Only seven states currently bar “subminimum” pay for tipped workers like bartenders and restaurant servers, but activists see 2024 as ripe to expand the tally to as many as 20.
Couriers (DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc.) are not employees. They are contractors.
There is no minimum wage for contractors. The base pay for these services don’t quite cover the $0.655 per mile that the IRS allows drivers to claim in travel expenses. The only money these drivers actually take home is customer tips.
If you, as a customer, do not believe in tipping couriers directly, that’s perfectly fine, so long as you DO NOT use these services. As these drivers operate almost exclusively on tips, using these services without tipping is socially equivalent to begging in the streets.
assuming a “take it or leave it” from a huge company to an individual, can ever be a valid contract
Employees don’t get “offers”. Employees get “assignments”. An offer can be refused. Refusing an assignment has negative consequences. Employment worsens the disparity between huge company and individual, by reducing the individual’s ability to decline work.
As a contractor, I can work for DoorDash and UberEats simultaneously. As an employee, both of them would demand exclusivity and I would have to choose one or the other.
paying “sufficiently “ for an employee while also delegating business expenses
I think the service should collect a mandatory delivery fee from the customer equal to the IRS mileage rate, about $0.655 per mile, and reimburse the driver for it. That’s the base pay. A suggested “bid” (what they currently call a “tip”) should be provided, based on the going rate of labor in the area. The customer should be able to adjust that rate, and be warned if their adjustment goes below minimum wage. A below minimum wage offer does not imply the driver will be earning below minimum wage: orders are often stacked. Two minimum wage orders performed simultaneously earn nearly twice minimum wage.
False. If drivers don’t make enough, they stop driving. Enough stop driving the business has to change their model to entice new drivers. That’s how you bring about change. Not sitting online complaining, hoping that the government will get off their asses and fix it
They’re employees being exploited by a loophole. DoorDash n’ friends are predatory businesses, and are a great example of why we need better regulations on this kind of shit.
It’s not a loophole or predatory, it’s just something the people doing these one-off job knowingly agreed to. I myself certainly agreed to it years back each and every time I accepted another order. The key was to not agree to orders that don’t make any fucking sense. It was all optional.
I don’t know how we could ever regulate away the issue of people who decide not to act in their own best interest. Probably best to focus on education or something?
I refuse to use these services for three reasons. One, I think they’re unnecessary. Two, I think they’re unreliable. Three, I think they’re exploitative.
I don’t see how it’s my responsibility to give my money that I earned doing my job to someone else for doing their job and I shouldn’t have to avoid the service because of that. If I want to use the service I should be able to because, why not, I want to. I shouldn’t give that up just because someone wants me to pay their wages.
A kid comes to your door, asks you what you would be willing to pay for his older brother to shovel your driveway. The older brother is going to be doing the job; the kid is asking you what you are willing to pay. Is it your “responsibility” to “give your money that you earned doing your job” to the older brother for shoveling your drive?
DoorDash is not a courier service. DoorDash is not shoveling your driveway. DoorDash owns and operates neither a shovel nor a delivery vehicle. DoorDash is a broker of courier services. DoorDash is the little kid, asking you what you’re willing to pay. The drivers are the older brother actually doing the work.
Paying DoorDash’s delivery fees and not offering a tip is the equivalent of paying that little kid $3, offering nothing to the older brother who will actually be doing the work. and still expecting your driveway to be shoveled.
The older brother is forced to honor the agreement the kid made with you. If he doesn’t, the kid will have to give back the $3 he got from you. The kid will then pout and refuse to line up any additional work for the older brother. The brother “tolerates” this, because most customers are reasonable people and either offer a reasonable amount for the older brother, or decline the service entirely. The older brother makes all kinds of money from reasonable people.
If the “reasonable people will pay the older brother” argument isn’t enough, continue the analogy: the kid got money from you. The kid is going to keep trying to get your business so he keeps getting money from you. But the older brother isn’t getting paid for his work.
