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...?

[cayenne8]

But if he's an adult working full time at the most sophisticated job that he's able to do, he should make enough for food, shelter, and health care.

You seem to think this is a right that everyone is inherently born with...?

When did this come about?

The declaration of the US said it wants to give everyone the "pursuit of happiness", but it doesn't guarantee it, it requires the individual to figure things out and do what they have to do to attain it.

No one owes you a damned thing once you hit the oxygen.

And if you are such a dense simpleton that you cannot take care of yourself, well....there is always welfare.