> Advocacy groups like Los Deliveristas Unidos, which led the fight for the pay standard, are working to keep deliveristas educated about the benefits of the minimum wage.
I think "educated" is an interesting choice of word, there, given the rest of the article.
I think much more people should be educated about the benefits of minimum wage, even here.
Some people think it only benefits the workers at the cost of everybody else. But it also benefits the market because the most inefficient companies that have business models so bad that they can't even provide minimum wage to their workers are weeded out. Also it benefits job market because workers that are not pushed to the wall financially have marginally higher chance to seek and find employment in a more efficient company than the one they are currently employed by.
delivery worker earnings increased from $11.72 per hour to $19.26 per hour after tips — a jump of 64 percent — since last year and total orders have gone up.
there are now 12,000 fewer delivery workers.
Sounds like a win for some workers. I would like to know the new total of workers though, is 12K fewer a lot? Seems like a lot.
I don't want to go back and pull the quotations, but there's a lot of "productivity has gone up! Deliveries per hour are up 1/3rd! this proves Uber and Doordash should have been doing this all along!" sentiment
contrasted with "It's nice to have a wage so I don't have to rush. I'm paid for my time not for deliveries. It's not fair, they seem to be giving hours to people who are more productive though!"
I'm skeptical about the numbers in this article, since there are a lot of nuances that it doesn't address. Many of the app-based delivery workers in the NYC metro area are migrants who lack legal work permits, so instead they rent someone else's identity/account on the apps. And counted among this drop in NYC delivery workers are several thousand who live in NYC but now work in Hoboken and Jersey City instead, since the wage law is NYC-specific.
If delivery workers are "full time employees", they should get the same protections, not just equal pay.
Many are attacked by dogs while delivering, by customers of their employer. That is a text book examples of job related injury! Also interfering with a post delivery is a federal crime, and violent assault!
But right now workers are gas lighted "you provoked the dog", or it "was your fault". Instead of compensation and paid sick leave, they have to pay hospital bill themselfs and are forced to take unpaid leave for recovery!
Some are even bullied not to report their attacker!
There is also social justice and racial argument! Most delivery workers are low income, while attackers who order deliveries are higher income!
Fair, but also many people that use this serve are disabled and elderly that are already paying a lot.. we could just tell old ppl they need to find another way to get food or they need to reach deeper into their social security checks.
Sounds like we shouldn't consider foundational infrastructure something that should turn a profit.
I’m consistently amazed at how many things our progenitors of society nailed - that we threw away trying to make profit, only to realise that serving everyone means that some elements of service will not turn profit.
I'm pretty sure those federal laws protect UPS/federal mail delivery. Private delivery services (packages, food, courier) are not protected by these laws. In the same way, none of the private services are allowed to use our mailboxes (different section of the same block of law).
> Post is a foundational infrastructure. It is protected by constitution.
I agree the post is a foundational infrastructure, that both the service itself and postal workers should be protected by law, and that we dog owners should control our dogs as well as being responsible for the cost of any dog attacks. (I’m originally from NYC but currently living in Berlin, Germany, where dog liability insurance is legally mandatory for the owners of any dogs living here. Good public policy! Yes I do have the required insurance.)
But, as a tangent: no, the postal service is not protected by the constitution, only by statutory law. The Postal Clause of the constitution gives Congress the power to establish a postal service but not an obligation to do so, nor a requirement for any such congressionally established postal service to be a public entity. Congress could choose to abolish or privatize USPS more than it already has, and Republicans have often pushed in that direction.
> Post (as federal institution) has constitutional protection from local states, all sorts of thugs, and people who would interfere with mail delivery.
>
> That clause handles what local states must do, it is not about federal goverment!
That clause does indeed empower the federal government to statutorily legislate the types of protections you describe, but those protections do not directly spring from the text of the constitution without enabling federal statutory legislation - as do for example the restrictions on the states from the Bill of Rights as incorporated against the states by the 14th Amendment.
These services are super expensive nowadays. By the time you add service fee, delivery fee and tips, your cold and soggy burger starts to get quite expensive.
Well your can’t have the economic benefits of the caste system without social cost of it, so either it’s subsidized by investors to feel rich or makes no sense
The math is always kind of mind boggling, I mean you assume it adds up somehow but it feels like 15+15+15 for three sandwiches is about 82 dollars.