You’ve found a loophole where you can get your driveway shoveled without paying the guy doing the shoveling. The kid wants to keep doing business with you, but it would be far better for the older brother if you never talked to the kid again. So, you’re going to get your driveway shoveled for a pittance, but all that snow is going to end up in front of your door, or burying your car.
Lol the older brother is just an idiot. He isn’t ‘forced’ to do anything at all. The business arrangement makes no sense unless the little brother being the salesman adds value somehow.
I am an older brother and I assure you if long ago my younger brother was like "hey you need to shovel the neighbors driveway for $3’’ I’d be like “lol, no, go give that nice man back his money. If you want to be my salesman, I need the guarantee of $10 in my pocket minimum. If you can find a guy who pays $11, by all means keep the dollar. Oh, also I get any tips provided after the job.”
Do you actually think any older brother is going to just keep shoveling driveways for $3 when he thinks he deserves $10?
This is why I don’t use those services. They are both predatory, and taking advantage of regulatory loopholes
They do need to be fixed somehow though. I have elderly relatives with mobility issues who can really benefit from these services. Beyond more transparency and fixing the regulatory gaps, I don’t k ow how to make it both more fair to the gig worker and more affordable to those who need it though.
Maybe a subscription model? I’d pay Uber Eats a fixed price for my Mom to get as much delivery as she needs, assuming an even playing field we’re established
The “contractor” model is valid. When you hire a kid to shovel your driveway, for example, you are not “employing” that kid; you are contracting him to perform a specific task. Landscapers, builders, roofers, plumbers, lawyers, accountants, DJs, wedding planners… Most small businesses operate on a contractor basis.
The real issue with these services is one of semantics. DoorDash gives drivers a few pieces of information. They are told where the pickup location will be, where the dropoff location will be, the total distance they will have to drive, and, critically, the total amount of money they can expect to receive for performing that task. The driver is (ostensibly) free to accept or reject that offer. DoorDash may bundle (“stack”) your delivery task with other delivery tasks and offer the entire bundle as a single task.
In a contractual arrangement, the money offered in compensation for performance of a task is the “consideration”. The offering of money in exchange for a service is a “bid”. That’s the semantic issue: most of the money being offered to the driver is being called a “tip”. It does meet the IRS definition of a “tip”, but it does not meet the colloquial use of that term.
DoorDash is not actually a courier service. DoorDash does not operate a single vehicle used for package delivery to customers. DoorDash is a broker of courier services. DoorDash connect customers to vendors and drivers. DoorDash takes the customer’s task and offer of compensation and offers it to contract drivers. If they find a match, the customer gets their food. If they can’t find a match, it sits on the vendor’s shelf until closing, then gets thrown away.
You and your elderly relatives are free to use the service. You can use it ethically, simply by understanding that what they are calling a “tip” is actually a “bid” to the driver. So long as you are placing a reasonable “bid”, your use of the service is fair and ethical.
What do you suppose would happen if everyone all at once just stopped tipping and kept using the service? Like I’m serious, what do you actually think would happen?
I think DoorDash would convert it’s drivers to employees. I think those employees would earn less than they did as contractors. I think DD would be forced to offer healthcare and similar benefits, which would be contingent on continued employment, making them extortion rather than benefits. I think they would use those benefits as a bargaining chip to secure non-compete clauses. I think employed workers would be strictly limited to 40-hour weeks at lower pay, with rigid schedules. I think they would enact quotas, and strict deadlines.
I think employee drivers will be pissing in bottles to meet quotas and deadlines. I think instead of stacks of 2-3 orders, they will be stacking 5-8 orders, and delivery times will be longer and longer. I think employee DoorDash drivers will be treated as employee Amazon drivers.
I think that switching to an employment model would hurt drivers and customers, and benefit DoorDash and vendors.
That all seems a bit much compared to doordash just raising their service fee in order to pay their contractors enough to be willing to deliver orders in this new tipless world, but ok. I appreciate your attempt at answering the question nonetheless. Although it is pretty odd you consider a stable wage, hours and healthcare benefits to be a bad thing. And I still don’t understand why employees are willing to piss in bottles to meet quotas and stuff. I wouldn’t agree to a job like that. You probably wouldn’t either. Especially for the lower pay you described. Unless of course the stability and healthcare benefits made up for it all…in which case it would be a better deal than before.
