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Dark Side of Gig Economy: Some Instacart Workers Go On Strike Over Pay That Can Be as Low as $1 Per Hour (fastcompany.com)
From a report: Instacart shoppers and drivers -- the people who gather your groceries and deliver them to you after you order via the Instacart app -- are on strike. While independent contractors can't technically strike, via a Facebook group some of the company's thousands of employees have organized a "no delivery day" in the hopes of getting higher wages, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The strike is only taking place in a few of the 154 cities nationwide that Instacart operates in. The action may be small, but the grievances are big. While Instacart, the 5-year-old San Francisco startup, is valued at $3.4 billion, it allegedly pays its workers as little as $1 per order. Ars Technica has a great breakdown of all the issues surrounding how Instacart employees get paid and it's complex, with three different income streams coming together Voltron-like to form a wage. The result, though, is that some shoppers are being paid less than the federal minimum wage, like a Jackson, Miss., worker who put in a 19-hour week in Jackson, Mississippi, that paid out $37.75 (roughly $2/hour). That's far below the $14/hour wage that Ars Technica says Instacart is targeting.
Ok..it does sound like the app is a bit unfair, treating 6x cases of water the same as 1x case, but still...the person 'can' refuse a trip, or even to work for the company at all.
It takes a bit of smarts to figure out if the bill rate for a contracting gig is worth the effort, you know?
Put on those big boy pants and do some ciphering.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This is not a bug but a key feature of gig economy. Also, multi-billion valuation for a grocery delivery service? Why?
So, are e-unions the future? I hope so. The plutocrats have gotten the upper hand for too long, creating growing inequality. It's time us 95% get some bargaining power back (if GOP doesn't outlaw or de-fang unions & e-unions).
Table-ized A.I.
If you don't like it, you have plenty of other choices. It's not like there's a shortage of gigs to bring in money. Crying and going on strike is moronic when you can simply choose to spend your time on other opportunities. This is what the entitled liberal millennial generation has taught us: rather than working hard to better yourself, just complain and insist someone hand everything to you.
Forcing someone to pay you a certain rate for their services is what the mafia does for so-called protection.
At the same time, a strike/boycott is totally within the rights of any worker, so long as they do not damage person or property in the process.
If the work is really that bad, then they do not have to do it. Then, either someone else will do it, or no one will do it and the company will be forced to change or go under.
Please don't call me an "African American".
I've never been to Africa. I'm black. Thank you.
The only way it's economically viable for most people to get someone else to go shopping at a retail store for them is to pay that person much, much less than it otherwise would cost conventionally to do that.
The gig economy seems entirely oriented around pay schemes that are so complicated that most of the people signing up to do the work can't figure out up front they won't make any money doing the work.
If you want to join a voluntary union, that is totally your right. But almost all of Big Labor depends on forced membership, which is a form of serfdom.
The data repeatedly shows that when right to work is enacted, the majority of union members will OPT OUT.
Big Labor is on its last legs. It is a shell of its former self, and soon will be gone forever.
https://fee.org/articles/unions-are-the-worst-labor-day-deal/
In many towns, the unemployment rate exceeds 50 percent.
Yes, it can be the only OPEN job.
You chose to work for $1/hour and now you mad? Who is the stupid one here?
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basic insurance will not cover them like pizza drivers no you need the higher cost Commercial Insurance.
Tons of people always looking for side hustles: chai carts, ditch digging, "taxi" drivers.. and they live like shit.
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That implies there is a "light side."
I've yet to see it.....
But the guy they quoted in the article already had a public sector job.
Here is the article cited: https://www.fastcompany.com/40498626/instacart-workers-are-striking-over-wages-reportedly-as-low-as-1-an-hour. There is only one "guy quoted," and the quote is "some shoppers are being paid less than the federal minimum wage, like a Jackson, Miss., worker who put in a 19-hour week in Jackson, Mississippi, that paid out $37.75 (roughly $2/hour)." No mention of a job in the public sector.
Here is the second article cited http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Instacart-workers-plan-Sunday-Monday-strike-12366805.php. Two Instacart workers are quoted. Neither mentions a job in the public sector.
Here is the third article cited, the ars technical article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/some-instacart-workers-to-strike-over-pay-that-can-be-as-low-as-1-per-hour/. Ah-- at last-- Six people were quoted, and three more people's wages were listed (but they weren't quoted directly). ONE of the many people quoted was the guy who said he had a civil service job.
So it's a little disingenuous to say "the" guy they quoted in "the" article.
So. What you meant to say was ONE of the large number of people quoted in the three articles cited also had a full-time job.
