A first-of-its kind law requiring a minimum wage for app-based delivery workers will take effect after a judge rejected the companies’ bid to block it.
Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub won’t be able to get out of paying minimum wage to their New York City delivery workers after all, following a judge’s decision to reject their bid to skirt the city’s new law. The upcoming law, which is still pending due to the companies’ ongoing lawsuit, aims to secure better wage protections for app-based workers. Once the suit settles, third-party delivery providers will have to pay delivery workers a minimum wage of roughly $18 per hour before tips, and keep up with the yearly increases, Reuters reports.
The amount, which will increase April 1 of every year, is slightly higher than the city’s standard minimum wage, taking into account the additional expenses gig workers face. At the moment, food delivery workers make an estimated $7-$11 per hour on average.
I dont think raising minimum wage will help. It just forces the service to raise the cost of the delivery fee. I don’t know the answer to the affordability crisis, but it ain’t that!
I come in peace, because you wanted an honest answer/real conversation. .
I disagree with you but upvote for engaging. People are really bad about using that as a disagree button.
I agree that raising minimum wage won’t help, but I still think it needs to be done. For as long as our shitty treasury targets a 3% YoY inflation rate (and esp when it goes way over that), the minimum wage needs to keep pace. Personally, I’d greatly prefer that we lower our target inflation rate but that’s a totally different discussion.
I don’t think it forces them to increase the cost of the delivery fee, I think it gives them an excuse too. They always want to. To anyone that has used meal deliveries, we know that it is wildly overpriced as is, to the point where it’s downright foolish to use any of them. They can try to increase their prices if they feel ‘forced’ to (read:want to maintain profit margins), but the fact of the matter is they’ve already done the math to maximize profit and determined that fees any higher will result in fewer customers and less profit. That will shift a little as the upfront cost of providing the service does, but they simply can’t go much higher without losing more customers than it’s worth. I hope I’m wrong though, because if it does force them to go much higher then the entire delivery ecosystem of apps will collapse and that would be a good thing.
I don’t know the answer to the affordability crisis either but I do know that meal deliveries are not part of that crisis. It is an extremely overpriced luxury service. They are about as worried about being affordable as Apple and Cadillac are. Frankly, I’m rooting for their downfall.
Very good points. I hadn’t thought of the downfall of delivery to be an option, but I can understand that. The inflation stuff is a little over my head but if we constantly target higher inflation, what is the end game? We can’t raise all salaries realistically and have a loaf of bread cost $20 in the end. Is the future meant to have less humans?
Well. It doesn’t force the service to do so, the higher ups just decide they want to preserve their pockets and charge the customer more.
aaaand THAT is the real fucking issue here. All these low wages are completely unnecessary but the C-suite needs their bonuses to increase YoY!!!
Yes, it comes out of worker compensation, what’s your point?? If wages go up we will have to raise prices instead of cutting (or even limiting increases) into our poor leadership’s bonuses and compensation /s
Yes @missveeronica, love peace, love discussion! I am curious what other alternatives we have or what people can think of. It’s obviously a very tough problem since the US government can’t seem to (agree to) fix it. Things that pop in my mind:
I understand this is a basic overstatement, but in general, people work so that they can afford a house. I think housing prices have gone bonkers in recent years, partially due to foreign investors and the flipping houses/Airbnb craze. One thing that pops into my mind is to impose a flip tax, where unless the owner personally lives in a house for 4-5 years, they pay a large tax when selling the home. This of course applies to corporations as well but with the added spice of larger tax if the inventory was empty the entire time. If we can make housing affordable again, I think the need for higher salaries is less of an issue.
Revamp the food stamp system and make it universal to everyone. This ties into universal basic income, but I think if everyone was part of a food stamp program, it would make it less stigmatized and there would be a wider offering of choices available. This could be very cool.
Aside from the usual tax billionaires/term limits/socialize healthcare ideas, it seems that we have an issue where things can get out of hand from people who are greedy. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but I feel like if there was some website that showed what companies are owned by who, we could vote with our dollars and level the playing field. I hate that I found out after years the gym I belong to is owned by some nutjob and I’ve been patronizing him. If there was some visibility into where my money was going, it might educate people where their money is going.