That all seems a bit much compared to doordash just raising their service fee in order to pay their contractors enough to be willing to deliver orders in this new tipless world,
DoorDash already has a “earn by time” option, where drivers earn an hourly wage, but only while they are engaged. DoorDash sets an hourly rate of $12 in my area. They still pass through tips, but they also (effectively) require drivers to take every order assigned, no matter where it is from or where it is going. 8-floor walkup in a sketchy neighborhood, giving the local meth heads 12 minutes to steal your catalytic converter? Yeah, you don’t get to skip that order, sorry.
We already know what DoorDash will do if they get to set the rates, because they are already doing it. I would much rather the negotiation happen between me and the customer rather than me and DoorDash.
Healthcare should be a government function, not an employment function. The idea that I should only have coverage while I am well enough to work is truly barbaric. Employer-sponsored healthcare is extortion. It is a tool to make it harder for you to detangle yourself from the company when they do something shitty. I know healthcare was the primary reason why I stayed at a job that forced me to work 60-hour weeks for 13 months straight.
Healthcare should be a birthright, not a benefit.
Which is the more stable job:
A: you have to wake up at the same time every day, clock in at the same time, clock out for lunch, clock back in exactly 30 minutes later, clock out again after exactly 8 hours of work.
B: you show up whenever you want. 8am. 11pm. Noon. Three days a week, seven days a week. Skip town for two weeks straight, clock back in and nobody says a word.
The first is not “stable”. The first has an attendance policy that punishes you for any instability you might experience in your life. Kid gets sick? Attendance point. 6 points, and you’re written up. 9 points in 12 months, and you’re fired.
The second job is completely tolerant of any instability in your life. You can show up whenever you like, leave whenever you like, and the job just adapts around you.
And I still don’t understand why employees are willing to piss in bottles to meet quotas and stuff.
I don’t understand either, but I don’t need to understand. Quotas are a function of hourly (employee) labor. Piecework laborers (contractors) don’t face quotas. Drop the hourly labor, offer a piecework rate that will earn an entry level worker minimum wage, and your most proficient workers will be earning what they are actually worth.
Couriers (DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc.) are not employees. They are contractors.
There is no minimum wage for contractors. The base pay for these services don’t quite cover the $0.655 per mile that the IRS allows drivers to claim in travel expenses. The only money these drivers actually take home is customer tips.
If you, as a customer, do not believe in tipping couriers directly, that’s perfectly fine, so long as you DO NOT use these services. As these drivers operate almost exclusively on tips, using these services without tipping is socially equivalent to begging in the streets.
Imagine a system so broken you say shit like this lol.
All you’re saying here is that the base pay is too low.
I think the loopholes include:
Employees don’t get “offers”. Employees get “assignments”. An offer can be refused. Refusing an assignment has negative consequences. Employment worsens the disparity between huge company and individual, by reducing the individual’s ability to decline work.
As a contractor, I can work for DoorDash and UberEats simultaneously. As an employee, both of them would demand exclusivity and I would have to choose one or the other.
I think the service should collect a mandatory delivery fee from the customer equal to the IRS mileage rate, about $0.655 per mile, and reimburse the driver for it. That’s the base pay. A suggested “bid” (what they currently call a “tip”) should be provided, based on the going rate of labor in the area. The customer should be able to adjust that rate, and be warned if their adjustment goes below minimum wage. A below minimum wage offer does not imply the driver will be earning below minimum wage: orders are often stacked. Two minimum wage orders performed simultaneously earn nearly twice minimum wage.
That just makes too much sense.
False. If drivers don’t make enough, they stop driving. Enough stop driving the business has to change their model to entice new drivers. That’s how you bring about change. Not sitting online complaining, hoping that the government will get off their asses and fix it
They’re employees being exploited by a loophole. DoorDash n’ friends are predatory businesses, and are a great example of why we need better regulations on this kind of shit.
