- Safety precautions at no cost to workers — PPE (at minimum hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes/sprays and soap).
- Hazard pay — an extra $5 per order and defaulting the in-app tip amount to at least 10% of the order total.
- An extension and expansion of pay for workers impacted by COVID-19 — anyone who has a doctor’s note for either a preexisting condition that’s a known risk factor or requiring a self-quarantine.
- The deadline to qualify for these benefits must be extended beyond April 8th.
There was controversy in the past with DoorDash effectively pocketing the tips (https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/dc-attorney-gene...) which makes me wary about tipping in these apps -- are InstaCart and Amazon doing the same?
Something strange by the way, is that tipping is variable. Eg my ~$110 order yesterday automatically tacked on a $7 tip, my ~$50 order of three days had a $5 dollar tip automatically added. Anyone have an idea how they are calculating this?
If I remember correctly, the prior controversy was that DoorDash (or whomever) would give them the tip 100% but then take an equal or weighted portion from the company's contribution.
Company tells the worker a delivery pays $15, you tip $5, the company reduces their portion to $10, the worker gets $15 total. You tip $10? The company pays $5, worker still walks away with $15.
How many industries offer a hazard pay? I know the military does for conflict zones, what amount do they offer?
https://civileats.com/2020/03/20/breaking-grocery-store-work...
May also be coming to doctors, nurses (if it isn't there already):
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-says-administration-looki...
Customs workers, corrections officers, and a ton of other jobs also negotiating it. In Philly, among them are police, firefighters, sanitation workers, health care workers.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/philadelphia-to-r...
Which makes sense, as the quantity is what actually matters to the delivery person.
i can't understand what might prevent amazon and instacart from assenting to these demands as soon as they have the logistical ability to provide the necessary items to their staff.
the national situation isn't permissive of corporations dragging their feet when essential services are down at the moment.
on the other hand, workers treated to a hopefully quick victory will not forget this when the pandemic ends. if we're lucky, the balance of power will shift to their favor.
As for "who typically offers this" I would argue that this isn't quite like a "normal" time. Many people are putting their health on the line to come to work which is not something that is normally part of the decisionmaking process for their regular wage. As a result of that increased risk and because of the huge demand for their labor a large increase in pay makes a lot of sense (even if we take the "combat pay" stuff out of the equation. Demand-alone would increase their wages)
- We will pay you $X
- We will make sure you make at least $Y
If you make the wording changes
- $X == <wait staff minimum wage>
- $Y == <normal minimum wage>
Then it becomes clear that this is exactly how restaurants work; with the caveat that it's per delivery instead of per hour.
(1) Drivers are paid in 2 factors, a tip provided by the user, and a per delivery fee provided by doordash thats variable, and generally in the industry is between 10 and 20% of the basket cost
(2) doordash additionaly guaranteed a total "minimum compensation" per delivery up front that was like ~20% of the cost of the basket
(3) Doordash would use the tips users paid to offset the amount they would pay drivers in order to meet the "minimum comp guarantee", so if you ordered 100 dollars in food, and tip 20 dollars, and the minimum compensation on the order was 20 dollars,doordash would pay the driver nothing, and your whole tip would sub for driver pay. If instead you tipped 0 dollars on your 100 dollar basket, doordash would pay the driver 20 dollars out of its own funds to meet the minimum comp. Likewise if you tipped 10 dollars, doordash woud pay 10 dollars.
Amazon I believe tends to do everything through third party companies and there really isn't tipping with Amazon as far as I know, but that might have changed since I haven't ordered an Amazon Fresh order in ages. From other comments here, it sounds like they now having tipping.
"Shhh... don't let the Plebes know they're still getting robbed. We're going to fight this, negotiate something a little lower and still come out way ahead." -Our Corporate Lords and Vassels
In all seriousness, it goes to show you how little people have come to expect. Some of these strikes historically have had unrealistic expectations in requests from what I recall. Labor rights have declined so far in this country that demands from strikes are now almost fully reasonable, leaving little room to negotiate back from.
