Peterson, a manager at Bicycle Express. "If we couldn't work things out with them, we'd just have to start over."
Most messengers still think they get the short end of the stick.
"I'm out there whether it's 100 degrees or 30-below and my take for each run is less than 50 percent," said Mark Sundlin. "We enjoy the freedom the job gives but we'd like to see better working conditions. You don't want to get abused for too long."
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