It’s not a loophole or predatory, it’s just something the people doing these one-off job knowingly agreed to. I myself certainly agreed to it years back each and every time I accepted another order. The key was to not agree to orders that don’t make any fucking sense. It was all optional.
I don’t know how we could ever regulate away the issue of people who decide not to act in their own best interest. Probably best to focus on education or something?
I refuse to use these services for three reasons. One, I think they’re unnecessary. Two, I think they’re unreliable. Three, I think they’re exploitative.
I don’t see how it’s my responsibility to give my money that I earned doing my job to someone else for doing their job and I shouldn’t have to avoid the service because of that. If I want to use the service I should be able to because, why not, I want to. I shouldn’t give that up just because someone wants me to pay their wages.
A kid comes to your door, asks you what you would be willing to pay for his older brother to shovel your driveway. The older brother is going to be doing the job; the kid is asking you what you are willing to pay. Is it your “responsibility” to “give your money that you earned doing your job” to the older brother for shoveling your drive?
DoorDash is not a courier service. DoorDash is not shoveling your driveway. DoorDash owns and operates neither a shovel nor a delivery vehicle. DoorDash is a broker of courier services. DoorDash is the little kid, asking you what you’re willing to pay. The drivers are the older brother actually doing the work.
Paying DoorDash’s delivery fees and not offering a tip is the equivalent of paying that little kid $3, offering nothing to the older brother who will actually be doing the work. and still expecting your driveway to be shoveled.
The older brother is forced to honor the agreement the kid made with you. If he doesn’t, the kid will have to give back the $3 he got from you. The kid will then pout and refuse to line up any additional work for the older brother. The brother “tolerates” this, because most customers are reasonable people and either offer a reasonable amount for the older brother, or decline the service entirely. The older brother makes all kinds of money from reasonable people.
If the “reasonable people will pay the older brother” argument isn’t enough, continue the analogy: the kid got money from you. The kid is going to keep trying to get your business so he keeps getting money from you. But the older brother isn’t getting paid for his work.
You’ve found a loophole where you can get your driveway shoveled without paying the guy doing the shoveling. The kid wants to keep doing business with you, but it would be far better for the older brother if you never talked to the kid again. So, you’re going to get your driveway shoveled for a pittance, but all that snow is going to end up in front of your door, or burying your car.
Lol the older brother is just an idiot. He isn’t ‘forced’ to do anything at all. The business arrangement makes no sense unless the little brother being the salesman adds value somehow.
I am an older brother and I assure you if long ago my younger brother was like "hey you need to shovel the neighbors driveway for $3’’ I’d be like “lol, no, go give that nice man back his money. If you want to be my salesman, I need the guarantee of $10 in my pocket minimum. If you can find a guy who pays $11, by all means keep the dollar. Oh, also I get any tips provided after the job.”
Do you actually think any older brother is going to just keep shoveling driveways for $3 when he thinks he deserves $10?
This is why I don’t use those services. They are both predatory, and taking advantage of regulatory loopholes
They do need to be fixed somehow though. I have elderly relatives with mobility issues who can really benefit from these services. Beyond more transparency and fixing the regulatory gaps, I don’t k ow how to make it both more fair to the gig worker and more affordable to those who need it though.
Maybe a subscription model? I’d pay Uber Eats a fixed price for my Mom to get as much delivery as she needs, assuming an even playing field we’re established
The “contractor” model is valid. When you hire a kid to shovel your driveway, for example, you are not “employing” that kid; you are contracting him to perform a specific task. Landscapers, builders, roofers, plumbers, lawyers, accountants, DJs, wedding planners… Most small businesses operate on a contractor basis.
The real issue with these services is one of semantics. DoorDash gives drivers a few pieces of information. They are told where the pickup location will be, where the dropoff location will be, the total distance they will have to drive, and, critically, the total amount of money they can expect to receive for performing that task. The driver is (ostensibly) free to accept or reject that offer. DoorDash may bundle (“stack”) your delivery task with other delivery tasks and offer the entire bundle as a single task.