In other words, you don't know. I agree with you that they shouldn't be scummy about this but I don't think it's fair to make up that they are.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonFlexDrivers/comments/9ji1af/p...
"Amazon will never disclose any information about specific deliveries beyond what you see in the app before and after the delivery. They will not tell you who tipped or how much. The only ways to tell if a customer tipped are cash tips and blocks with only one order completed, including instant offers, for which the earnings exceed the initial offer."
"If an offer shows a pay range, the base rate is never more than the low end of that range. For example, if you accept an offer for a 2 hour block with pay of $36-50, anything you earn for that block beyond $36 is from tips."
"Amazon does not technically steal tips, but the end result is the same as if they did. They call it variable base pay. They state in the contract that 100% of tips are passed on to the driver. This is true. However, they often lower the base rate enough so the net earnings is the minimum stated in the block offer. Think of it like a piece of string. The entire length of the string is your earnings. The right side of the string is tips and the left side is base pay. They promise never to cut the right side of the string. They cut the left side instead. It still results in a shorter piece of string."
"If the base pay plus tips ends up being more than the offered pay for the block, you will get paid the full amount. So if you accept a 2 hour block for $36-50 and get $55 in tips, you will be paid at least $55. They don't lower the base rate on every block and they don't always lower it the same amount. They say it's based on demand. For a 2 hour block, after tips, you might be paid $36 or you might be paid $80. It just depends."
"I'm not sure how Amazon determines the suggested tip for orders that include tips. I just played around in the Prime Now app and it seems like the suggested tip is a percentage of the total item cost, before shipping and tax, but is a minimum of $5. Customers can, of course, change it to whatever they want."
This should be done by the government. It feels unfair to pass this on to consumers, but there should be some sort of "voluntary unemployment" for people with pre-existing conditions right now.
Hazard pay is moot for workers who have already caught COVID-19 too, which I would guess is a reasonably chunk of delivery workers by now.
Here's a question for people who were so upset by this. Let's say you have a bunch of tipped employees that you directly pay $10/hour and with tips they average $20/hour. You have two problems though, (1) your employees complain that during some shifts they are making barely over their base pay and (2) potential new hires are worried that they won't make as much in tips as you say current employees make. The question is: would it be taking advantage of those employees to change the employment to include a guaranteed $15/hour minimum, for any shift where they make less than that you'd pay them extra to hit the minimum?
I apologize for the wall of text below, feel free to minimize this comment ([-] sign next to delete above), but it is crucial to demonstrate how broad this support is to the working class.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-stimulus-package... (F.A.Q. on Stimulus Checks, Unemployment and the Coronavirus Plan)
> Benefits will be expanded in an attempt to replace the average worker’s paycheck, explained Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a public policy research group. The average worker earns about $1,000 a week, and unemployment benefits often replace roughly 40 to 45 percent of that. The expansion will pay an extra amount to fill the gap. Under the plan, eligible workers will get an extra $600 per week on top of their state benefit. But some states are more generous than others. According to the Century Foundation, the maximum weekly benefit in Alabama is $275, but it’s $450 in California and $713 in New Jersey.
> Are gig workers, freelancers and independent contractors covered? Yes, self-employed people are newly eligible for unemployment benefits. Self-employed workers will also be eligible for the additional $600 weekly benefit provided by the federal government.
> If you’ve received a diagnosis, are experiencing symptoms or are seeking a diagnosis — and you’re unemployed, partly unemployed or cannot work as a result — you will be covered. The same goes if you must care for a member of your family or household who has received a diagnosis.
> What if my child’s school or day care shut down? If you rely on a school, a day care or another facility to care for a child, elderly parent or another household member so that you can work — and that facility has been shut down because of coronavirus — you are eligible.
