Uber, Grubhub and DoorDash must pay NYC delivery workers an $18 minimum wage::New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Moyne rejected a bid by Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub to block a bill requiring a minimum wage for app-based delivery workers.
Excellent.
The sad thing is that they’re probably just gonna shut down shop there and hurt these workers. Not justifying their low payment at all. Just fuck. Capitalism is fucked up.
If they leave, people are still going to want food delivered. The job still exists. Uber just isn’t there to skim their money and squeeze drivers dry
Restaurants used to just have their own delivery drivers. Crazy, right? Like Phillip J. Fry.
I delivered pizza and later Chinese food for years, working directly for a restaurant. I get the sense you got a way better level of service from that arrangement, as well, versus the Uber Eats randos you get these days. You sure as shit did from places where I was a driver.
My wife and I have gone back to when we order food, like our pizza night, ordering directly from the place. I know the drivers are getting paid a decent wage and without all the extra fees it’s more reasonably priced. Plus the food actually arrives in a timely fashion and is still hot rather than the driver doing a bunch or other deliveries before us and the food being cold.
The worst is when they are driving for 2 different apps. I’ll have them go right by my house, skip the drop off, then I see them waiting somewhere else. Then they come back to actually make the delivery 20 minutes later.
In-house delivery drivers are so much better.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it – we’re talking trade balances here – once we’ve brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they’re making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selling them here – once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel – once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider to be prosperity – y’know what? There’s only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode
high-speed pizza delivery
I haven’t read Snow Crash in decades. I think I’ll revisit it.
I was blown away the first time. Only had the audio book but sat there, ok he’s describing the internet, vr, and a country ruled by corporate interests… Big Whooop. Wait, published in 1992? There’s some interesting predictions, and ideas surrounding technology but still grounded in reality. A bit of Alt-history.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
As soon as I read the word Deliverator a smile came across my face. An actual Snow Crash reference.
Quality of service from UberEats and DoorDash kind of sucks. Bags are often left directly in front of the door, so you can’t open the door to get it without smashing everything. Sometimes after an hour they just seem to give up and cancel. If the restaurant doesn’t have something, they don’t reach out, you just don’t get it, or get some other random thing… then you have to reach out to the app for a refund, but dinner still sucks. Sometimes you get some other persons meal, again, no real way to fix it…. Get a refund and hope their taste is similar enough to tolerate. Sometimes the driver is a smoker and the meal smells and tastes like smoke… but too late, already tipped. Then, they send out emails saying you report too much stuff as being wrong, and claim you’re taking advantage of the system and that this money comes out of the hand of hardworking people… basically trying to guilt you into not reporting real legitimate issues with the order. How about DoorDash or Uber pony up the cash when the system they put in places break down and suck shit.
Lots of first world problems, but still really annoying, especially when it comes at such a premium price.
Doubt it. NYC is an enormous market, 10 million people (20 mil if you count people that commute to NYC for work). They might add extra fees, though.
Nah, they’ll just add yet another surcharge to the meals. Food through DoorDash is already at least double vs getting it yourself. What’s a little more. They’ll probably look at the average deliveries per hour and use that to divide up the $18… then pad it a bit to make sure they don’t come up short. Corporate will likely turn a profit on this, unless is makes orders drop significantly. But I have to assume the regular delivery customers are pretty price insensitive.
The point is realising that you can pay a liveable wage and still be profitable.
So if all this happens, that’s great.
I get the legal distinction between 1099 and W-2 worker but it’s pretty crazy that it’s allowed to pay someone below minimum wage because of that distinction.
Like, SOMEONE is doing an hour of labor, and it’s allowed that they get paid less than the minimum wage? Is there actually any reason we as a society should be OK with that, or is it just a legal technicality we can’t get rid of without making a bunch of plumbers making $80/hr fill out paperwork ensuring they make more than the minimum?
Delivery services are trash.
How does this work with the way these delivery apps work?
Correct me if I’m wrong since I’ve never worked for one of these outfits, but the way I understood it was anytime you want to work you just log into the app and make yourself available, and you randomly get assigned nearby jobs. If there are no jobs to do (middle of the night or w/e), then you get no pay. With this change, when are you eligible for the minimum wage? If everyone in NYC logs into the app at once, will everyone get minimum wage?
How will they prioritize volume? Or can everyone join and make 18/hr all at once?