News yesterday said food generally is up 20-25% since Covid, but maybe the reason that even this high number feels quite low for restaurants/delivery is that it really is creeping up on 33% or more after you account for shrinkflation as well as markup
I don’t understand how Dominos can deliver hot pizza for a $5-10 fee+tip and keep their drivers happy (everyone I’ve ever talked to who drove for Dominos liked doing it and the money was good and remembered fondly even if they’d moved on to better employment).
Yet these apps charge something like $20-50 for delivery?
Apps have a lot more overhead built into their deliveries.
Dominoes has a small radius around it often enabling multiple drop offs before returning. Dominoes drivers always return to the restaurant after a delivery, and the restaurant is optimized for that handoff generally with a dedicated parking space etc.
Apps do longer deliveries from more restaurants who don’t prioritize their time etc. Apps also need to be inherently profitable thus some of the charge is paying for the app itself. Really Apps are like someone took an extremely efficient system and thought how can we make this worse in every possible way.
Maybe there should instead be lots of locally organized delivery services instead for areas within local radius?
Wasn't there some guy who made a local version of some delivery service or something and was profitable on day one? I remember there was a hn link on it that came up a couple of times
Because Dominos as a business has good fundamentals that can afford decent pay and benefits, subsidizing the cost of delivery with profits from the food.
Delivery apps are ultimately pyramid schemes that were initially funded by zero-interest investors who eventually cashed out to greater fools at a profit. Now that the investment funding has dried up, they need to get money from somewhere and that is by adding a ridiculous overhead
I used to order pizza delivery 2-4 times a month. The drivers worked for the store, knew my address, and provided prompt delivery.
My local Pizza Hut has since outsourced their delivery to DoorDash. Now, even though I'm only two miles away from the store, it takes 30+ minutes for the DoorDash driver to bring my order once the store says its "out for delivery". I no longer order pizza delivery.
Same here, most of our town's local pizza deliveries have moved away from having in-house staff deliver, and are now outsourced to DoorDash. And the service is slower, the pizzas sometimes arrive cold, and it's more expensive for customers than in-house deliver used to be. We've also stopped getting delivery.
Because delivery is part of Domino's business model. Sure, you can walk in an get a pizza; but, they expect to deliver pizzas and their prices are based on that. A driver leaves with several orders, because they use a smaller delivery area and can optimize deliveries.
Doordash et al. normally have a driver picking up one order and delivering it. I've seen a driver picking up two orders; but, it's rare.
I feel that problem really is the middle-man here squandering lot of money. Restaurants have tight margins so issues are not likely there. Delivery people paid hourly rate is not that high, so even just 2 or 3 deliveries per hour should not be massively expensive. So all of this money must end up with middle-man. That is payment processors or these platforms?
How come they get the big cut? While they have most scalable costs. Shouldn't they be there only taking tens of cents per order? Maybe they should outsource the work more to cheaper people.
For one, there are twice as many businesses trying to make a profit with the apps as compared to dominoes.
The owner of the Domino’s Pizza wants to make a profit, so he pays his drivers to get the pizza there fast. One company.
When it comes to food delivered by an app, but the restaurant and the company providing the app both want to make a profit.
(Yes, the franchise fee paid Domino’s Corporate technically involves profit for another company but that ruins my argument so I’m conveniently leaving that out. But in all seriousness, there seems to be an economies of scale there that keeps the franchise fee low enough as to be a manageable cost.)
This kind of discourse always strikes me as "BREAKING NEWS: luxury items are expensive". Wide-ranging food delivery is very new and investor subsidized, when really it's a labour intensive luxury item.
To me it always comes down to cost of living... Lower limit of cost of living in west is not low enough to make these services viable. And that is really the political problem.
If several people in a similar location want burgers from the same restaurant at the same time? Great.
On the other hand, if they're in different parts of town? Can't carpool.
If they order 30 minutes apart? Unless your service is slow as hell, can't carpool.
If they order from different restaurants? One customer's food is going to be sitting around, maybe getting cold, while the driver stands around waiting to be served at the second restaurant. If that's not acceptable, can't carpool.
If the customer density is high enough these things work out OK - but a lot of these services operate in areas where the customer density doesn't look high enough.
I spent a little bit of time on the doordash subreddit, and I know just as a matter of fact that there is an insane churn rate of dashers (not exactly a surprise). Many people who don't have a stable job (and often don't have skills) start to deliver food order, hoping it gives some income with some flexibility (family, illness etc). Then they discover lots of issues with the platform and the delivery model itself, and they end up earning less than minimum wage. Then they realize it's not worth the effort and quit.
