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.

Comments

Re:Again...where's the gun...?

[EndlessNameless]

If more young people, didn't have kids too soon before they can afford them

Wrong. The average age at which people have children is going up, and it has been for years. The trend has been toward older parents since at least the 1970s.

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressr...

if they didn't always go out and buy the latest shiny $$$ smart phone, didn't eat out all the time, etc, etc.

Oh, teens and 20-somethings in the 70s didn't blow money on stupid shit? Give me a break.

They did marry earlier though, and it is much easier to save for a house when funneling two incomes into it.

If you don't make Pro Athlete or rock star money, then you should know you can't live even close to that lifestyle and spend money like that.

We are talking about people getting paid $1/hour. I doubt they aspire to a celebrity lifestyle. If anything, they aspire to be free from the ever-present fear of homelessness.