Uber, Grubhub and DoorDash must pay NYC delivery workers an $18 minimum wage

Technology@lemmy.world – 331 points – 9 months ago

Uber, Grubhub and DoorDash must pay NYC delivery workers an $18 minimum wage::New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Moyne rejected a bid by Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub to block a bill requiring a minimum wage for app-based delivery workers.

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Restaurants used to just have their own delivery drivers. Crazy, right? Like Phillip J. Fry.

I delivered pizza and later Chinese food for years, working directly for a restaurant. I get the sense you got a way better level of service from that arrangement, as well, versus the Uber Eats randos you get these days. You sure as shit did from places where I was a driver.

My wife and I have gone back to when we order food, like our pizza night, ordering directly from the place. I know the drivers are getting paid a decent wage and without all the extra fees it's more reasonably priced. Plus the food actually arrives in a timely fashion and is still hot rather than the driver doing a bunch or other deliveries before us and the food being cold.

Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it – we're talking trade balances here – once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selling them here – once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel – once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider to be prosperity – y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:

music

movies

microcode

high-speed pizza delivery

I haven't read Snow Crash in decades. I think I'll revisit it.

I was blown away the first time. Only had the audio book but sat there, ok he's describing the internet, vr, and a country ruled by corporate interests.... Big Whooop. Wait, published in 1992? There's some interesting predictions, and ideas surrounding technology but still grounded in reality. A bit of Alt-history.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

As soon as I read the word Deliverator a smile came across my face. An actual Snow Crash reference.

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