With that in mind,
> An Uber spokesperson, for example, said the report proves that the law was a "job killer" because there are now 12,000 fewer delivery workers.
My guess is that 10k out of 12k would have quit anyway within a few minths in the old model, and the total amount of orders delivered isn't reduced by that much. I don't view this as a negative.
It sounds like pandering to some kind of deity that demands jobs filled above all else, at all costs, and a job description be deemed a word of the deity itself.
Corporate capitalism in a nutshell... I should really get around to reading that tech feudalism book I keep hearing about. As a historian, sounds plausible.
I mean, look at what a lot of these business owners refer to themselves as: "Job Creators". Almost god-like. They are The Creators. As if they will entirety of civilization into existence by waving their magical staff around and Creating Jobs. When they do their holy work, jobs spring up like lettuce from the fertile ground. Give them more subsidies and tax breaks, and they'll Create even more.
Just as McDonalds and Walmart perfected a method for using almost entirely untrained workers immediately, the “gig economy” has discovered that they can run continuously off of a few weeks work from most “employees” before they realize it’s a scam.
> said the report proves that the law was a "job killer"
No every job and not every company should exist. If your job can't provide minimum wage then either your business in not productive enough to deserve place in the market or you are exploiting your employees.
I like to see it this way: If a worker can't live a decent life without benefits on what you pay them, then society as a whole is subsidizing you. And in doing so, we're biasing competition in favour of businesses that depend on subsidies over businesses that are well run enough to be able to pay a livable salary. We'd be better off with companies like that not existing, even if it means paying better benefits to some people to make up for some lost jobs - it improve the chances of success and ability to create more jobs for companies that payer a living wage.
Yes, that's what we've decided as a modern society. If you're too old, too young or too unhealthy to be a productive member of society, a civil society will provide you with the basics of life anyway.
And it's not black or white. There are lots of people who can contribute a little, but cannot contribute their full share. But we've set up the rules in a way that makes it very difficult for them to work and contribute. If you have income, your welfare often gets cut off completely. That's counter-productive. There are lots of people who should be able to get some of their income from work and some from welfare, and that's the way things should be, a gradual change from "all from welfare" to "all from work".
He wasn't talking about subsidizing people. Letting companies pay people too little is subsidizing those inefficient unproductive companies. Society might subsidize inefficient people because of humanity. Subsidizing inefficient unproductive companies is just dumb.
> Letting companies pay people too little is subsidizing those inefficient unproductive companies.
That's a direct subsidy to people assuming that too little subsidy is supplemented with welfare or food stamps. It may also be an indirect second-order subsidy to a company, but it is first and foremost a subsidy to people.
It's a subsidy to people, but it's the indirect subsidy to companies by allowing them to lean on people being underpaid and have society pick up the bill that is a problem.
You can "fix" that problem by eliminating welfare, or by ensuring companies pay enough. Since most of us don't want people to starve, either we're stuck with the problem, where we're distorting the market in a way that incentivizes behavior that harms society, or we level the playing field by ensuring companies pay enough.
I see this as economic pollution originating from those companies. They dip below the danger line because they can and it has so many negative societal effects that... it might be impossible to clean up.
Subsidizing companies to outcompete those able to be productive enough to pay livable wages creates a competitive pressure towards lower wages for more people, and creates a greater need for those subsidies.
Let's imagine someone working a standard full-time job. They put in the same hours as everyone else. Constraints make it so you can't really have 1.5 of a job or two, not really, not sustainably, so they have one job.
If an employee at the end of the month ends up having some kind of disposable income, that's a great result. If an employee at the end of the month ends up not having some kind of disposable income, but still have their needs met, that's an okay result.
But if they put in as many hours as everyone else and their income dips below some logistical threshold their work becomes unsustainable. Either someone else has to pay for their continued living or they sink. Now since companies figured out that government will help people on the verge of sinking, they would gradually lower pay below the threshold, while government makes up the difference from everyone else's pocket. They would do that, they /are/ doing that, so to combat this government imposes a minimum wage.
Not to say, that there aren't jobs that make sense to be below minimum wage, but the big bad actors force government's hand, just like one liar destroys everyone's trust in everyone else.
Question really is not about low wages, but so low wages you can not afford basics. Full time work, should always cover minimal housing(studio apartment, with heating), food(more than just rice), clothing(more than just fourth hand rags) and preventive health care with reasonable issues fixed.
If system can not reach this level there is lot to do to fix the system. Setting up minimum wages to level where this happens is one of them.