>Again, where's the gun to their head to do this contract job
Yeah fuck those guys for not wanting to starve! /fuck you too
If you think that's bad, you should see the hourly rate made by people selling stuff on Etsy.
factoring in cost of materials, I'm pretty sure some people there are making a negative per-hour income.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
I've done contracting also. While it's good living during boom times, it was nasty during the dot-com bust. I scraped by under sweatshop-like conditions under clients who'd often flake on pay. I tried to abandon the IT field altogether, seeing visa workers flood in*. I had a young family such that gigs far away were a strain. (If you are the lone-gypsy type, maybe it's fine for you.)
IT has had 3 bumps in the past 3 decades: The early 1990's aerospace slump (techies flooding market), the 2000 dot-com crash, and the Great Recession. (Personal impact may vary depending on location & specialty.)
Recessions happen and the future is unknown. The good times have been nice, but during the bad times the employer has you by the balls. Myself, I won't bet that the IT good-times will last.
Plus there's agism and age-related problems. Software is often at the whims of fads, and fad chasing is a young-person's game: it's why the fonts are so tiny by default on all the dev tools/sites. Admit it: dev hates fogies. (There are gigs for legacy apps, but you fall behind by taking those.)
People often hate unions during their good times and like them during bad. Look at the long-term instead.
* One of the few things T did right is tighten the visa review process.
Table-ized A.I.
There is no gun forcing you to take a job you can't do well enough to earn a decent living doing
Work Safe Porn
To complicate things a bit, not everyone doing gig jobs is in it for the money:
Some people are in it just to "get out of the house" or alleviate boredom. Think retirees or can-afford-to-stay-at-home spouses whose kids have started school recently. If they can break even they are happy.
Some people are in gig economies because they enjoy DOING whatever it is and wouldn't mind doing it for free or cheap. This applies more to photographers, artists, coders (open source anyone?), authors, YouTube video-makers, etc. than to drivers, babysitters, and lawn-mowers. "Stay-at-home-mom" babysitters have willingly worked for way less than the cost of professional day care - or for free for friends and family - for longer than I have been alive.
Non-local gigs are competing against people around the country or around the world, driving effective wages down. A code-monkey-level by-the-gig coder in rural Indiana is a lot cheaper than one in San Francisco, and a lot cheaper in India than Indiana.
I lived in Jackson MS for awhile. That dude who worked a 19 hour week for $37 may very well have only put in a single hour of real work. I saw people take all day long to do something that I could easily do in 30 minutes.
No you shouldn't "have to" pay anything in particular, BUT
The kids should:
find out what professional gardeners charge for a given service
be certain that they can provide equivalent value
not accept less than the pros on a value-for-service basis (whether hourly or per
agreement)
If the kids do provide equivalent value they should be paid as pros. The fact that they are 'just kids' is not relevant. Said kids have no obligation to subsidize your lawn maintenance costs.
Nobody is preventing you from pulling your own weeds!
It would be interesting to see the U.S. economy completely crash just to see who really is essential and who is superfluous. There's an excess of smugness these days. I can see an every man for himself situation develop very quickly.
The only way it's economically viable for most people to get someone else to go shopping at a retail store for them is to pay that person much, much less than it otherwise would cost conventionally to do that.
You are right, for "most people."
Grocery-shopping services are great for people with limited driving ability or limited time. Think the elderly, the infirm, those with acute injuries, those with no driver's licenses or no car, and rich people.
It also makes sense if the delivery person can combine many customers in one trip, like the milk- and ice-delivery services of days gone by.
What DOES make economic sense is for stores to offer "pick up" services, where they will have your groceries ready for pickup for you in a set time window with only a few minutes wait-time for them to get the goods to your car. I'd pay maybe $0.16/minute that I usually spend in the store (minus $0.16/minute for each minute I wait) for a service like that ($10/hour, about 1/3 above minimum wage). If I was pressed for time, I would pay more.
Oh wait, I see my local stores do offer pick-up services.
On my consulting gig I think they hold out for at least that.
"the world does not owe you a living"
If "the world" owes $(random_individual) nothing, what if anything does a $(random_individual) owe "the world"?
If you say the $(random_individual) owes "the world" more than nothing, why?
That's a common libertarian statement, yes: they have no problem with people starving, but if you try to make a system where people don't starve, they say "The immoral position is yours, namely attempts to interfere with it."
Right. Let people die, it's the only moral thing to do. That way the economy works, and the economy is more important than the people in it.
I will repeat: this is exactly why people have such a low opinion of libertarians.
"employer" is so small that it is not worth "rental, fuel and basic maintenance" costs associated with the (human) machinery required to do the task under consideration, perhaps the task is so trivial that the 'employer' should perform the task itself. Why should the 'employer' be able to externalize its costs?
My friend in Seattle says that all the Instacart shoppers are stupid thieving whores anyway, so who gives a shit? Fuck 'em all.
The key is to save your money in the boom time, then retire like all of my friends. Not be the retard who goes out and buys herself a luxury condo, a BMW and lives paycheck to paycheck.