> What if I’ve been advised by a health care provider to quarantine myself because of exposure to coronavirus? And what about broader orders to stay home? People who must self-quarantine are covered. The legislation also says that individuals who are unable to get to work because of a quarantine imposed as a result of the outbreak are eligible.
These workers were forced to work during quarantine because the government deemed Amazon an essential business. As a result, Amazon stock's price relative gain to the S&P 500 tumble during this crisis is ~80%, that's almost a doubling of the stock valuation due to the uninterrupted business that these delivery workers made possible.
I repeat: AWS basically doubled their relative stock valuation, withstood one of the biggest stock market tumbles in all history, because their lowest level employees went to work at a point when everybody else stayed at home safe.
Where do you think the government gets its money?
We tip our delivery / pickup people 5 bucks for orders which are well south of $100. Masks and hand sanitizers and gloves are what they need to do their jobs. That and customers keeping away from them 6-10 feet. You can't let yourself just walk up close to someone you see working in a store to ask them a question, like you could in the beforetime.
The take away is this- truck drivers, stocking clerks, checkout people are essential to a functioning society. Hollywood stars, entertainers and media personalities are not.
I will admit I'm enjoying the schadenfreude of workers finally having some power due to a Congressional response to a pandemic, much to the chagrin of "but that's how the free market works" apologists.
The comparison to DoorDash isn't table service in a restaurant, it's ordering food for delivery to your house and then giving cash to the driver. Where does that cash go? The driver's pocket. That process & the cultural understanding of it has literally been around as long as the concept of tipping.
Here's the real question that answers why people are "upset". If you did a poll of 100 people ordering on DoorDash, and asked them "when you tip on your order, where does the money go", what do you think people would say? 99/100 of them would ABSOLUTELY say "to the driver" and that is everything that is wrong with what DoorDash did. I struggle to engage sincerely in argument with anyone claiming otherwise.
I think our tipping culture is okay but I’d like us to move to calling them delivery fees so we can keep the idea of the tip as a pure bonus between me and those serving me.
I don’t like feeling like I am required to tip but I like tipping. Especially when not expected but socially accepted.
Have empathy both ways.
How is that different from servers in a restaurant? If you asked that question of people who give a tip to their servers at a restaurant they would also say that that money goes to their server, despite the fact that the federally mandated earnings guarantee (assuming the restaurant doesn't have its own higher one) means that that money, effectively, might just be going to the restaurant.
> it's ordering food for delivery to your house and then giving cash to the driver
And would you be upset if Domino's gave an earnings guarantee to their drivers?
They can purchase soap.
That'll sell well in an election year with states and the federal government overextending themselves already due to a woefully inadequate initial response. We can't even get masks and ventilators manufactured at the necessary rate, and we're going to send force to assist Amazon Fulfillment? We're not even sending in force to assist first responders and medical practitioners.
Amazon workers have options during this, including just going home. That's Amazon's problem, not the country's. No one is entitled to cheap delivered ecommerce services. If Amazon can't make the economics work without coerced labor, good riddance.
If their job is so important that you can't make do without it, pay them more, or consider doing it yourself for less.
If you think of a business as a machine, and the person who bought the machine as a stockholder, you would understand that a machine does not suddenly work harder because the person paid more for the machine.
We're only a few weeks in, and we've already drastically expanded benefits to those in need (the stimulus bill I mentioned upthread) much more than we would've under normal circumstances. Quite a bit of change can occur in a year, no?
Just generally too: if Amazon announced they were hiking prices 50% overnight, how would you react? This move is pretty scummy.
I fail to see how that is relevant. I think the closest comparison to DoorDash is ordering delivery from an Italian restaurant – not driving to the restaurant, sitting down at a table and getting table service. And yes, I think many people are aware that it is common for kitchen staff to pool tips at a restaurant, in the same way that they know the same process doesn't exist for delivery drivers.
>would you be upset if Domino's gave an earnings guarantee to their drivers?
I would have no problem with that, but if they have a button on their app that says "tip your driver" it had better all go to the driver.