You're assuming society can function with only businesses that are well run enough to be able to pay a livable salary, which is quite a daring assumption even if it's one we'd all like to be true.
The problem isn't allowing functions to be carried out at a loss, but creating a situation where we reward only companies that underpay as a means to compete. If you believe it is too expensive to create jobs on the low end, then subsidize all of them, so the most efficient of those companies are not penalized.
The problem is adverse incentives that make it more profitable to do things that harm society.
> If your job can't provide minimum wage then either your business in not productive enough to deserve place in the market or you are exploiting your employees.
There are employees who can provide enough value to be worth hiring at a cost below minimum wage but not above it. A minimum wage is effectively a statement that they don't deserve a place in the market. The notion that everyone is worth at least minimum wage to whoever is paying them comes from ability privilege. Such people are real.
I hired one last weekend to help paint my house. Perfectly lovely guy but slow of thought and slower of motion. There is no little damage in dignity done by choosing to subsidize such people rather than allowing them to exchange their real work for real value.
> There is no little damage in dignity done by choosing to subsidize such people rather than allowing them to exchange their real work for real value.
But the damage is being done to society at large. By subsidizing that worker, taxpayer dollars are being used to prop up a business that should not exist instead of being spent on productive things like healthcare, education and infrastructure.
Imagine if I wanted to buy a Porsche, but decided it wasn’t worth the asking price, so I just pay less and make the government pay the rest like I have some right to have one just because. That is exactly what businesses are doing when they pay employees so little they require government assistance to live.
You can't survive on sub-minimum wage. If that person worked every hour they were capable of for you, they'd still need social benefits just to keep from being homeless. Working for less than you need to survive isn't dignity, it's desperation.
> Working for less than you need to survive isn't dignity
Are you saying some people don't deserve respect just because they can't support themselves? I think they should be able to work and contribute as well, saying we don't need them just because they can't provide for themselves isn't respectful.
I highly doubt that the most productive use these people can be put to in society is painting your house for sub minimum wage. Furthermore, I resent that I'm paying their social services for no benefit while you reap the rewards of them being able to accept sub-survival work because of my contribution.
It's a forum sponsored by a Venture Capital company, of course there is going to be a lot of simping for businesses here. A lot of Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires who will surely one day be a Captain of Industry among the business ownership class.
It makes me sad to see that there are enough members of the HN crowd who are completely in favor of capitalist exploitation that this comment would end up grey.
> “ Minimum pay, the idea, is that the worker doesn't have to rush, they have a wage," said Ajche.
Noted. DoorDash (should we call them DoorStroll now?) should change the tipping feature to be set after the delivery. Or algorithmic determine what is relatively fast and slow delivery and adjust the tip based on the performance of the worker.
Now that their guaranteed income is higher, their variable should be performance based so the best dashers receive the highest total compensation.
Like the drivers are actually getting the full value of the tip.
Next time you use one of these apps, ask the driver/delivery what this trip is worth and how much tip they actually see. With Uber, I saw them taking as much as a 75% premium off the fare and near the full value of the tip. The ride was fine
I think the real problem is that you have people with no other marketable skills who are forced into becoming non-employed "workers".
This whole "gig economy" should be illegal. Having someone work full time for a company, but not being an employee of any company, seems like a pretty obvious circumvention of labor laws.
The solution should be to force food delivery companies to employ the people doing the deliveries. Of course that will significantly drive up prices, as cost for delivery makes up a substantial part of the total costs. But to be honest food delivery is not something which needs to be as large as it is.
So, wait, you don't buy Uber and DoorDash's arguments that these gig workers are actually entrepreneurs? They're not really underpaid employees, quite the contrary: each of them are individual small business owners, powerful executives on the top of their one-man totem poles!
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadI think "educated" is an interesting choice of word, there, given the rest of the article.
Some people think it only benefits the workers at the cost of everybody else. But it also benefits the market because the most inefficient companies that have business models so bad that they can't even provide minimum wage to their workers are weeded out. Also it benefits job market because workers that are not pushed to the wall financially have marginally higher chance to seek and find employment in a more efficient company than the one they are currently employed by.
there are now 12,000 fewer delivery workers.
Sounds like a win for some workers. I would like to know the new total of workers though, is 12K fewer a lot? Seems like a lot.
contrasted with "It's nice to have a wage so I don't have to rush. I'm paid for my time not for deliveries. It's not fair, they seem to be giving hours to people who are more productive though!"
