2y ago

Uber, Grubhub and DoorDash must pay NYC delivery workers an $18 minimum wage

www.engadget.com

A first-of-its kind law requiring a minimum wage for app-based delivery workers will take effect after a judge rejected the companies' bid to block it.

Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub won’t be able to get out of paying minimum wage to their New York City delivery workers after all, following a judge’s decision to reject their bid to skirt the city’s new law. The upcoming law, which is still pending due to the companies’ ongoing lawsuit, aims to secure better wage protections for app-based workers. Once the suit settles, third-party delivery providers will have to pay delivery workers a minimum wage of roughly $18 per hour before tips, and keep up with the yearly increases, Reuters reports.

The amount, which will increase April 1 of every year, is slightly higher than the city’s standard minimum wage, taking into account the additional expenses gig workers face. At the moment, food delivery workers make an estimated $7-$11 per hour on average.

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2y ago

Uber, Grubhub and DoorDash must pay NYC delivery workers an $18 minimum wage

www.engadget.com /uber-grubhub-and-doordash-must-pay-nyc-delivery-workers-an-18-minimum-wage-213145847.html

76 comments

- Don't worry the drivers will just refuse to pick up your order. Basically the way it works given the companies show the tip to drivers. Especially door dash. Which create an extremely toxic problem where drivers can decide what they think is worth their time or pick something up and fuck with someone's food cuz they didn't get "tipped"
  
  Capitalism at its finest
  
  That's an auction. I need to keep bidding to get my order
- It's not a tip, it's a bribe. A tip is given after service has been rendered.
  
  Postmates would only ask for a tip after the delivery was completed. But now they don't exist anymore so...
- Okay, Mr. Pink.
- If you are too lazy to pickup your own food and need someone to deliver it to you, then yeah it is your job to pay those people. You expect someone to want to bring you food for free?
  
  No, I think he expects their employer to pay them through the fees they collect. If the tip is mandatory, it's not a tip, it's a fee and it should be included in the up front costs with payroll taxes etc deducted.
  
  Invalids and disabled people use these services too. The problem isn't they expect it for free, the problem is the people who do the work are not being paid a living wage to do it.
  
  There's already a delivery fee
  
  A tip is merely subsidizing a company's inability to pay its employees appropriately. I really could care less seeing Stanley Tang (door dash founder/ owner) gamble (and lose) hundreds of thousands of dollars on hustler casino live playing poker while simultaneously claiming his company can't pay a living wage.
  
  Go back and reread what they said but slower this time.
  
  You aren’t a smart person, hey?
  
  Pretty sure they get paid regardless of if they're tipped.
Remember when minimum wage driver work went up for a vote in California under prop 22 and we still voted against it? Im always so mad every election cycle i feel like everyone is a complete moron working against themselves
- Copying my own comment from another thread:
  In those workers’ defense, the delivery companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a disinformation campaign to trick the public into thinking that voting for 22 was in their own interest.
  It’s absurd that it was on the ballot in the first place.
- Unfortunately corporate advertising works when it comes to elections
- Is it fair to call people stupid when they're facing a literal corporate propaganda campaign? I'd sooner reach for "corporations are evil" than "people are stupid" in that case. Remember how people used to treat you if you were against the Iraq war? And today, we know that thing was unnecessary and awful. Sometimes powerful people just manage to convince us of things that aren't true.
  
  You dont have to always be the victim, dont strip away your obligation for due diligence just because some corporation made a nice commercial.
  
  It's not one or the other. The corporate propaganda works because people are stupid.
Guess who's about to keep all employee tips... A minimum wage is a great first step, but stricter regulation will be needed to curtail the absurd levels of greed from these megacorps.
- Guess who's going to stop playing 20% for tips now that I don't have to subsidize a subhuman wage?
Layoffs incoming.
- Nope.
Honest question to the lemmy users here, but do people believe the solution to the affordability crisis in the US is to raise the salaries of every single job out there (menial or skilled)?
Looking to have a real conversation and not just a 'fuck capitalism' one (and yes, I know it sucks, but I'm looking for a real conversation).
- No, the optimal solution is to have a society where all the blood and sweat equity that has been put into the system by workers is finally repaid, and the capitalist leeches of the world are knocked off their thrones. Workers created the abundance that allowed the billionaires of the world to get fat while they let others starve, and only once that misappropriation of resources is ended can we fix the issues that the oligarchs have created.
  