A 10% default tip in a situation like this doesn't feel bad to me as a consumer.
It just seems to be well outside the scope of things a business should be trying to solve and into the realm of what we have a government for.
default to 10% instead of 5%; it's a UX nudge. The user can always change it.
The Fed is predicting 47 million unemployed [1], at a 32% unemployment rate. That's a lot of folks without health insurance. 68k people in the US die every year because of lack of access to healthcare, and 50% of bankruptcies are due to medical debt, under "normal" circumstances. That is a "failure of capitalism" not replicated in other developed countries.
Sometimes, to fix a system, you must break it. This is the "break it" part. [2]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-job-losses-could...
[2] https://reason.com/2020/03/27/pandemic-related-unemployment-...
Again, how would you feel about Amazon hiking the price of hand sanitizer 50%?
It will be great to see this play out though. I live somewhere (unf) that had unions running govt for a period of decades. The US never really had this so is under the illusion that this kind of thing achieves it aims. It doesn't. What happens is most of these people don't have jobs anymore, you have to hike interest rates so most people lose their homes (and bye bye, VC funding...that will just stop overnight...I would guess the majority of the people on here will lose their jobs, and modify their opinions too late), and the price of food starts increasing daily.
And btw, this should be obvious but apparently isn't, this is going to go on for at least a year. At some point, people are going to have to learn how to go about their daily life without infecting other people. The alternative is: most of these jobs stop existing, and the economy shrinks significantly (10%+). Lockdown and people deciding they need "hazard pay" to do their normal job isn't a permanent solution (central banks will be watching this closely and will be ready to hike rates as soon as it starts).
That's the opposite of what you want here.
I also think instacart workers might be at higher risk of virus exposure because, as I understand it, they need to go into the store and pick out groceries - while food delivery workers only really interact with the food bag at the counter. I'm also not sure how often the different contactless delivery options are chosen, but instacart would include more exposure if you needed to hand every grocery bag to the customer compared to one or two food bags.
The commenter above incorrect about the taxing, but are correct that tipped workers don't have precisely the same wage laws. Tipped workers are allowed to be paid a lower minimum wage that varies by state. In NYC is is $10/hr as opposed to the standard 15/hr minimum. In Florida it is $5.54, while regular minimum wage is $8.56/hr.
Yes employees are supposed to be compensated in missing tip pay to reach the actual minimum-wage. But also yes, this is the fastest way to get yourself fired from a company. If you are the only employee asking for compensation due to low tips you're effectively admitting you do not offer customer service to the same tier as other tipped workers and should be fired.[0]
[0] I don't personally believe this. But every manager I've ever had while doing tipped work has believed this. And good luck getting a lawyer to fight for you when your salary was previously $5.54 / hour.
Amazon has the global logistical supply chain to make it happen. Bezos can send an email and have a grain-to-alcohol pipeline in the works by the end of the week.
The computer system notifies drivers when they are delivering a first-time order for a specific address or phone number. This is intended for security purposes (you are supposed to always call when outside for a new order to ensure it's not a robbery or scam). But for myself and other drivers, the main function of the "first time delivery" notification was to let us know this person would not be tipping. Anecdotal evidence purely, but first-timers would almost never tip, and then would always tip every time after. I imagine because they saw the notice on the box.
I do wish it were as you described. Because of the wage laws in Florida when I was in college, a delivery at the edge of our radius that didn't tip basically cost me money. I was never compensated for gas or mileage, and tipped workers are allowed to be paid a separate minimum wage. If I remember correctly it was about $3/hour when I was working? I was lucky enough to deliver for a store that had coverage in a very rich neighborhood though and I'd say on average I made way above what the average pizza driver did. Jobs are weird.
If Amazon is promising to pay you at least $36, then the "base pay" must be $36 - that's what you'd be getting if there was $0 tips - and either you're getting all the tips (i.e. if there's any tips, you're paid more than $36), or Amazon is lying and stealing tips (i.e. if there's $2 in tips, they reduce ("steal") your base pay to $34 so you're still paid just $36).