Many are attacked by dogs while delivering, by customers of their employer. That is a text book examples of job related injury! Also interfering with a post delivery is a federal crime, and violent assault!
But right now workers are gas lighted "you provoked the dog", or it "was your fault". Instead of compensation and paid sick leave, they have to pay hospital bill themselfs and are forced to take unpaid leave for recovery!
Some are even bullied not to report their attacker!
There is also social justice and racial argument! Most delivery workers are low income, while attackers who order deliveries are higher income!
I’m consistently amazed at how many things our progenitors of society nailed - that we threw away trying to make profit, only to realise that serving everyone means that some elements of service will not turn profit.
Dog owners must be forced to take responsibility. They should not be allowed to push cost of dog attack onto other people!
Attacking postal worker for whatever reason should be a crime, punishable by prison!
I’m not sure how its different from allowing your dog to bite any other civil servant.
To be fair there is not much in the way of consequence for the dog owner here either.
Post is specific to USPS (in the US).
With that said, Uber and GrubHub drivers should be regular employees with all those protections.
And USPS workers have the same problem!
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1701
I agree the post is a foundational infrastructure, that both the service itself and postal workers should be protected by law, and that we dog owners should control our dogs as well as being responsible for the cost of any dog attacks. (I’m originally from NYC but currently living in Berlin, Germany, where dog liability insurance is legally mandatory for the owners of any dogs living here. Good public policy! Yes I do have the required insurance.)
But, as a tangent: no, the postal service is not protected by the constitution, only by statutory law. The Postal Clause of the constitution gives Congress the power to establish a postal service but not an obligation to do so, nor a requirement for any such congressionally established postal service to be a public entity. Congress could choose to abolish or privatize USPS more than it already has, and Republicans have often pushed in that direction.
That clause handles what local states must do, it is not about federal goverment!
That clause does indeed empower the federal government to statutorily legislate the types of protections you describe, but those protections do not directly spring from the text of the constitution without enabling federal statutory legislation - as do for example the restrictions on the states from the Bill of Rights as incorporated against the states by the 14th Amendment.
Old people are favorite target for dogs (just after children).
Some streets are not even served by delivery services, due to frequent dog attacks. That affect elderly who rely on such services!
News yesterday said food generally is up 20-25% since Covid, but maybe the reason that even this high number feels quite low for restaurants/delivery is that it really is creeping up on 33% or more after you account for shrinkflation as well as markup
Yet these apps charge something like $20-50 for delivery?
Dominoes has a small radius around it often enabling multiple drop offs before returning. Dominoes drivers always return to the restaurant after a delivery, and the restaurant is optimized for that handoff generally with a dedicated parking space etc.
Apps do longer deliveries from more restaurants who don’t prioritize their time etc. Apps also need to be inherently profitable thus some of the charge is paying for the app itself. Really Apps are like someone took an extremely efficient system and thought how can we make this worse in every possible way.
Wasn't there some guy who made a local version of some delivery service or something and was profitable on day one? I remember there was a hn link on it that came up a couple of times
Delivery apps are ultimately pyramid schemes that were initially funded by zero-interest investors who eventually cashed out to greater fools at a profit. Now that the investment funding has dried up, they need to get money from somewhere and that is by adding a ridiculous overhead
My local Pizza Hut has since outsourced their delivery to DoorDash. Now, even though I'm only two miles away from the store, it takes 30+ minutes for the DoorDash driver to bring my order once the store says its "out for delivery". I no longer order pizza delivery.
Doordash et al. normally have a driver picking up one order and delivering it. I've seen a driver picking up two orders; but, it's rare.
How come they get the big cut? While they have most scalable costs. Shouldn't they be there only taking tens of cents per order? Maybe they should outsource the work more to cheaper people.
The owner of the Domino’s Pizza wants to make a profit, so he pays his drivers to get the pizza there fast. One company.
When it comes to food delivered by an app, but the restaurant and the company providing the app both want to make a profit.
(Yes, the franchise fee paid Domino’s Corporate technically involves profit for another company but that ruins my argument so I’m conveniently leaving that out. But in all seriousness, there seems to be an economies of scale there that keeps the franchise fee low enough as to be a manageable cost.)
On the other hand, if they're in different parts of town? Can't carpool.
If they order 30 minutes apart? Unless your service is slow as hell, can't carpool.
If they order from different restaurants? One customer's food is going to be sitting around, maybe getting cold, while the driver stands around waiting to be served at the second restaurant. If that's not acceptable, can't carpool.