If Libertarians are so bad, why is the US government the only nation espousing Randian ethics, having the highest stock market values in history, with an economy at full employment. Don't like the job? Move elsewhere. The US is in the best shape it has ever been in its history, now that virtually all the socialist FDR based stuff is on the ropes or tossed overboard.
The United States is a country that has a minimum wage. If you like the "having the highest stock market values in history, with an economy at full employment", then part of what you like is minimum wage.
Oh, uh, by the way, it does not actually have full employment.
then i wont use their service until they get a decent living wage, either that or if i have no choice to use them then i will give them a nice fat tip, maybe a 20 dollar tip if they bring me my 100 dollars worth of groceries in good condition, i cant condone employees making less than a living wage, i want them to be paid fairly
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
You must be single.
Table-ized A.I.
It's the economy, stupid. What has been called a recession is a depression. Former full time employees are scheduled for 20 hours per week to avoid receiving benefits and overtime pay. Minimum wage needs to be $30 per hour so workers can afford food, a car, and a place to live.
Basically, using the guise of 'independent contractor', companies are skirting our (American) wage regulations and shafting workers whenever and whereever they can. And people wonder where that income disparity is coming from.
This here is a nice shiny example.
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Just want to point out that a lot of libertarians want to end all the welfare programs as well. I just want to consolidate them all into a basic income guarantee.
Basically, by removing welfare cliffs, we can encourage people to achieve all that they can, while providing just enough of a floor so that people aren't starving on the streets. This way you don't have people hitting a point and then just stopping because earning any more would cause them to lose effective income.
I don't read AC A human right
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From the Ars article:
shoppers make a per-item fee (typically $0.40)— however, this is not per unit of that item.
Ars spoke with six Instacart shoppers who said that they have routinely been made to pick up several heavy items, such as cases of bottled water, soda, or ice. Those items, of course, not only have to be loaded into a shopping cart, and then into a car, but they must be also hand-carried to someone’s door—sometimes up flights of stairs. Shoppers are still paid a $0.40 per-item fee even if someone orders one, five, or 10 cases of bottled water.
This definition of an "item" creates a windfall for people/businesses ordering lots of things--often heavy, bulky ones. Instacart's pricing scheme makes them a good deal more competitive than typical delivery services, so the customers do the rational thing.
I have to wonder how much this entire issue would smooth out just by changing this into a true per-item fee.
... quit.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You selfish piece of shit. What about everyone who isn't you, those who aren't lucky to be of prime earning age during a boom time. Think about someone other than yourself, fuckstain.
can't figure out up front they won't make any money doing the work.
Can't Google "instacart average pay"? I just searched that exact phrase and found several websites with employees sharing their negative experiences working for Instacart.
When was the last time someone in the US starved to death
Just this year alone more than 2000 people have starved to death in the US. http://www.romans322.com/daily-death-rate-statistics.php - look for "Malnutrition" (i.e. not enough food) deaths.
Certainly there are countries with worse starvation death rates, but every last person who upvoted your comment should feel like crap.
if i have no choice to use them
yes indeed someday someone will force you to purchase grocery delivery from a particular company
but first you'll have to escape from your mental hospital
I think you mean the only side. The sharing/gigging economies have been exploitation from the start (unless of course you are an owner or shareholder). It also isn't realistic to try to make a living forever doing odd jobs.
Last I checked, slavery was the coercion of Labor by force. Voluntarily paying $5 to someone who is willing to work for $5 is not slavery. However, when government claims a right to the fruit of our labor and calls it a tax, that literally IS slavery by definition.
You are demonizing this person you know, whereas he was he the only one actually PUTTING FOOD on the table for her by giving her a JOB.
Libertarians: our grand secret plan for government is to...leave people alone to be free.
Why, what a horrible thing! What ever would we do without self-righteous busybody control freaks like you to micromanage every part of our lives?
If everyone quit, and nobody did the work, Instacart would have to either change its practices or go out of business. As long as people are willing to do the work at the agreed-upon rate, why do self-appointed dogooders like you want to take away their source of income? Do you think they will be so much better off with no money instead of some money?
If your UBI is privately-funded, okay.
If your UBI is funded by stolen money (taxes), then please do not call yourself a libertarian. Libertarians do not believe in violating the non-aggression principle.
If you can't afford to pay someone at least $10/hr (or whatever min wage is in your city) to do it, go by yourself. What's a half hour every week?
I didn't say anything about me.
I doubt it. Running a business is ridiculously hard work, but all you arm-chair commentators want to sling your accusations even though you have never been able to do it.
http://fortune.com/2016/12/12/michigan-marxist-vegan-restaurant-closes/
Everything in the economy has subjective value. Prices are the signals that explain how the market (which is just a word we use to describe people interacting) is valuing that good or service. What you think is a fair price is irrelevant, and that is the core reason why socialism can never work. Without market price signals, you have no way of allocating scarce resources effectively and you wind up misallocating or with shortages.