I'm not sure where you got the idea that that is what I was talking about?
Do you not understand what an earnings guarantee means in the context of a tipped job? It means that you have a base pay + tips. If those tips end up not meeting the earnings guarantee, the company will pay you extra to hit that guarantee. That effectively means that the first $x of your tips are going to the company to cover the earnings guarantee. That's what doordash (and most restaurants) are doing.
The US federal minimum wage laws require a minimum wage of $7.25/hour. Tipped employees only require a base rate of $2.13/hour but the employer must guarantee that they earn $7.25/hour w/ tips, if they make less, the employer must pay them the difference. Effectively, the first ~$5/hour of tips goes to the employer.
To save $5? Really?
Right now, I'd pay $25/order to actually get a delivery window.
As I specifically mentioned: this is going to last for a year (probably more). Everyone is going to have to learn how to continue doing their job with that.
There is no other option: the govt doesn't have enough money, business doesn't have enough money, consumers don't have enough money...everyone is going to have to do their job with this happening.
Not equally. You can't possibly be saying that someone who is able to completely self-isolate by working at home is in the same position as the person who is out grabbing groceries?
Source: https://shoppers.instacart.com/
The trouble here seems to be maintaining a consistent supply that is sustainable.
It's tricky to discuss whether the price is worth the service. Because it depends on many factors (e.g. how much you make)
We'll just vote with our wallets.
Because there will be a certain group of people who shame others to tip.
As a bonus, we might just start addressing the extreme and ridiculous levels of wealth inequality we have in society today through that process.
For the record, I'd be perfectly happy with the price of these delivery services increasing by $5 if it went to the gig worker fulfilling it. That's already a lot less than I tip food delivery drivers.
Serious question, not being combative with you.
Doesn't Amazon have a very real hazard here which could result in burdensome regulation and or customer defection?
Additionally, we, as a society, should value minimizing the number of people working in these roles and their interactions to ensure they remain healthy and don't become transmission vectors.
I appreciate that you either can't see that or don't buy it so I end my participation here having tried to make the point as clear as I could. That is not a sly way of saying "I'm right, you're wrong" by the way. I am just out of words and ideas and time to re-express the relationship again.
Very best to you.
But Instacart is just grocery shopping. At a certain price point, people will go into stores themselves, or self organize to do bulk purchases for a small group. Right now in NYC, some people have started a charity to deliver goods to older residents in apartments for free. Instacart can’t compete with that.
Personally, I would be fine with paying $5 extra per order of groceries, but I'm not a user of services like this.
Haven't worked as an ISS, but I presume that they have no say in their orders as they aren't paid per order. I actually have no idea if they even get a portion of tips.
source: have run for Instacart before.
True "delivery fees" are only enacted for non-subscriber or small orders.
source: am infrequent Shipt/IC shopper
The biggest problem here is that this is one of the most "expendable" workforces we've ever seen–hiring cost is rock-bottom, training is done through an app (requiring no human interaction or pay), and shoppers are just sent a shirt and prepaid card (Shipt) or a lanyard and card (Instacart).
I feel like the organizers understand this and know that if the overlords decide they don't want to deal with the strike, their accounts can be deactivated with the click of a mouse, wasting less than $50 in resources (though usually less because of the ROI they've already exhibited). All the company has to do is ramp up advertising or add some new hire incentives.
Keeping the demands reasonable is how they're self-preserving. Anything too extreme, and they just get replaced with no change. It's a good _starting point_, but there definitely need to be more protections for our gig economy workers in the future.
I see some people have different definitions than me but defining tips as discretionary and optional. Required costs are fees and should be called such. It’s pedantic nitpicking based on a goal of explicitly paying workers and not hiding it in mandatory tipping. I hope they get what they want.
Come on now.