Food delivery service Gorillas has announced it will lay off 300 workers, mostly in Berlin.

The "start-up" is already notorious for layoffs. After Berlin delivery drivers ("riders") fought back with wildcat strikes against lousy working conditions and labor law violations in 2021, there was a hail of layoffs. This time, employees in administration are to be affected in order to consolidate the company, which is bloated according to plan, and to become "profitable in the long term".

Start-ups like Gorillas show the insanity of capital increase and the contradiction between capital and work in a particularly acute form. A lot of capital is pumped into companies that are supposed to serve needs that do not even exist yet. In the hope of eventually achieving a monopoly position in a large market, years of losses are calculated in for the beginning. The risk of this expansion into the unknown is borne first by the workers, whose number in the administration at Gorillas is now to be halved, because the windy business strategy does not seem to work out. Apparently, the company also relies on pressuring the workers into self-termination in order to circumvent regulations. The Gorillas Workers Collective, an organization of Gorillas workers, writes: "That's why they try to get workers to leave on their own: Through harassment and unfair treatment." Gorillas workers already familiar with this, as is a great deal of class-struggle solidarity, which workers are sure to push even further in these coming storms.