In a contractual arrangement, the money offered in compensation for performance of a task is the “consideration”. The offering of money in exchange for a service is a “bid”. That’s the semantic issue: most of the money being offered to the driver is being called a “tip”. It does meet the IRS definition of a “tip”, but it does not meet the colloquial use of that term.
DoorDash is not actually a courier service. DoorDash does not operate a single vehicle used for package delivery to customers. DoorDash is a broker of courier services. DoorDash connect customers to vendors and drivers. DoorDash takes the customer’s task and offer of compensation and offers it to contract drivers. If they find a match, the customer gets their food. If they can’t find a match, it sits on the vendor’s shelf until closing, then gets thrown away.
You and your elderly relatives are free to use the service. You can use it ethically, simply by understanding that what they are calling a “tip” is actually a “bid” to the driver. So long as you are placing a reasonable “bid”, your use of the service is fair and ethical.
What do you suppose would happen if everyone all at once just stopped tipping and kept using the service? Like I’m serious, what do you actually think would happen?
I think DoorDash would convert it’s drivers to employees. I think those employees would earn less than they did as contractors. I think DD would be forced to offer healthcare and similar benefits, which would be contingent on continued employment, making them extortion rather than benefits. I think they would use those benefits as a bargaining chip to secure non-compete clauses. I think employed workers would be strictly limited to 40-hour weeks at lower pay, with rigid schedules. I think they would enact quotas, and strict deadlines.
I think employee drivers will be pissing in bottles to meet quotas and deadlines. I think instead of stacks of 2-3 orders, they will be stacking 5-8 orders, and delivery times will be longer and longer. I think employee DoorDash drivers will be treated as employee Amazon drivers.
I think that switching to an employment model would hurt drivers and customers, and benefit DoorDash and vendors.
That all seems a bit much compared to doordash just raising their service fee in order to pay their contractors enough to be willing to deliver orders in this new tipless world, but ok. I appreciate your attempt at answering the question nonetheless. Although it is pretty odd you consider a stable wage, hours and healthcare benefits to be a bad thing. And I still don’t understand why employees are willing to piss in bottles to meet quotas and stuff. I wouldn’t agree to a job like that. You probably wouldn’t either. Especially for the lower pay you described. Unless of course the stability and healthcare benefits made up for it all…in which case it would be a better deal than before.
DoorDash already has a “earn by time” option, where drivers earn an hourly wage, but only while they are engaged. DoorDash sets an hourly rate of $12 in my area. They still pass through tips, but they also (effectively) require drivers to take every order assigned, no matter where it is from or where it is going. 8-floor walkup in a sketchy neighborhood, giving the local meth heads 12 minutes to steal your catalytic converter? Yeah, you don’t get to skip that order, sorry.
We already know what DoorDash will do if they get to set the rates, because they are already doing it. I would much rather the negotiation happen between me and the customer rather than me and DoorDash.
Healthcare should be a government function, not an employment function. The idea that I should only have coverage while I am well enough to work is truly barbaric. Employer-sponsored healthcare is extortion. It is a tool to make it harder for you to detangle yourself from the company when they do something shitty. I know healthcare was the primary reason why I stayed at a job that forced me to work 60-hour weeks for 13 months straight.
Healthcare should be a birthright, not a benefit.
Which is the more stable job:
A: you have to wake up at the same time every day, clock in at the same time, clock out for lunch, clock back in exactly 30 minutes later, clock out again after exactly 8 hours of work.
B: you show up whenever you want. 8am. 11pm. Noon. Three days a week, seven days a week. Skip town for two weeks straight, clock back in and nobody says a word.
The first is not “stable”. The first has an attendance policy that punishes you for any instability you might experience in your life. Kid gets sick? Attendance point. 6 points, and you’re written up. 9 points in 12 months, and you’re fired.
The second job is completely tolerant of any instability in your life. You can show up whenever you like, leave whenever you like, and the job just adapts around you.
I don’t understand either, but I don’t need to understand. Quotas are a function of hourly (employee) labor. Piecework laborers (contractors) don’t face quotas. Drop the hourly labor, offer a piecework rate that will earn an entry level worker minimum wage, and your most proficient workers will be earning what they are actually worth.
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