  I agree. I'm having a hard time understanding how raising the salary of delivery workers to what an entry level doctor, engineers or lawyer is going to solve the problem. There are two things that might happen, either all the other salaries in the world will then also increase (and thus services too), keeping the wealth disparity the same, or, since these delivery companies already operate on such thin margins (GrubHub net profit for past years have been negative $millions), they are going to pass the cost to the consumer. It creates an interesting problem where then it's too expensive to get delivery so you don't order food, which means less delivery jobs are needed so people are laid off, preventing people from making money. Also, from what I've seen, most of the workers seems to be immigrants. While I'm not saying we take advantage of immigrants, but these low barrier to entry jobs have always been helpful for those who have complicated statuses.
  I'm not bashing any delivery worker (I used to work at a wings shop in my youth), but the amount of interaction you spend with a delivery worker is usually minimal. It doesn't require any formal training and neither being a bad one is going to affect whether you are in the mood for Thai food.
- Yes, wages need to proportionally keep up with the rate of inflation, otherwise you are literally getting paid less to do the same work every year.
  
  This part I haven't figured out. Seems chicken and egg to me. If we keep raising wages to match inflation, the costs of good measured to match inflation will also go up and we end up with higher inflation right?
- Yes. Higher wages actually is the solution.
- I dont think raising minimum wage will help. It just forces the service to raise the cost of the delivery fee. I don't know the answer to the affordability crisis, but it ain't that!
  I come in peace, because you wanted an honest answer/real conversation. .
  
  Well. It doesn't force the service to do so, the higher ups just decide they want to preserve their pockets and charge the customer more.
  
  Yes @missveeronica, love peace, love discussion! I am curious what other alternatives we have or what people can think of. It's obviously a very tough problem since the US government can't seem to (agree to) fix it. Things that pop in my mind:
  I understand this is a basic overstatement, but in general, people work so that they can afford a house. I think housing prices have gone bonkers in recent years, partially due to foreign investors and the flipping houses/Airbnb craze. One thing that pops into my mind is to impose a flip tax, where unless the owner personally lives in a house for 4-5 years, they pay a large tax when selling the home. This of course applies to corporations as well but with the added spice of larger tax if the inventory was empty the entire time. If we can make housing affordable again, I think the need for higher salaries is less of an issue.
  Revamp the food stamp system and make it universal to everyone. This ties into universal basic income, but I think if everyone was part of a food stamp program, it would make it less stigmatized and there would be a wider offering of choices available. This could be very cool.
  Aside from the usual tax billionaires/term limits/socialize healthcare ideas, it seems that we have an issue where things can get out of hand from people who are greedy. I don't know how to solve this problem, but I feel like if there was some website that showed what companies are owned by who, we could vote with our dollars and level the playing field. I hate that I found out after years the gym I belong to is owned by some nutjob and I've been patronizing him. If there was some visibility into where my money was going, it might educate people where their money is going.
- are you really questioning if people deserve a competitive wage in which they can actually live on?
  Do you believe the solution is instead to limit which jobs get paid a wage you can survive on? I'm not saying all jobs, but you better believe higher wages to the workers and less to the C-suite is 1000000000000% a better solution.
  Do you have ANY idea how much wealth has been transferred from the workers to the elite since just 2020?? Open your fucking eyes
  According to Forbes, the 10 richest people, as of 30 November 2021, have seen their fortunes grow by $821 billion dollars since March 2020.
  The wealth of the world’s 10 richest men has doubled since the pandemic began. The incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of (and following) COVID-19. Widening economic, gender, and racial inequalities—as well as the inequality that exists between countries—are tearing our world apart. This is not by chance, but choice: “economic violence” is perpetrated when structural policy choices are made for the richest and most powerful people. This causes direct harm to us all, and to the poorest people, women and girls, and racialized groups most.
  src
  