I wish every professing socialist would legitimately TRY to start a real business. See the crushing burden that comes through regulation. Learn how challenging it is to actually have to provide people with a paycheck. Then you will learn something you should have learned at age ten: money does not grow on trees.
Large parts of the rust belt and South game little or no jobs. Go back to the Guilded Age and you'll find anyone with a decent job had servants. That's not because they made a lot of money, there were just that many desperate people. These people know they're getting screwed. They're desperate. It's why they elected Trump. Remember that when we go to way with North Korea in a few years.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Blanket statements with no substance. People? PEOPLE have a LOW VIEW of libertarians?
Hmm, then I guess Ron Paul did not attract tens of millions of under-30 followers who view him as a rock star, and spawned a vast movement that is still even now only beginning to form the comic tidal wave?
You are just saying crap. You know who we libertarians have a low view of? Self-righteous internet commentators who are too lazy to make a real difference in society but want to use the iron fist of government to make everyone behave the way they want.
Plenty of food there under socialism! Sure, most of it is dead rats and rotting vegetables, but hey, food for all! Yea, socialism!
Independent contractors are not employees and do not get paid a wage. Contractors are not subjects of minimum wage regulations for them selves, while anyone they hire would be.
With so many people looking for work there are plenty who won't be so fucking greedy, so I say the companies should just fire anyone who dares to go on "strike" and hires someone else. Corporations owe these people nothing and it is high time we stop letting left wing agitators destroy our economy by undermining the rights of corporations.
And therein lies the answer to this entire thread: Boot the illegal immigrants out (as mandated by law) and the low-skilled Americans can take such jobs, forcing the overall pay to increase due to the dwindled labor supply. You may mod this post as trolling if you find it distasteful, but this is simple economics.
Sociopaths see people as assets to be exploited for their own personal gain and do not concern themselves with the pain and misery they inflict on others.
Also, water is wet.
Details on the 11 o'clock broadcast.
Seriously, though, Silicon Valley became evil a long time ago. This isn't news. I cannot for the life of me understand why any sane, decent person would work for one of these "disruptive", douche-bag companies.
That's the economic equivalent of believing that the earth is flat. Thanks for demonstrating your complete and utter ignorance so clearly.
Here is the Forbes article (you know Forbes, right? Not exactly a left-wing-socialist-tool) explaining it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/f...
It would be easier to show this by showing graphs of demand curves, but /., with an old-fashioned text-only interface, doesn't support that. The take-away calculation is that if minimum wage increases, while some businesses will decide not to hire some workers because their productivity now is less than their cost, pay increases for the rest of the minimum wage workers, the ones who had been being paid less than their marginal value. It turns out to be a net win-- the workers not hired are the ones who were producing minimum value.
Real economics is actually somewhat interesting-- you should learn some of it, instead of the oversimplified cartoon economics that libertarians hold so dearly to. You might like it.
This is exactly why people think libertarians are assholes.
Nope. There are other reasons. Libertarians tend to be introverts,
I see no evidence whatsoever that libertarians tend to be introverts.
and not very good at communicating complex ideas to other people.
"Not good at communicating," maybe, but "complex ideas"-- no, the exact opposite.
The essence of libertarianism is very, very simple ideas. Unfortunately people in the real word live in a complicated real world with real world problems, and libertarian simple ideas are often too simple; they don't solve real world problems.
My view of the typical libertarian is that they took a introductory economics class, went to the first two weeks in which the ideal free market is described, shouted "eureka! that explains everything!"-- and then decided that they know everything about economics and never went back to that class again.
Some libertarian ideas are counter-intuitive, especially economics ideas.
Nope. Libertarian ideas are very simple and intuitive, especially economics ideas. That's the attraction of libertarianism. It fits that model "for every problem there is a simple solution."
When it comes to economics, people tend to trust intuition. While intuition works pretty well for small groups, it fails horribly for larger ones. A reasonable approach for a band of hunter-gatherers divvying-up the day's kill does not scale to a market economy of millions or billions of people.
Exactly!!!!! This is precisely the problem with libertarianism: it takes a simple solution that works well in the case of one farmer with a cow and another growing tomatoes who agree to exchange milk for tomatoes, and says that intuitive model solves any complicated problem with billions of people where everybody's actions have repercussions on everybody else with multiple non-intuitive effects.
The same applies to various non-economic positions, to varying degrees. Libertarians, who tend to be introverts,
Unsubstantiated.
are often not especially skilled at countering the hostile statements of others.
Yes. In fact, they are not especially skilled at even listening to the comments of others.
Those others are usually uninformed or misinformed about what libertarians actually believe.
Or, more to the point, libertarians always start with the going-in position that everybody else is uninformed or misinformed.
...