If the customer density is high enough these things work out OK - but a lot of these services operate in areas where the customer density doesn't look high enough.
With that in mind,
> An Uber spokesperson, for example, said the report proves that the law was a "job killer" because there are now 12,000 fewer delivery workers.
My guess is that 10k out of 12k would have quit anyway within a few minths in the old model, and the total amount of orders delivered isn't reduced by that much. I don't view this as a negative.
No every job and not every company should exist. If your job can't provide minimum wage then either your business in not productive enough to deserve place in the market or you are exploiting your employees.
And it's not black or white. There are lots of people who can contribute a little, but cannot contribute their full share. But we've set up the rules in a way that makes it very difficult for them to work and contribute. If you have income, your welfare often gets cut off completely. That's counter-productive. There are lots of people who should be able to get some of their income from work and some from welfare, and that's the way things should be, a gradual change from "all from welfare" to "all from work".
That's a direct subsidy to people assuming that too little subsidy is supplemented with welfare or food stamps. It may also be an indirect second-order subsidy to a company, but it is first and foremost a subsidy to people.
You can "fix" that problem by eliminating welfare, or by ensuring companies pay enough. Since most of us don't want people to starve, either we're stuck with the problem, where we're distorting the market in a way that incentivizes behavior that harms society, or we level the playing field by ensuring companies pay enough.
How is low wages worse than no wages? I don't get it.
The other guy gets his apartment paid for by the state, he asks for $10/hr
I need to pay for my apartment so I need $20.
The other guy gets the job and the apartment.
Have this play out a million times across the entire economy.
If an employee at the end of the month ends up having some kind of disposable income, that's a great result. If an employee at the end of the month ends up not having some kind of disposable income, but still have their needs met, that's an okay result.
But if they put in as many hours as everyone else and their income dips below some logistical threshold their work becomes unsustainable. Either someone else has to pay for their continued living or they sink. Now since companies figured out that government will help people on the verge of sinking, they would gradually lower pay below the threshold, while government makes up the difference from everyone else's pocket. They would do that, they /are/ doing that, so to combat this government imposes a minimum wage.
Not to say, that there aren't jobs that make sense to be below minimum wage, but the big bad actors force government's hand, just like one liar destroys everyone's trust in everyone else.
If system can not reach this level there is lot to do to fix the system. Setting up minimum wages to level where this happens is one of them.
The problem is adverse incentives that make it more profitable to do things that harm society.
There are employees who can provide enough value to be worth hiring at a cost below minimum wage but not above it. A minimum wage is effectively a statement that they don't deserve a place in the market. The notion that everyone is worth at least minimum wage to whoever is paying them comes from ability privilege. Such people are real.
I hired one last weekend to help paint my house. Perfectly lovely guy but slow of thought and slower of motion. There is no little damage in dignity done by choosing to subsidize such people rather than allowing them to exchange their real work for real value.
But the damage is being done to society at large. By subsidizing that worker, taxpayer dollars are being used to prop up a business that should not exist instead of being spent on productive things like healthcare, education and infrastructure.
Imagine if I wanted to buy a Porsche, but decided it wasn’t worth the asking price, so I just pay less and make the government pay the rest like I have some right to have one just because. That is exactly what businesses are doing when they pay employees so little they require government assistance to live.
Are you saying some people don't deserve respect just because they can't support themselves? I think they should be able to work and contribute as well, saying we don't need them just because they can't provide for themselves isn't respectful.
Here on HN it gets downvoted, because I assume the average user is the business owner (or very much aspires to be) who is doing the exploiting.
Noted. DoorDash (should we call them DoorStroll now?) should change the tipping feature to be set after the delivery. Or algorithmic determine what is relatively fast and slow delivery and adjust the tip based on the performance of the worker.
Now that their guaranteed income is higher, their variable should be performance based so the best dashers receive the highest total compensation.
Next time you use one of these apps, ask the driver/delivery what this trip is worth and how much tip they actually see. With Uber, I saw them taking as much as a 75% premium off the fare and near the full value of the tip. The ride was fine
This whole "gig economy" should be illegal. Having someone work full time for a company, but not being an employee of any company, seems like a pretty obvious circumvention of labor laws.
The solution should be to force food delivery companies to employ the people doing the deliveries. Of course that will significantly drive up prices, as cost for delivery makes up a substantial part of the total costs. But to be honest food delivery is not something which needs to be as large as it is.