  I am not saying people don't deserve a living wage. Raising the minimum wage helps solve short term problems, but from what I see, doesn't help fix the high cost of living. The cost of living needs to be lowered somehow, and I was curious what people thought on this. I don't think the money to subsidize the workers are going to come from the CEOs salaries...
- It's the wrong question. The question isn't "why shouldn't people get paid more" but "why should profit even exist?"
  Profit exists only as excess value and does nothing to help anyone except those already so rich they can't spend it.
  
  I don't think it's the wrong question. Profits exists in every society and many countries are capitalist or have their own flavor of capitalism. If the idea is to create a system where those who excel are rewarded, then profits need and should exist. In a capitalist economy, this drives better products, better services, etc. Additionally, the opposite of profit (loss), serves as a great metric to determine whether something is worth doing. If the customer wants a pure gold toilet, but only has $50 to spend, your going to offer them spray paint instead of the real thing.
  There are some bad apples that abuse profits, and disproportionately hoard all the value, but I'm looking to discuss my original question.
To those who live there: How does $18/hour in NYC compare to $20/hour in California (for the fast food thing recently passed here)? Is that a living wage there?
- Household income for me and my wife was around $150k and we got priced out of the city. A lot of Dashers take late night trains deep deep outside of the city, or they live with half a dozen other Dashers on alternating schedules, sharing beds.
- Not a resident of either but it's worth mentioning that this is NYC not NY state and California probably has suburban and rural areas that are much, much cheaper cost of living than NYC.
I don't see how this doesn't kill business for these companies.
Edit: I'm not defending the decision not to pay people more in general. It's more about the service going away altogether because the wage cost will be passed into the customers. But if that's what you fuckers want ok. I don't live in NY so it doesn't affect me. Enjoy losing access to all your delivery services.
- If you can't afford to pay your employees a fair, living wage, then you don't deserve to stay in business. Capitalism in a nutshell.
  
  I would say regulated capitalism in a nutshell. Raw capitalism wants to pay workers as little as possible for as much production as possible.
  
  Especially if it's a service. Maybe if your service business can't generate enough revenue to pay your employees then it's a service that doesn't need to exist?
- I don't see why that's a problem.
  
  Normally I wouldn't give a shit. But for these P2P businesses the unit economics for the business to be profitable requires passing on that expense to the end customer.
  I'm not going to pay an extra $10+ dollars or whatever for my meal when I'm already tipping, paying tax, and service charge.
  So I'm saying while it sounds awesome to pay people more, in this case it will just cause these services to go away.
  Everyone down voted me like I'm defending the companies, but that's not my intention. It's more that these services as they are won't exist, so everyone loses. The employees lose the job and their customers lose the service. The company goes out of business too but that's not the issue I care about. We will effectively all lose delivery services except those willing to pay a lot for it, which stifles demand and makes the problem worse.
  Anyway... I'm totally willing to hear counterarguments and certainly on the side of the workers, but the knee-jerk downvote and talk about how everyone needs a living wage isn't helping dive into the nuance of how these businesses operate and make money and what impact this decision will have on the business model.
- I thought the invisible hand of the market was a good thing...
  If your business plan cannot make a profit under the laws of where you want to operate, why should anyone care?
- Good. If you can't afford to pay your employees minimum wage, you should die as a business.
- They can make less profit in order to cover paying employees a fair wage.
  They will still be make a profit, which means all of their business expenses are covered. Those who pocket that profit will also be richer than you can ever hope to be.
  I don’t see how this doesn’t kill business for these companies.
  That's because you don't know what you're talking about.

76 comments